slow down. listen. the veil is thin.

a new cartography for the threshold?

dear sojourners,

Rain overflows the birdbaths. Oak leaves gather in small bundles on the deck where Wind has tossed them as an offering during recent gusty days. i see no need to sweep them away and make a deposit into the compost bin, at least not yet. they might be shelter for some small Being on my concrete deck. shelter looks different this time of year.

we finally had a “visible breath” morning where i live in the pacific nw…cold enough so my warm exhale created a mini-fog to walk through as i approached my car for a morning outing to swim, the opening of day still wrapped in dark. the waning Moon high in Sky. Stars maintaining vigil. Rain a few days off. i offered gratitude. with all that is unfolding in the world, it helps ground me, blowing a kiss to Moon and thanking cold Air for revealing my breath’s presence. gratitude reminds me i am not alone. awe and wonder are two of my mentors that remind me to stay present to mystery. something i need reminding of these days…

these days i am raw. porous. those “thundertides” from my last post, being unsettled, are the dominate feeling that rivulets my body. i know not everyone “feels” as deep as i do (that’s not a judgment, it is part of my being’s make-up) AND i want to check in before i get going. how are you? what feelings, if any, are stirring in you? how are you taking in the world around you? after all, we are the world around us, there is no separation. please take a moment to sit and be with yourself. if you it feel comfortable, give yourself a hug.

i’ve return to my (almost) annual read, Wintering, The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May. what has called me back to this read? it could be the nights closing in earlier and earlier. or the bare hints of sunrises that greet me post lap swim at the community center where only four, five weeks ago rising Sun blinded me as i drove toward home. but those are the cyclical Earth/Moon/Sun reminders. my need to reread Wintering is a noticing from within…plus that rawness. there are internal cycles that have my body saying “remember when?” and “time to slow slow slow down”

pre-Sun rise clouds and waning moon 10/25. photo by anne richardson

this season is when the veil thins between this “above” world and the Otherworld (see “pps” below for definitions and history.) for me many anniversaries of deaths and transitions are clustered from october through mid-february. in the past nine years alone my marriage ended, my beloved pug died, my mother and mother-in-law died, i chose to move from the first place i ever lived alone (a nest of safety,) i started a significant relationship which is now twilighting. plus 29 years ago this coming january my father died. my body, my spirit, my whole being wants me to be present at the veil and listen. aware. these composting winter landscapes invite nothing less than my whole attention.

and yes, other significant life transitions happened outside this “window.” they tap at the door and ask to be let in. "we mark your life too,” they whisper. “let us in, let us in, let us in.” like a mouse secreted behind walls nibbling at yellowed and covered over paper. “welcome. come in,” i respond.

in Wintering Katherine May says:

“There are gaps in the mesh of the everyday world, and sometimes they open up and you fall through them into somewhere else. Somewhere Else runs at a different pace to the here and now, where everyone else carries on. Somewhere Else is where ghosts live, concealed from view and only glimpsed by people in the real world. Somewhere Else exists at the delay, so that you can’t quite keep pace. Perhaps I was already teetering on the brink of Somewhere Else anyway; but now I fell through, as simply and discreetly as dust sifting between floorboards. I was surprised to find that I felt at home there.” pg 9-10

most days Somewhere Else feels less like a world i’ve fallen into and more a country i’ve been given immigration papers to live in for the past nine years. reading Katherine’s words again, are a timely reminder that existing Somewhere Else while simultaneously navigating the “normal” world is work. no wonder i’m tired. they also dovetail into Becoming Monster, the meeting|gathering|festival i’m participating in this week (this was also mentioned in my last post.) after i signed up, i received this in a welcome email:

“You click the button. You join the meeting. You are here and not here. You are in a place that is no place, yet the air around you is charged with a sense of something happening. It is a strange magic. It breaks your heart. And in that moment we feel the monster in our fingers, our posture, our anticipation, and we notice, together, how we are already in the weird alchemy of dissolving and coming back together as something other. To enter a threshold is neither a beginning nor a step towards arrival. It is, perhaps, a moment when we name this condition of in-between being, this being unmade in the confluence of currents coming together. What does it mean to enter this space, this time, the time of the festival, the time of the monster?”

a welcome into a confluence. a liminal space. a noticing. the Somewhere Else. to be assured there is no fixing, no arriving at some destination. no map necessary…or even a compass. this other than human-centric space. to me it means entering with curiosity. to allow time to drift away. i also feel shy. what do i have to offer? i have some things to shed. to grieve…and celebrate. to be open to mystery. to name.

in the spring of 2019 i sojourned to the UK where i returned some of my mother’s ashes. as i continued to grieve her death the following year and all that unfolded on that journey of “going home” i wrote about “losing the map” and needing “new compass points” in a blog post on Nurture Your Journey, Grief's Dance Card, Loss Reminders, and Compass Points. as i approach this spiral return toward her death and sit with all the other dissolving landscapes in our world, this metaphor seems to have been prophetic for what was to come. i savor those teachings from that first sojourn.

Báyò Akómoláfé is involved in Becoming Monster (no surprise there.) ah, he always gets my pondering mind pondering and one link offered from The Emergent Network, who is Becoming Monster’s host, was to a presentation Bayo gave at Macalaster College in Minnesota where this comment on “home” caught me up short: “home has been stripped away beneath our feet.” (to offer context it is at around 17 minutes.) this is why it resonated with me: last week i went for a walk. up up up the hills where i live until i reached a summit. once there i wandered around council crest park until i came to a Grandmother Red Cedar. after i asked permission, i placed my hands against her bark and breathed in her dry musty scent. and then the word “home” filled me and an urgent sense to be “home.” my intuition said it was more than my physical abode, but in that moment, that was all i wanted, to walk home to my nest. so to hear these words in Báyò’s talk, just moves that experience to another level. our concept, my concept, of “home” is undergoing radical changes, whether we/i can receive that or not. and a reminder that Tree Beings are wise teachers that have been around longer than humans. that whisper of “home”…when i move away from my human-centeredness, i can hear differently.

i dreamed the other night i was on a Beach making sand castles with my niece and sister-in-law. they were young and i was my current age. i looked up and saw a Tsunami wave of Sand coming at us. they ran one way and i ran another, the wave following me. in my dream i am thinking to myself “if Sandwave overtakes me, i will suffocate and that will be it. or maybe the Sandwave will create a well around me and i will be able to breathe.” ahead of me is Stream|River. human beings on the other side are waving for me to come across. Water is moving swiftly. there are partially submerged Stones that are hard to see, that could be used as “steps.” i need to decide if i want to cross the threshold. Sandwave, i “know,” cannot get across Stream|River. i wake up.

i have been pondering this dream. at first it seemed obvious it was about crossing a current threshold since that is where much of my life is spent. but as i listen to Báyò and Aerin Dunford, Lead Weaver for Becoming Monster, (she was a guest on a recent episode of You’re Going to Die: the Podcast and is well worth a listen) and prepare for Becoming Monster, i began to consider my old beliefs about thresholds, i wonder if i need to stay with Sandwave. perhaps that is the threshold. crossing Stream|River would take me to familiar places. maybe i need to be metabolized by Sandwave. perhaps we all do.

since my move last november, i’ve been dancing intimately with winter. shedding. shifting. restless. unsettled. it’s no wonder my relationship drifted. i wandered off on an unmarked path and stumbled further into a terrain without language. further into the land of “Somewhere Else.” a place of dissolving and coming back together, but still very much in the muck state. how does one share a map for an undefined cartography? a place where compasses have no use. where “home” refuses to be stable? (and trust me, i love my routines and stability.)

it has helped to name (a recent occurrence) what has been drifting like fog from place to place in my embodied self. these loose threads not willing to be woven into a complete story, try as i might. threads that break free from my body into time beyond time. a thread of Red Cedar, Rain splatter, Song Sparrow, a wind scattered Oak leaf…we are all part of each other and part of this “home.” we are leaking beyond what we are told defines us. does it scare me sometimes? yes. but then i remember the gift of fog. how it slows me down. seeps into my pours. wraps me in my own breath. our breath. the breath of Sandwave. where maps and compasses are useless and i must trust.

sitka sedge state national area.photo by anne richardson

what is Winter to you? what maps are you still using to navigate your life? are there any you are willing to set aside? as the veil thins this season, how do you plan to honor those in your life that have crossed to the other side? how will you be with your Grief?

thank you for journeying with me in this raw space. i hope you are taking tender care of your hearts and reaching out to beings, human and non, for support.

in gratitude

anne

ps: one of my favorite Substacks is Death and Birds by Chloe Hope. Though i haven’t met Chloe, she feels like a kindred spirit. Her latest post is embers, first flights and final words. if you listen to her post, you might find it is a meditative experience. i do.

pps: the thin places: if you are curious about the Celtic Roots of Halloween and the days surrounding oct 31st, here’s a good read for you: What is Samhain? (Definition & Etymology.)