Of rags and bones (continued)

Continuing despatches from inside a dismemberment

All the next day she felt the loosening.

Impatient with the demands of the world, craving caves and the letting-go of form, of shape, she lurched through the daylight hours with little grace and just enough presence to pretend, to those it mattered, that she was fully here.

When night fell she knew she needed the quiet time in the dead….no, in the aliveness of the small hours. Waking while the household was quiet, she rose and dressed and attended to the stream that was making its way through her. Giving herself up, immersing herself in its eddying waters, she wondered how she would land - if she would land - later that day.

Art by Olaf Hajek

She wondered if she could stand again and walk with willingness back to the bright shore of things. Things of the world that needed attention, things that clamoured and pressed and insisted.

Yet this was the practice, this was the walk, the steps she needed to practise. Seeing the veil, passing between with ease, hearing what needed to be brought into this world from the other world, breathing and speaking and dancing daily on the thread-thin bridge amidst noise and clamour of the world around her.

After a time, she came to a stream. Boggy in places, the path by it ran over knolls and around tree roots, following the watercourse doggedly. From time to time she stood in the stream, cooling her heels, hearing the flow through her blood.

More and more she stepped into it, finding that its silvery slip fed her.

Until she found herself walking through it, shifting from land dweller to water creature effortlessly. The bones she cradled in the bag at her waist sighed to receive the welling up of liquid nourishment, and quickly settled to her new rhythm, a swaying rather than a striding, a shimmer more than a step. On and on she was led by the stream, finding her chatter and bubble to be a dear companion to her own journey, until far off she heard a different sound, a more confident bubbling, and she wondered what lay ahead.

Not for long did she wonder, for soon she found the stream quickening, all life within it rushing, and she too was swept towards a horizon that seemed to cleave the world ahead.

Rounding a curve, the stream pushed her up against high rocks. Beyond was nothing. A ledge, a freefall into another world held by the susumnation of the stream, by deep and ancient rocks, but nonetheless a seam-place. For here was a choice. Water-dweller as she now was, she had come to a threshold, and like all such places, there were many paths around, and one path through.

Gathering herself, she knew fear. Nesting her bone bundle close to her she rested awhile against the rock, calling on Knitbone for her fierce holding, and Owl for her keen seeing. She knew she did not need to jump. Yet the urge was insistent, like the drumbeat of life itself, running through her hot blood. To go around, to climb down, would be possible, but the journey would be undertaken alone and would be arduous.

To simply let go, to allow the friend that was the stream to carry her, would be delicious freedom, an adventure that her parched spirit craved.