I get irritated so easily these days. I can't seem to step outside of my life... I can't seem to allow for a different, more peaceful perception of my world either... and it's getting harder and harder to snap out of it.
I've been a bit of a monster all day. My thoughts are harsh thoughts and are harsher still amidst the dream-like tranquility of our backdrop. My love and I engage in the subtle dance of avoidance. Attempts at reconciliation have made it worse, the day stretches on past normal day lengths, and we both wish the whole trip won't be like this. Silent prayers are cast into the dreamscape, drifting on the southern glacier breeze, bouncing off the three mountain ranges that converge on this Salmon fed lake. The prayers hold an urgency, as though we both understand that this may be the last chance that we are both able to give the other...
The Douglas Firs are huge here. There, on a rocky, grass-lined bluff, the trees and the ancestors of this land sit. Like a single stalk of fireweed amidst a bone-dry forest, they hold space here, waiting.
Waiting peacefully for the others to remember. To join them in the peace and quiet. And it doesn't take long, this remembering. Simply a day or two, without any other input, in a place untouched by human folly. Theirs is simply a subtler frequency. Powerful when tapped into. They will never bombard you. They simply wait for you to listen and feel. They want to share with us. They know it's our birthright.
I am a thirty year-old child. On the outside I can manage life, and take care of my needs, but on the inside, I am stuck somewhere around the age of twelve. I never went through a rite of passage. I don't even know what that means, or what it might look like.
Most stories seem to be of young boys who attempt week-long sojourns, alone, to fast and hopefully vision-quest. For what, I never really understood. Bu what they discovered and realized would be brought back with them to their tribe, and because of this, they would be given new responsibilities and roles. I never had a delineation point. Some event in my life must have caused essentially the opposite to happen, for me to stagnate emotionally, while my body and mind continued to develop, and relatively no new responsibilities or roles were asked of me.
In fact, thoughts of being alone, in the wild, for even a day, terrify me. Thoughts of being on a dirt road at night terrify me. Or did. Fear is so constricting. I can feel the power of it; like invisible shackles. Self-induced, and self-maintained, it keeps us from moving forward, or from even being able to dream larger than our environment. So what then? What will I make myself endure to finally see through it?
That question sends a river up my spine.
“Our culture no longer goes through any rite of passage. We are all allowed to be children in adult bodies.” My lover sees how damaged we all are. He understands that children who raise children slowly weed out the maturity and wisdom of the role known as elder. We no longer know how to access this role in ourselves, or access them. Perhaps clear cuts cause the same repercussions on the maturity and wisdom of the forests....
Sometimes I wonder what this year is about. It is 2012, the year of prophesied apocalypse. But what if the proclaimed apocalypse is simply a rite of passage for the planet and its inhabitants? Will we pass into a new experience of life as we know it? One full of beauty, magic, and love unfathomable by our recent Western minds? Or will we instead choose to clutch to the known security of humanity's youth; disgracing ourselves and our lineage as we dye our hair blonde, smear on self-tanner, and continue to roller-blade with our fourteen year friends?
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