Down to the River

This has been a very hard week. I miss my Dad. I cried when I had to leave home last weekend, when my visit was over. I cried just like I did when I was 17 and had to move to college when I didn't want to go. Ever since I've gotten back, I feel so permeable and sensitive. I'm bruising easily, and I fantasize, at least once a day, about running home and hiding under my bed. Me, a 25 year old woman with a credit history, a lease, and a near master's degree. Yup, that's the woman who wants to slither under the bed and lay down with her teddy bear sitting gaurd.

Tonight I finally started crying. It all just became too much and I finally felt like letting it out. I was at a school function- an informal group meeting of colleagues and a faculty member. We're supposed to be there for a research support group. But, the typical semi nastiness is going on. Academics at their most collegial can only be described as young lion cubs, biting and nipping and pulling, just enough so as to not quite break the skin. I am in no mood or condition now to play this way. Not that I commonly am anyway.

The evening, which I exited early, left me in tears. This was due mostly to some rough handling that was not meant personally, but certainly felt that way when one of my suggestions resulted in peals of laughter and eye rolling.

I realize that I do not let go of things well, and that I search for things to take with me- good or bad- because I seem not to be able to NOT do that. I'm like an experiential magpie.

I came home and what to do? How to cope? Nothing seemed like it would help. Even tea could not cure this. And the book that had recently been my refuge was finished this afternoon.

I decided to see about reading one of the poems excerpted in that book- Shadow Mountain: A Memoir of Wolves, A Woman, and the Wild.


The poem was by Rumi. I googled, and found two that felt important.

Rumi says this-

These spiritual window-shoppers,
who idly ask, 'How much is that?' Oh, I'm just looking.
They handle a hundred items and put them down,
shadows with no capital.

What is spent is love and two eyes wet with weeping.
But these walk into a shop,
and their whole lives pass suddenly in that moment,
in that shop.

Where did you go? "Nowhere."
What did you have to eat? "Nothing much."

Even if you don't know what you want,
buy something, to be part of the exchanging flow.

Start a huge, foolish project,
like Noah.

It makes absolutely no difference
what people think of you.

A Star Without a Name


When a baby is taken from the wet nurse,
it easily forgets her
and starts eating solid food.


Seeds feed awhile on ground,
then lift up into the sun.


So you should taste the filtered light
and work your way toward wisdom
with no personal covering.


That's how you came here, like a star
without a name. Move across the night sky
with those anonymous lights.

These poems did some amazing trick in me, and now I am better. It's like they struck a match inside me, and in a few moments, all the ice encased around me slid away, melted and completely innocuous.

I feel that books come to us at certain times for certain reasons. This has always been the case for me. Shadow Mountain changed my life. Other writings have offered comfort at the right moments, too. In considering this, I see a narrative to my life, a progression and a story. Things are interwoven. I know it. Other poeple that don't view life that way, well...I don't know what keeps them going and I don't exactly care. But they belong to a group outside of my understanding, as I lie outside of theirs, and thus often, their approval. The room in which tonight happened, was only two hours and a finite small amount of cubic feet. Real life for those hard bitten academics happened in that room tonight. For me, real life happens everywhere else and in many places and times. My universe is infinite.

Oh Sisters, Let's Go Down. Let's Go Down, Come on Down. Oh, Sisters, Let's Go Down, Down to the River to Pray.