I’ve had this saved since you wrote it. Grateful to see it in Caroline Ross’ notes and read it this Sunday morning of all mornings.
I just read a beautiful picture book last night called Fox by Margaret Wild and Ron Brooks and haven’t been able to get it out of my mind. The story is minimal, with gorgeous paintings, about a magpie whose wings have been severely burnt in a forest fire, a one eyed dog, and a Fox “who feels nothing”.
It’s was a bit heart rending tale about redefining what it means to fly, friendship and the difficulty of return. A bit of a trickster tale about how and where we find the strength to make that difficult journey.
Somehow in this essay you are Magpie, Dog and Fox yet manage to do so with a radiant sense of humor that I can only describe as a miraculous bit of grace. I’m not sure your mom was right about the Jesus bit.
I remember when you and I met for a 1:1 in one of the Dark Mountain classes a few years ago, i was in a difficult place regarding lichens and what they seemed to be calling from me and a feeling of abandonment regarding them, and you shared with me about Ariadne's story, about how the return from the center of the Labyrinth is just as important as the quest to the center, just as important as what happens at the center - that the return is a most critical component of the journey. That has sat with me during these years, coming back again and again. And this deepening here in your essay... being at the threshold of return, that going back isn't as clear as it seems like it should be - as if the red thread frays and requires us to see and feel with senses beyond our eyes and touch... maybe this is what provokes change in the morphology of the eels too... silvery, back to the sea... you and Mark, all of us, returning to the sea, amidst the toxins and the trash, the return being ever more important since our culture seems to not know how to do it anymore.
Thanks so much Nastassja! So glad you enjoyed the piece and that Dark Mountain conversation had mythic reverbs in your life and work. Here's to the silvery seaward journey and our making it back home... Love Charlotte
SO MUCH!!! PRAISE!!! Such a writing of OUR time and place. There's so much Care we hold for one another. Held captive by Capital demands. This 'economic survival' - a boast of 'Spiritual Healing' tied into 'Liberative worth'.
As to say : look at me. Serve unto me. I am your Savior. A 'feel good tactic of Care'.
A game to put yourself above the 'filth, shame, sickness' One so claims to heal.
Thank you so much for speaking your Voice to us masses Charlotte.
Beautiful writing! Awake beings in the nightmare of history, indeed … It reminds me of Wendell Berry’s OUR REAL WORK:
It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.
Thanks for this Charlotte. As ever plenty to chew over… it reminded me of this poem which always makes me laugh
The Committee Weighs In
I tell my mother
I’ve won the Nobel Prize.
Again? she says. Which
discipline this time?
It’s a little game
we play: I pretend
I’m somebody, she
pretends she isn’t dead.
—Andrea Cohen
Sending love and squeezing spagnum moss on the hill between my toes. Cally
I’ve had this saved since you wrote it. Grateful to see it in Caroline Ross’ notes and read it this Sunday morning of all mornings.
I just read a beautiful picture book last night called Fox by Margaret Wild and Ron Brooks and haven’t been able to get it out of my mind. The story is minimal, with gorgeous paintings, about a magpie whose wings have been severely burnt in a forest fire, a one eyed dog, and a Fox “who feels nothing”.
It’s was a bit heart rending tale about redefining what it means to fly, friendship and the difficulty of return. A bit of a trickster tale about how and where we find the strength to make that difficult journey.
Somehow in this essay you are Magpie, Dog and Fox yet manage to do so with a radiant sense of humor that I can only describe as a miraculous bit of grace. I’m not sure your mom was right about the Jesus bit.
Bless you for it.
I remember when you and I met for a 1:1 in one of the Dark Mountain classes a few years ago, i was in a difficult place regarding lichens and what they seemed to be calling from me and a feeling of abandonment regarding them, and you shared with me about Ariadne's story, about how the return from the center of the Labyrinth is just as important as the quest to the center, just as important as what happens at the center - that the return is a most critical component of the journey. That has sat with me during these years, coming back again and again. And this deepening here in your essay... being at the threshold of return, that going back isn't as clear as it seems like it should be - as if the red thread frays and requires us to see and feel with senses beyond our eyes and touch... maybe this is what provokes change in the morphology of the eels too... silvery, back to the sea... you and Mark, all of us, returning to the sea, amidst the toxins and the trash, the return being ever more important since our culture seems to not know how to do it anymore.
Thanks so much Nastassja! So glad you enjoyed the piece and that Dark Mountain conversation had mythic reverbs in your life and work. Here's to the silvery seaward journey and our making it back home... Love Charlotte
SO MUCH!!! PRAISE!!! Such a writing of OUR time and place. There's so much Care we hold for one another. Held captive by Capital demands. This 'economic survival' - a boast of 'Spiritual Healing' tied into 'Liberative worth'.
As to say : look at me. Serve unto me. I am your Savior. A 'feel good tactic of Care'.
A game to put yourself above the 'filth, shame, sickness' One so claims to heal.
Thank you so much for speaking your Voice to us masses Charlotte.