Day 6

Run wild through your life.

Kal Barteski

I go in search of who I am and find only who I am not.

Do I exist? Do I have the right to exist? I find myself asking these questions and I do not always have an answer. Sometimes all that I find are negatives. Not negatives as in “bad” but as in emptiness, non-being. Like a vacuum in space. If the world is life and existence, then I am the vacuum that defines it and reveals its existence through contrast. I am non-being. Or so it sometimes feels.

I think of Rhiannon at work. She is like a bright candle and she burns from not one end, or even two. It’s like she has found a million ends to burn all at once in a brilliant flame. Rhiannon works in graphic design, and, in a world of grey, she is one of the few points of colour, like a tropical bird appearing on a winter sky of bare branches and sparrows. Her hair changes colour with the breeze, almost, from deep auburns to peacock blues, and occasionally even ordinary blonde or brunette. Her makeup is like an artwork, changing with her mood. And her body is an art form. Voluptuous and abundant, she wears her body and her clothes with pride. On one shoulder blade, a flight of birds rises with every movement of her shoulders.

Rhiannon is at once everywhere and everything it would seem. I sometimes wonder what she thinks of working in this grey, confining world of office bureaucracy. She looks supremely confident and as though she is determined to make the world work for her. If life is a game, she’s in it to win. I’ve overheard her talking in the staff kitchen and it seems that her entire life is a blur of one activity after another: work, photography, her own business, dance, yet more dance – and parties. More parties than I could count. Frequently she comes in tired from the intensity of all she does, and sometimes her voice is little more than a hoarse croak from all that she has demanded of it. But radiant. Always radiant. Her eyes are like the sunrise I love to watch each morning – you almost need sunglasses to look at her.

And as I watch her, I find myself on occasion wondering what she thinks of me. I have fancied that I have seen her looking at me, with something like pity or even simple bemusement. Though, more likely she doesn’t even know I exist. I wouldn’t even register on her radar. To her I must appear, not only insipid, but barely half alive. I don’t imagine she could even begin to comprehend how anyone could choose to live life without draining to the dregs every drop of goodness it had to offer.

For some funny reason I do not comprehend, she reminds me of Maggie Elram on YouTube. Maggie is an entirely different person. Even though Rhiannon stands out, she has somehow found that subtle line drawn between social consensus and “outside”. So has Maggie, for that matter. But whereas Maggie, in my imagination, has taken her stand outside and celebrates it, Rhiannon plays from within. If you are not in the game, you cannot win. And so, for all her apparent eccentricity, she is, in fact, the ultra representation of what it means to be “normal”.

Maggie is my style guru. It used to be the wonderful Kelly-Ann, until I discovered Maggie Elram. Her body is like a canvas. No, that’s too two-dimensional. Even “sculpture” doesn’t work. It’s like she creates a living devotion and celebration from her body, her eyes points of defiance in the face of a goddess. “Anything is possible,” she seems to say. “You are only limited by what you believe you are.”

On one of her videos she talked about how to live authentically and openly, without needing to always shout our individuality from the rooftops. I can’t remember exactly what she said, but she gave an example of expressions of self that aren’t always necessary – it was something like dressing in rainbows and running through the park shouting, “I’m a unicorn!” Then she kind of paused and edited herself. “Actually, that would be pretty cool.”

And it would! I would absolutely love to see that. Imagine the world if there were more people in it who believed they were unicorns. One part of me is scared at the prospect, because it would make the world less “safe” and “predictable”. But the rest of me rejoices. I mean, think about it. Who says that, in order to survive and feed ourselves, we have to wear “professional” clothing and live in neat, unimaginative housing? In what universe is that necessary to our survival? What if we all took on beautiful, rainbow names that matched our personalities and dressed however we chose, according to our moods? Clothes from every era and every kind – clothes that exist only in the imagination… Maggie, I think you’re wrong. I think the world needs more people who are prepared to run screaming through the park, giving up the battle cry, “I’m a unicorn!”

So, if I love these vivid personalities so much, why am I not one myself? Why do I not get a hairstyle like Maggie’s or dress like Kelly-Ann? Why don’t I have tattoos or dye my hair a different colour every month?

Because on me it would be ridiculously false. You know how some people absolutely own who they are, while others are just try-hard wannabes? I would look an absolute clown. Much as I want to see a champion for living life as a unicorn, and much as I celebrate the people who are prepared to flout (or in the case of Rhiannon, lead) convention, it is not me. I remember the one and only time I went to a Mabon celebration near here. It was pretty cool and the organisers were amazing. One of the organisers, to me, absolutely personified the horned god. Slender but strong, and wearing only loose trousers (no shirt or shoes), he was filled with an exuberance I have rarely seen. He danced with wild abandon, his eyes like coals of determination and amusement as he called and cajoled us to join in the fun. Like Rhiannon, he was going to suck the marrow from all existence. Unlike Rhiannon, he was not “in the game”. Nor was he outside it, like Maggie. Instead, he was oblivious, like the laughing, insouciant and ageless Tom Bombadil of Lord of the rings. He was so busy being himself that he saw no boundaries. None existed. He was Life itself dancing to the very point of sacrifice, willingly given, knowing that he must die that the world might live. All was one to him, and he was One.

Anyway, I digress. As I remember that day, I cannot help but recall the one time I have been privileged to truly know and see the god of Wicca. At any rate, late in the afternoon, almost as the celebrations were due to end, it was he who first gave up the call: “The fairies are here! The fairies are here!” The mood and energy of the crowd changed in an instant. It became at once softer, gentler, welcoming. Sympathetic and encouraging. A circle opened up and then somehow closed around two slender men, dressed as fairies, complete with star-tipped wands. Reluctantly they found themselves drawn to the centre of attention and the crowd danced around them, celebrating the presence of fairies in their midst.

But what I remember most was the fear, timidity and reluctance on the fairies’ faces. They did not own their dress or wands at all. They literally shook, their wings fluttering without benefit of a breeze. They stood – limply – in the centre, eyes downcast and somehow dreadfully exposed. Their limbs hung and appeared disconnected from any projective life force that might command them. I saw how much the crowd wanted them to know they were loved and celebrated for their uniqueness, and I saw also their horror. I cannot believe they wanted this attention. I am sure they would much rather have stayed hiding in the background, observing. Perhaps that is why they came so late, hoping to go unnoticed amidst the revelry. They were fairies but they did not own their fairy-ness. They did not know how to be themselves without being the centre of an attention they did not want.

And that’s the problem. I would love to find that unique expression of myself and escape the confines of what feels like unifying, de-identifying prison garb. But I do not know how to do that without being noticed. And I do not want to be noticed. That’s interesting. I had never recognised until I began writing these pages that I not only do not like attention, I crave anonymity and invisibility. Not complete and utter invisibility, simply the kind of presence that attracts no attention and raises no awareness in passers by. The kind that allows people – and animals – to feel fully safe – fully themselves. When I am present, I want them, not to see me, but themselves, reflected. I want them to have space to be and dream and exist expansively, fully. They shouldn’t run up against the wall of another “self” but open up unhindered in the light. And that gives me the absolute privilege of being able to witness the miracle of that existence. I can be still and watch as birds fly and lizards scurry, all unconcerned with my existence. I can watch as people laugh, and cry, dream and hope – seeing the unguarded expressions of being that are never shown when witnesses are present. The world is like a great drama, but, like a science experiment, to observe a thing changes it. What if I could be the silent witness who sees, knows and records, quietly telling the world “I see you. You exist. You matter. You are beautiful. You are loved. And your story has been recorded for all time. The world shall know of your passing and of the fact that you passionately lived.”

I am fantasising now of course. But it’s a beautiful idea, isn’t it? Oh! My. Goodness. Have you seen what it is I am doing? I have created for myself just exactly what I would wish to create for the world! In writing these pages I have written “you” into being. I have declared that “you” exist. You are witness to the truth of who I am and of my struggle to find my place, if there is one, in this world. You are the mirror that reflects my need. I need you to be, in order that I might know myself real. And “you” is just exactly who I want to be for others. Silent. Not intervening. Just being. Actively, passionately, daringly listening, completely without judgement or personal investment. Just being, witnessing, celebrating, mourning, standing with the other in the moments of Truth.

I have been looking at the whole thing the wrong way round. I have been seeing myself as a negative, as a non-being. A colourless individual who does not truly live. But I already said it myself. The emptiness defines the space. The emptiness allows the space to be and opens itself to be filled. The emptiness is not a negative, a non-being. It is the essential complement to the physical.

I am the emptiness that allows the space to be.

I am the emptiness that allows the space to be.

Am I? Truly? Can I allow this for myself? Can I create myself into being according to my own wish? Or, more simply, allow myself to be that which I already am? Shivers are running up and down my arms and I am paused. Stopped. For a moment the world has stopped. At the risk of boring you, I will say it once again, louder.

I am the emptiness that allows the space to be.

The wise, beautiful and incredibly talented Emilie Bourdet is a painter who seeks always the balance of light and dark. She insists that we should not run from our darkness but embrace it, for it is the darkness that illuminates. I have always thought that too much light makes the world two-dimensional, harsh and flat. I see less well in bright light. And Emilie Bourdet apparently agrees with me. She teaches me that one sees best in shadow.

I reside in shadow.

The Raven’s prophecy tarot also deals in shadow and the secrets to be found there. If I were a Tarot reader, I do not think I would read with that deck. Its images somehow do not yield themselves comfortably to logical stories and answers to questions. At least not for me. But I am not a Tarot reader, so I can revel in the mystery of the images, that seem to speak without words and raise more questions than they answer. The cards look at me and ask “Who are you? I cannot tell you. I am a mirror, reflecting you back to yourself. What do you see?”

One of the cards I love in this deck is The Hermit. It is not a satisfyingly pretty picture, like some of the cards, but it smiles at me and winks. Because, in this deck, The Hermit does not retreat from the world, as s/he does in some other decks. In the Tarot of the hidden realm, for example, if I were The Hermit, I would be a lover of community, seeking temporary solitude in order to find wisdom and creative knowledge to bring back to my loved ones. But in the Raven’s prophecy tarot, I would not need light in the world outside. The light would be within me, reaching out to fill my entire body. I would not need to carry a flame because I would be the flame. I would be the light illuminating the surrounding dark. Only the world would not see that. The world would see only the retreating shadow.

* * *

I hear drum beats. I often hear them, strongly within me. It is one of the reasons I became a Pagan when it was the least logical thing I could do. The thing most unlike anything I had ever thought to do before or since. I heard the call of the drum, the wild, haunting, insistent voice of a great rhythm, filling the world inside me and filling all life besides. I heard its call, and I followed.

But I have never danced. Until now. I felt too self-conscious, too silly. Too awkward, uncoordinated and lacking in grace. In truth, I have felt a fraud, like one of those wannabes, “trying” to be a Pagan by faithfully and mechanically doing the things that Pagans are “supposed” to do. I wanted to truly and instinctively feel my devotion, not try it on like a child playing dress-ups. I just never found the way to do that. It’s easy to talk about offering reverence, but how do you actually live it? Today, I have begun to answer my own question. Today, after my amazing discovery about myself, I stopped to listen. I meditated in a way I have rarely done. Not “trying” to feel or be anything. Just being. Listening. Allowing. And I heard the drum beating. Softly, deeply, with vibrations working deep within me, waking every cell and fibre within me. Then louder, wilder, more triumphal.

Finally, I rose from meditation and, following instinct, sought tribal drumming produced by humans. I had already connected to the deep drumming that beats the world into existence. Now I wanted to connect to people and to rhythms I have never previously heard or explored. I found music and I danced. For the first time ever, I danced. For the first time, I felt and experienced my body in a way completely unknown to me. In the dark, just me and the drums, and the calls of the drummers. I laughed, I shook, I moved every part of myself, feeling the shifting patterns and attempting to respond to them, attempting to portray with my body what I heard with my ears. But ultimately not caring. Just dancing. In the dark I danced. And worshipped the All That Is with my body, not my mind.

* * *

I am the emptiness.

I am.

I exist.

I have a right to be.