The Quest of the Holy Howl- aka this is how I'm introducing myself on Patreon now
photo by Aldene Nicole Photography
Once upon a time, a long long time ago (or at least that's what it feels like, especially when I’m around my friends’ children who I SWEAR were infants just a few months ago), there was a young woman who was ABSOLUTELY DETERMINED to ….actually, she pretty much just wanted to live a fairly normal life.
She wanted to be able to buy herself things when she wanted them, she wanted to be able to travel, she wanted to have a relationship that felt nice and safe and cozy. She wanted a beautiful home, that she loved waking up in every morning.
So she applied herself to the path that she was told was most likely to give her all of those things. She found a job that paid her fairly decently, she spent evenings and weekends in a band that was her hobby, and she went on dates with some nice but largely incompatible men she met on OK Cupid (this was a long time ago. Don’t forget)
The problem was, this young woman had always had this ability to hear things outside of what other people could hear. She could see these layers of metaphors and patterns and magic wherever she looked. She felt words, and could make people feel words.
She would go about trying to make her unexciting but dependable life, but she wasn’t very good at it. It is hard to go about finding meaning in filing folders when snippets of songs come tugging at your ears, begging you to follow. It’s hard to simply smile and nod and be unthreatening when going through a “team building” exercise based on archetypes run by someone who was OBVIOUSLY hired because they were the CEO’s golfing buddy. (And then the exercise reveals you as the lone maverick in the whole company, a role best suited for “leadership” positions…not for the receptionist).
All the while, as she was going through the motions, wondering why she wasn’t happier the woman kept hearing a call from the wilderness within her, raising in intensity until the howl was impossible to ignore.
Finally after years of walking down the clearly marked path of “success” and finding nothing but more road in front of her, the woman decided to detour off the path towards to call of her own desire.
She felt confident at first, and then scared, and then she failed a few times, and the ghosts of her fear and failure gained momentum but always she followed that magnetic pull.
Past the valley of her destruction and re-creation.
Through the caverns where she confronted her darkest fears.
Through those caverns again
Through those caverns again
Ok, enough with the fucking caverns already.
…
Damn it, how many times do I actually have to do this?
…
how many caverns are there in this story?
on an on she went, making friends new friends and finding teacher along the way until finally she found herself at the source of the cry that pulled her off the well paved road all of those years before.
A mirror (magical. Obviously) in the center of the woods- ivy climbing up it’s legs, it’s oblong frame a silver leaf pattern gleaming suspiciously despite being left outside for who knows how long.
And inside of the mirror…was her- still wanting all of the things she wanted before. Comfort, security, beauty, love - but now she saw that she had been refined: the power of her truest self attuned, her ability to hear what was not there, to see what is under, and to use words to open portals to the heart all honed.
She stepped through the mirror, and onto a new path to a beautiful life - only this time she didn’t have to pretend to be anyone but her self along the way.