Day 5

You are on a journey. Yes, it is an internal journey but there is also a physical expression of this journey that is going to become increasingly important to the fulfilment of your destiny in this lifetime. Your journey has started on the inside but its destination will be the physical expression of an internal healing. This journey will draw upon what you have learned and mastered over the course of your life – so much so, that you may feel as though your life experiences have prepared you just for this particular adventure.

Alana Fairchild

I have become obsessed with walking the mudrugada, that magical liminal time of the pre-dawn. I never started out with that intention. It was merely something I thought to do on my first morning, when I was so scared and yet so wanting to mark the momentous occasion, as though I had truly achieved something that needed to be celebrated, not punished or hidden. And then it was a way of ensuring that I got exercise and fresh air each day, a chance to be in the world without risk of being “caught out”. But now it has become one of the most important things I do each day. I have never so readily risen from my bed before. Now, no matter how sleepy and comfortable I may be when the alarm wakes me, I find myself eager to leap out of bed and see what special knowledge this new day has for me. It’s like a special secret, whispered only to me, and it is mine for the asking. I never would have imagined that I would choose to get up with an alarm on any day when there was a choice not to. But I am. I think it has become a special part of this month, a morning ritual and promise to be fully alive in every moment and to be fully open to whatever the day may teach. I do not know how to “make” this month work for me. I have no plan, no clue about how to make a difference in my life. But showing up at the beach each morning is like a commitment to it, ensuring that each day counts and matters, that every sunrise is a complete universe in itself, and not one that I have ignored or wasted. I want this month to matter, and walking the mudrugada is fast becoming one of the most important parts of that for me.

There is something about the early morning that is all poetry for me. It is, of course, a shadow time, where worlds for a moment unite and possibility explodes. It is also a time when I am closest to my own private world and the everyday world belongs briefly to me rather than me to it. I can walk in it but still be of the world of dreams, cloud and smoke. As the day takes hold, my own world retreats and poetry descends into prose. But, for a brief moment, the world belongs to me.

And I love the feeling of hiding in the shadows. It is no longer just about my fear of being seen and judged by someone who knows that I am on sick leave. It is the feeling of absolutely expansive anonymity that walks with me in the pre-dawn light. For I am larger when I am anonymous. When people see me, name me, label me – when I have to talk to and interact with them - I become very small and insignificant. It’s not shyness, it’s about their energy overtaking mine. Can you imagine a picture in which you are looking down on yourself huddled in a small box? You are closed in on all sides except the top, only you do not stand because above you is a very, very bright light. It is shining down harshly on you, washing out your features and at the same time highlighting every unflattering detail. And so you crouch and cower, trying to shade your eyes from the painful brilliance of it. Now pan back – remember you are watching this from the outside. The light is everywhere and the box becomes smaller and smaller, with a tiny, insignificant you hidden inside.

That is me in the every day world. But not in the mudrugada! Why had I not noticed this before? I always knew it was a joyful time, but always before, I have associated getting up with the dread of going to work, with the crushing weight of every demand placed upon me. So I have remained hidden in the world of sleep and darkness as long as I possibly could. Now I have time to be, to notice, to live this time! The time of the pre-dawn is a magical, liminal world of shadows, inhabited by few. And those who do share the time with me all seem to share this same secret knowledge. Or at least, I like to imagine they do. At any rate, they each move in quietness and with relaxed purpose, as though there is all the time in the world before them and their focus is entirely on what wisdom the ocean has to offer today. They, too, are listening, and looking, and responding.

Of these fellow travellers, my favourite are the meditators. They are not here each day, nor are they always the same ones. At least, so far, in these last few days they haven’t been. And I do not look closely enough to really know. I guard their privacy as jealously as my own. It seems part of our tacit understanding of the time we cohabit. But when I see them, I envy them their complete stillness and appearance of ease. So tall and straight they sit, so unmoving. They look as though they are carved from the sand itself and are one with it. They do not just observe the ocean, the clouds, the gulls, the rising sun. They are the ocean in all its changing changelessness.

It would be tempting to join them in meditation before this magnificence and to see if I too could become part of the shadow-world in this way. But I spend more than enough time sitting as it is, more so now than ever. This morning time remains my time of freedom. And so I walk.

It is hard at the moment because the tide is very high in the early mornings. Some people seem to walk easily on the softer, squelchy sand, almost as easily as though it were firm sand. But I have never had that gift. Grace and elegance were not part of the package distributed to me at the beginning! Instead I flounder hopelessly, with my very best beached-whale impersonation, struggling and fighting with the soft, rising and falling sand and with my own limbs, and making very little forward progress. It is also warm again in the mornings. Not quite so warm as it was a week or two ago, but warm enough for someone fighting the invisible enemy of gravity. I therefore don’t get very far. I look forward to when the tide times shift and the sand becomes easier to walk. There is almost nothing I like so well as the feel of firm, cool sand beneath my feet as the waves reach out to play around my ankles. Then I feel as though I could walk forever and ever without stopping, becoming part of the rhythm of my own heart and of the rhythm of the wider universe around me. If I could keep on walking forever, I would become the heartbeat of the world.

And as I walk in the quiet anonymity of this strange world, I expand. We all do. Every one of us here present, including every gull and crab, is its own entire universe of mystery. We all of us grow and grow, filling galaxies. And the universe expands to accommodate us. The shadows of the pre-dawn, I have discovered, are my time. I would love to imagine I was a creature of the night, but I am not. I am a creature of the dawn, and the secretive shadows that herald it. Air. That makes me the element of Air. I do not want to be Air for some reason. I’m not sure why. It feels wrong. But dawn, I know, is the time of Air, and I do indeed fall into the wind with delight. It does not fight me for control as strongly as does Water, but plays with me, whispering to me and inviting me off into far realms. I watch each gull sail overhead, and, if I am very lucky, a lone pelican may wing by me in all its improbable bulk. And with each flight, I take flight. Each bird carries me with it on its journey and I can feel the currents of air beneath our wings, feel the air supporting our soaring, hovering adventure. We strain into the wind together or else rise and turn, allowing the wind to carry us as a surfer rides the waves. Perhaps that it why I met Fanu through levitation. Perhaps he knew that I longed to fly and he wanted to show me that, in my own way, it was possible.

Why do I not feel similarly about the evening, about the sunset? Partly it’s because all I see to the west is a tangle of buildings, the retiring sun caught, hidden and trapped within them. Partly it is because I am normally too exhausted by work to think of contemplating the evening in wakeful alertness. But mostly it is fear. I fear the night. I do not fear it when I am safe at home, but I fear it when I am outdoors, when I return late from work. Why? There is no logical reason. It is not the Unknown I fear, so, what?

Oh, I know! It is the known enemy of “Chaos”. That is what I shall call him. Hmm. Why do I call it “him?” The feminist literature I have read would suggest that Woman is normally clothed in the mantle of Chaos, or at least, that is how she is labelled. Never mind. For the moment, Chaos is male. And he rules the Night, or so I early learned. I was, of course, never allowed out at night when I was young. Night was the time of “bad people”. It was the time when thieves and murderers walked. I’ve been told that it used to be common for Australian families to sleep outdoors on hot summer nights (back when they all had big enough back yards to make that feasible!). But then an entire family was murdered in their sleep, and Australians learned to lock themselves in with the heat. Better the enemy of heat than the two-legged enemy with a knife. Anyway, that’s what I was told. Who knows how many people really did change their entire lives because of one story?

But night time was bad. It wasn’t just filled with criminals, but with people who liked to party – and drink. Alcohol was bad, and places where young people liked to gather and party together were even worse. For atheists, my parents seem very prim and proper, come to think of it! And so, I was not allowed out at night. Therefore, the funny thing is, I never saw a drunk person until I was about 16 or 17. I know Clare’s father used to like to have a beer on weekends (I occasionally sneaked a peak over the back fence, so I knew!), and I wasn’t allowed to visit Clare at those times. I imagined it must be a dreadful thing. And when I first encountered a drunk man, it kind of was. It was the middle of the day and I sat down to wait for a friend. It was one of the first times I had been allowed out on my own to meet a friend away from home and I was feeling very proud, grown-up and excited. I was carrying my first-ever handbag, which I carefully put down beside me. A man came and sat down next to me, too close for my liking, and started talking to me. His speech was somewhat erratic and confused. I couldn’t understand what was happening at first, and then I realised. “Oh my God. He’s drunk. This is what a drunk person looks like.” I don’t remember what he said to me at first, except that he suddenly grabbed hold of my brand new handbag, which held my wallet, bus ticket and all the money I possessed (I hadn’t yet been granted the privilege of a phone or door keys). That bag represented my only means of getting home again. He showed no signs of wanting to steal it; he simply held on to it so that I would not be tempted to get up and abandon him.

“I love you,” he said. “You won’t believe me, but it’s true. I really love you.” I have absolutely no idea how I responded; I just remember that I did everything I could to accept what he said and show that I believed him. I wanted him to think that I was really interested and that he didn’t have to keep hold of my handbag. I have no idea how long we sat there, while my heart raced and felt like it was going to explode out through my chest. But it worked. He put down my bag. It took all my will power not to immediately snatch it up. I resisted the urge, afraid he might become aggressive. After all, I had no idea. If his speech made little sense and he didn’t really understand what he was doing, what else might happen? Never having encountered a drunk person before, I had absolutely no idea what might be possible (there was a lot of TV I hadn’t seen and a lot of books I hadn’t read back then!). I kept on talking to him, trying to appear unconcerned about my bag whilst at the same time leaning further in, edging my hand closer to it, just in case. After a little while, I pretended I saw my friend. I smiled at him and said I had to go, thanking him for being so lovely. Oh-so-casually I picked up my bag and tried to nonchalantly walk in the direction of my imagined friend (who, by chance, did show up just at that precise moment!), while my knees tried very hard to collapse under me.

The silly thing is, I was never in any kind of danger. But I was terrified. I had never encountered someone not rational before (unless you counted the behaviour of every child I had ever faced in the school yard!) and it was like the universe turned on its head. Suddenly, anything and everything became possible. If people didn’t follow the “rules” of behaviour, then who knew what unpredictable and terrifying things they might think up to do? An invisible line had been crossed, and it didn’t occur to me that there might be other lines and other levels of safety. To my mind, right then, once the line was crossed everything was up for grabs.

And so I fear the night. I hear the shouts and wild music, feel the pulse of testosterone and see the evidence of rubbish and disruption in the mornings. Perhaps that is why Chaos has the face of a male to me. The face of someone prepared to break the rules. Like I just did when I let the doctor give me a medical certificate. Anything is possible.

At first, even the early mornings scared me. My heart raced uncomfortably at the sight of the lingering darkness, but quickly I realised that this world was inhabited by different beasts. Not the uncontrolled monsters of darkness but the free spirits of dawn. And so, the shadows of the mudrugada belong to me.

I drew another Sacred rebels card this morning, one that seems somehow appropriate to my communion with the dawn. I was enjoying being perplexed by “What you want, wants you” and I thought it was going to remain my theme card for the month. I didn’t think I would draw another. But then I felt a strong urge to do so. So I shuffled the cards over an episode of Buffy, allowing the movement to become like a kind of physical mantra as I watched, and allowing the cards to become a little more part of me. Then a card stuck itself out from the pack in the midst of shuffling, so I pulled it out and turned it over.

“Every journey starts with a single step”. “Journey” does seem to be my theme for the moment. I took that first step when I broke the rules, which, as you now understand, feels a little earth-shattering to me. I took that step, feeling like it was a step into the abyss, and landed on solid ground. Or almost. Now it feels that I am standing, right at the very edge of the cliff, just like The Fool in the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot. Unlike The Fool, however, I am all-too aware of the crumbling cliff-top and before me lies only darkness. The darkness of possibility? Right at this moment it feels more like the darkness of confusion. I have no idea which way to turn or even if there is a way to turn. It doesn’t feel like there is. I feel held – held within the limits of my own imagination and within the limits of my own beliefs about the way the world is. I do not see that alternate perspective, the one that shows me there is another choice.

Alana Fairchild suggests that there will be a physical journey involved, or at least, a physical aspect to the journey. I do not see how at this point. I have done much walking, but mostly in my mind. I do not see an outer journey emerging from the inner one. But that is because my mind keeps turning the problem over and over and over, like a pebble caught in the surf. There is only the same, ceaseless, repetitive motion, going nowhere except end on end on end on end.

Trust. Breathe. Listen. Open. Hold myself in Trust.