Sh*t Ain’t Worthless

Note: This post is about excrement. The title is the only place I will censor myself, either in talking about the act or the stuff. If this is a topic that you are squeamish about, I suggest either finding one of my other lovely posts, or moving on to another blog. 

 

There are images that get stuck in my head. These are the themes I use to write these post, and the images I explore with my therapist. Sometimes, the symbolism behind the images are so complex and overwhelming that I shelf them permanently (for instance, a while ago I had a dream about a snake with a broken back that was still alive and functioning as if nothing was wrong), other times, the image sticks in my mind, and insists that I examine them in great detail. The image of shit has definitely been the latter. About a month ago, I was feeling extremely depressed. I was stuck in a cycle of negative self talk, and what I kept saying to myself was “I’m a worthless piece of shit”. In my depression, I was invoking the image of shit as a substance that is to be extruded, flushed down the toilet, and forgotten. In the middle of the cycle, the image, first, of a dung beetle, then of a rich, well fertilized field came to mind, along with the phrase “shit ain’t worthless.”

The image page from my art journal documenting this event.

Now, beyond the modern, western squeamishness about bodily functions, the symbolism of shit has been difficult for me to research, mostly because there is so much of it (both shit and literature on it). Not to mention the various words used to describe the substance–shit, excrement, feces, scat, poo, etc. Where to even start? I talked to my therapist about this…constipation, for lack of a better word, and we explored some of the symbolism together. Even with help on the research, I felt like I could only really explore the imagery that came to me during that bad episode.

The reason I colored the dung ball in the first picture to the left  yellow is to invoke the sun. I don’t know much about Ancient Egyptian mythology, but I know that some of their legends states that the sun is rolled across the sky by a scarab, or dung beetle. Taking this to the logical conclusion, this would make the sun a giant ball of shit.  This…makes a surprising amount of symbolic sense to me. I don’t know how much animal dung Egyptian farmers used on their fields–I know they depended on the flooding of the Nile to refresh nutrients. But, to have feces in the sky and feces on the ground nourishing the plants that are needed to sustain life has a beautiful symmetry to it.

The second image, that of soil, is one that re-occurs in my life. I live on the third floor, so what gardening I can do is restricted to pots and containers. I love the feel of soil, though. I love the rich darkness of it, I love the smell. I love the promise of new life, of nourishment and beauty.

Soil, though, is an interesting thing. If you break down the bits that go into making a good soil, you’d end up with shit, rotting plant matter, and dust. None of these on their own are very pleasant but combining them turns them into something magical.  Soil becomes the heart of alchemy to me–it’s a substance that consists of horrible, noxious things but is in itself beautiful.

When I was discussing this with my therapist, she asked me what I wanted to do with it. (And that’s the million dollar question, right?) I talked about taking this shit, the foulness in my life and turning it into something good. My therapist then asked where I thought I was in that process. When she did, I remembered an incident.

My grandfather and two of my uncles are farmers, and live in a tiny village about 50 miles from the town I did most of my growing up in. Every year or two, we would go to one of their farms and get a truck load of manure to bring back to dig into our vegetable garden and flower beds. The year my sister was 16, she went by herself to pick up the manure, and our cousin overloaded the truck. She had a hard time driving home, and kept fishtailing because of the heavy load. She made it home safely, but was shaken by the incident (and more than a little upset at the cousin).

I feel like that’s where I am right now, is halfway home with a truck load of foul shit. It’s heavy enough that I can’t go as fast as I want and stay safe, but going slowly is a painful experience. I have to cling to the idea that when I get where I’m going (and I’m not sure where I’m going) that I’ll be able to turn it into something beautiful.

Until then, I’ll imagine a scarab taking my load of shit from me, forming it into a ball, and rolling it across the sky as the sun.

Suicide as Symbol

I’ve been spending a lot of time, lately, trying to be more cognizant of the symbols around me, especially those that show up in dreams. I’ve mentioned my depression before, and it seems that when it rears it’s ugly head, doing anything, especially something that might lead to getting better, becomes difficult to the point of being impossible.

I’d like to state, that, despite being in a dark place, and despite the symbols of death and suicide that I’m going to examine in this post, I am not currently suicidal. I have been, as recently as January, but right now, I am not seeking my own death.

If you are, suicidal or otherwise considering hurting yourself, please get help. There’s the Suicide Prevention Lifeline, as well as numerous local helplines. If you’re the religious type, talk to your pastor. And, in the very worst case scenario, go to the emergency room. I know how dark and scary it is standing on that brink, but I also know that it can and will get better.

I’m also still hanging out at my parent’s house as I write this post, so I don’t have access to the books that I use to look up symbolism. I’m going off of what I wrote in my art/symbol journal. I’d also like to reiterate that when I talk about symbols, I’m bringing up what they mean to me–in no way am I writing a comprehensive symbol encyclopedia.

A few weeks ago, I had one of those dreams that is so powerful, it stays with you. In this dream, I have broken in to the school where my mom used to teach. I’ve gone there with the intention of hanging myself. I went first to her classroom, and, using her key, let myself in. I stand in the middle of the room for a while just breathing in the scent. I want to remember the way it smelled.

I then go to another wing of the school, and break into a random classroom, this time, picking the lock. Once there, I stood on a desk and looped a rope through the drop ceiling, and hanged myself.

Searching out the symbols in this dream have been difficult, naturally. It makes me wonder why my subconscious can’t be giving me rainbows and puppies and unicorns, but it is what it is.

I kept coming back to the tarot when looking for these symbols–specifically, the Hanged Man, and the Death card. Now, I’ve tried tarot, but the cards just don’t “speak” to me–and I’m slightly jealous of those who can read and understand the cards. If you are such a person, and see that I’ve missed something in my interpretations, please let me know in the comments. All that I’ve written here comes courtesy of Google.

Anyway, Suicide by hanging.  Suicide is the act of ultimate despair. It’s forcing and ending by taking matters into your own hands. In the western world, it’s wildly perceived as the ultimate sin, while in the east, it’s more of a mixed bag. Hanging is a disgraceful way of dying, especially in places that execute criminals on the gallows. It’s also one that’s very easy to arrange. You can walk into any hardware store or sporting goods store and buy rope with no background checks or waiting period.

The Hanged Man of the tarot is hanging from the World Tree, like Odin seeking wisdom. He symbolises suspended action, feeling of being stuck, and sacrificing for a higher goal.

While researching symbolism of hanging, Tollund Man came to mind. This man lived and died in the 4th Century BCE in Denmark. Now, Tollund Man probably died by strangulation, not hanging, but the noose was left around his neck.

I don’t know if I have a genetic connection to Tollund Man, but I do know I have Danish ancestry, and it’s likely my ancestors worshiped in the same manner as those who sacrificed Tollund Man. (I am interested in learning about Pre-Roman Europe, especially the religion, but, alas, there’s just not that much information.) We can speculate as to why Tollund Man, and the other bog bodies were sacrificed, but, unfortunately, if there is a definitive answer, I could not find it. Tollund Man for me represents family, however distant, and the religious traditions that I don’t believe in anymore. He also becomes a symbol of mysticism, in that I don’t know why he was sacrificed, what god or gods the people were trying to appease (or even if he was a criminal or prisoner of war, rather than a religious sacrifice). He, and the culture he comes from, represents a lost knowledge, something for which there are currently not answers.

For all the negative imagery, death, in the Tarot, at least, is a positive thing. It represents change, endings, the old giving way to the new.  I don’t know if I’ve talked about soil on this blog or not, but I know I’ve mentioned it with my therapist. The individual bits of soil–manure, dust, rotted leaves and other organic matter–are vile things, but when they are combined together, they create something beautiful and useful. Without death, not only would the world be over-crowded, but nothing new could grow.

In the modern, Western world we are removed from death, while for the generations before us, death was simply a part of life. So death, for me, becomes a symbol of knowledge lost.

The other powerful image in this dream is that of a key. I let myself into the school, I didn’t break in to the school, and it wasn’t my intent to cause property damage–I didn’t want to harm anything but myself.

In this light, the key represents being in charge of my own destiny, controlling what the change is I need to make in my life. A key can open or close, lock or unlock. Keys are associated with Janus, whom I’ve written about before. The image of a two-faced person, especially when the two faces represent opposites, has been a reoccurring symbol for me, and one that I’ve adopted to represent myself.  I especially like this particular image, where the balance is between male and female figures.

As I was looking over these symbols and images in my art journal, I realized that they are all about being stagnant, standing still, and stopping, as well as being indicators of change. This flat out scare me. I tend to get comfortable in my ruts, and being forced out of them, even when it’s for my own good, is always a painful experience.

I mentioned in my last post that I’d been getting a lot of images about death and change, and this is only a small sampling of those symbols. I don’t know if the change I’m being asked to make is related to my recent medication change, or if there’s still something else that I need to do.

 

Crickets and Cockroaches

Recently, my anxiety has been out of control. I’ve had a hard time even leaving the house. My parents, in their wisdom, had me come spend some time at their house, and got me a doctors appointment to talk about the medication I’m on. In short, the doctor became the third diagnostician to say “bipolar” about me, and prescribed lithium–which, so far, has the side effect of planting a Nirvana earworm in my head whenever I even look at my pill bottle.

So, with that rather long and personal introduction, the night before my doctors appointment, I saw a black insect scurrying about the bedroom. It looked to me like a cockroach. I saw it again the next night, this time, with less scurrying , and I realized that it was a cricket.

Both the cockroach and the cricket have potent symbolism attached to them. I found it interesting that they are visually similar, and have nearly identical diets, but they are regarded so differently–as a personal note, I had no problem scooping up a cricket and depositing her on a plant outside, where a cockroach is to be killed on site.

Cockroaches are, well, unpleasant. They are indicative of death, decay and filth. The naturalist in me can admire them for their tenacity and adaptability, but there’s something about them that is just…gross. They symbolize a desire to pull back from the world, to focus on survival. While Kafka never uses the word “cockroach”, the symbolism of cockroaches speak very strongly to his “The Metamorphosis“. The character of Gregor Samsa is often depicted as a cockroach or a cockroach-like creature in the art surrounding the story (as an aside, I once had a literature teacher who was a native of Germany. She would be appalled to see me write “Samsa” and “cockroach” in the same sentence.)

While I was able to find some positive symbolism of cockroaches, I couldn’t shake the feeling of disgust and loathing surrounding them. Crickets, on the other hand, seem much more positive.  The cricket’s song is a staple of summer nights, and is something I consider comforting to hear. A cricket in the house symbolizes luck or fortune to come in some cultures (a token I destroyed by ushering my guest out the door). The character of Jiminy Cricket from Pinocchio (at least the Disney version) and Chester Cricket from “The Cricket in Times Square” bring an air of cunning and wisdom to the cricket archetype.

The most striking thing to me about my visitor was that before my medication change, I thought it was a cockroach. After, I saw that it was really a cricket. The symbols around me lately have been urging a change, while being vague about what needed to change. I’ve been getting a lot of death symbols–a category where the cockroach fits nicely–and the non-death symbols all pointed towards movement, as does the cricket’s hopping form of locomotion.

I’m not faithful or conceited enough to think that God or the universe or whatever drops signs into my lap. I do, however, believe that my subconscious causes me to notice things in a timely manner. I can’t fathom the cockroach-turned-cricket as anything other than a coincidence, but I’m glad that it happened. And I hope that as my new medication starts to kick in, the world will be filled with more crickets, and fewer cockroaches.

The Ethereal Nature of Symbols

I recently found myself in Kansas City, a very cool town by any account, and one made cooler by  the fact that my sister lives there.  While most of my trip involved hanging out at her house, I did make a point to visit the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, which has a very nice collection, and the added benefit of being free to the public.

Kerry James Marshall, American, b. 1955, b. Birmingham, AL
Memento #5, 2003

There is a piece in the Nelson that stops me dead in my tracks every time I see it–Memento #5 by Kerry James Marshall.  Part of the amazing power of this painting is its size, it’s 9’x13′ of unstretched canvas. Part of it is the shiny factor, the little rectangles covering the image are glitter, but mostly, this is as very powerful image.

This painting is full of symbols, some very unambiguous. And since I won’t be able to explain Marshall’s intent sufficiently, this is the write-up the Nelson has of this work:

“Memento #5 is the final painting in Chicago-based artist Kerry James Marshall’s Memento series, a five-part elegy to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. The monochromatic painting on unstretched canvas depicts a black angel standing at the center of a living room and facing outward. Solemnly, the figure draws closed a glittery, silver curtain, symbolically concluding a decade of peaceful civil disobedience, courageous marches, visionary speeches, righteous legislation, explosive riots and tragic deaths. Behind the angel, at left and right, are the faces of four assassinated leaders: President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. Each year of the tumultous decade is counted out between the glitter strands, and fragments of the word “Remember” are also visible. At the bottom of the painting, Marshall has written, “What a Time. What a Time.”

Except that’s not what I see.

I mean, I see the angel, the images of the Kennedy’s, Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X. I see the years, I see the text, and I certainly see the artist’s intent.

What I don’t see is a curtain. When I look at this painting, I see bars, like to a jail cell–and rather than pulling them closed, in my mind, the angel is bending them apart. Rather than being an elegy mourning the end of the civil rights movement, it’s a reminder, 50 years on, about how much more work there still is to do.

Which brings me back to the topic of symbols.

One of the things that I love about art is that the painting you see isn’t necessarily the painting the artist saw. The symbols morph and change for each person. Good art (and literature and music) has as many interpretations as it does viewers–and no one interpretation is better than any other.

Eye, aye, I.

It’s been how long since I’ve blogged? Ahem.

Without going into too many details, the past few months have been challenging. Between family drama, having a nervous breakdown (I’m better now, thanks!) my computer giving up the ghost and not being able to replace it until I got a tax return…

Well, I’m back now.

I don’t really have reoccurring dreams. What I have is reoccurring dream settings. Not long ago, I found myself in one of these settings, an old Mormon pioneer Tabernacle.

So, for my non-Utah readers, let me explain. Temples and tabernacles are both places of worship, but the temple is only for members of the Church who meet certain moral requirements, like attending church regularly, not drinking  coffee or tea, and paying tithing. Tabernacles are meeting halls, similar to cathedrals, where anyone can come in. Often times, the doors of the tabernacles are open to the community at large, and host things like graduation, concerts, and inter-faith worship services.

Some of these tabernacles feature the Eye of Providence, or the all-seeing eye of God . This picture is from the St. George, Utah, tabernacle. The tabernacle in my dream also has an eye, and in this particular instance, the eye seemed to be the most important thing.

After this dream, I began to see eyes EVERYWHERE. I don’t mean in people and animals, I mean in graffiti, random shapes in nature, jewelry, etc. Every time I saw a circle or an oval with something in the middle, it became an eye. I picked  up new book, and in the first paragraph, the author describes being in the Pantheon in Rome, and looking out the Oculus at the sky.  Clearly this is a symbol I need to pay attention to.

As I pondered on eyes, the word itself struck me–namely, the three English homophones for eye. There’s eye, like the ocular organ, that allows us to see. There is I, as in myself, and there is aye, as in yes.

Humans are primarily visual creatures. While the other senses are important, we generally observe our world through our eyes. And as such, the eye has taken on a mystical element. We have such expressions as “the eye is the window to the soul”. We say a clairvoyant has a “third eye”, and those who wish to do us harm cast an evil eye on us–the charms in the picture to the right are to ward off such evil.

So eyes equal sight, as well as magical powers. For me, it became a realization that I needed to really look, to see.

But what do I need to see. I. I need to see myself. I need to examine the “I”, the me. The eye symbolism was telling me how I needed to do it too–aye. Yes. Positive.

The symbols of the eye that were popping out all over the place are telling me that I need to see myself in a positive light.

This isn’t an easy thing to do. But it is important, and it is a thing that I’m working on.

Finding the Stories

One of the problems in using a blog as a tool for coming to grips with depression is, well, the depression. I’ve been hit hard the past couple of weeks, to the point where I’ve been resentful of my dogs because I have to get dressed before I can take them outside to potty. Being in such a state, I haven’t noticed many symbols, and have lacked the motivation to write about the ones I have been seeing.

Jerks

Still, even if I’m in a place where it takes me all day to muster up enough enthusiasm to go grocery shopping when I’m out of food, the dogs need to be cared for. And it’s a whole lot easier to get dressed and take them downstairs than it is to scrub various bodily discharges out of the carpet.

Taking the dogs outside has the additional benefit of getting me out in nature, or at least into the suburbs with a few hold-out farmers nearby. I’ve been making a point on our walks to pay attention to things like the sky, birds, the feeling of sunshine and wind, etc.  I especially make a point of watching the sky at night. While it’s true that my neighborhood is inundated with light pollution,  I can still see a few stars.

Northern Constellations, December. Via http://astronomycentral.co.uk/

When I was out with the dogs a few nights ago, I was looking at the constellations in the northern sky.  Cassiopeia is easy to spot, and once you’ve found her it’s easy to locate Andromeda, Perseus, and Pegasus.  While looking at these four constellations, I was thinking about how they share the same story (except for Pegasus–he’s connected to Perseus by virtue of being born when Perseus cut off Medusa’s head, but that’s a story for another blog). The thought “Find the stories” came to my mind. While I don’t think it meant the literal stories in the constellations, I realized that it made sense to have have them there. It’s easier for most people to remember stories than it is to remember the random grouping of stars that kind of almost looks like a bear, and means that north is that way.

The stories served as literal guides for eons, pointing the way for travelers to go. They also served as moral guides, reminding people to, say, not boast against the gods or you’ll have to end up sacrificing your daughter to a sea monster.

Good advice, really.

I’m not sure what to do when the symbol is a story, and not the words therein. If the symbol was the legend of Perseus and Andromeda, for instance, I could easily pull out the symbolisms and meanings. Likewise, if it were the stars themselves, I could find symbols in the constellations, as well as in the science. But, stories?

The best I can figure is that my subconscious is telling me that I need to find my bearings, that I need to find my guiding stories and principles. This makes sense, because I’ve been feeling lost, like I’m spinning my wheels, for months, now. But between the feeling of being lost, and the depression, I don’t know if I can trust myself.

Related articles

• Cassiopeia and Perseus in northeast on autumn evenings (sott.net)
• Autumn Skywatching: Celestial Soap Opera Wheels Across Night Sky (space.com)
• Andromeda, The Chained Princess (englit0399.wordpress.com)

 

Dragonfly

While still reeling from the realization that my subconscious can lie to me, an image came to me with a great deal of force. The image was clearly that of a dragonfly, but it was a crude drawing, almost like a petroglyph.

The colors in the dragonfly I saw were reds and oranges. I haven’t payed much attention to color in the past; I haven’t seen much need to pay attention to color.  The black horse and the brown butterfly I wrote about recently have really been the only archetypes that have come to me where the color mattered. The fact that my dragonfly is red and orange, then, becomes an important part of decoding it’s meaning.

Red and orange are both warm colors, associated with energy and power. Red also symbolizes passion, love and desire, while orange represents balance, enthusiasm and warmth.

Female green darter at rest. Image courtesy Wikipedia commons.

The dragonfly itself is full of symbolic meaning. It is a creature that lives in two worlds–the water and the air–and is indicative of change.  Like a caterpillar that turns into a butterfly, a dragonfly naiad is unrecognizable when compared to the adult.

Dragonflies have a symbolic connection to the spiritual realm. Because they feed on mosquitoes, the are found around water, and many Native American traditions say that the dragonfly is indicative of pure water. They are also an invitation to look deeper, to peer into that water as it were, and to be wary of self-created illusions. This makes sense, then that the image of a dragonfly came to me while I was thinking about the man in my dreams who deceived me about what symbolizes me.

A dragonfly rests with it’s wings outstretched, which, to me, bears a resemblance to a double-barred cross.  I was mildly surprised to discover, then that in early and medieval Christian tradition, the dragonfly was considered a creature of the devil, one that would weigh souls down so they couldn’t go to heaven, or who would stitch the eyes and mouths of misbehaving children closed.  This, too, speaks to me. Dragonflies are beautiful, helpful insects, but they were maligned and unfairly castigated by humans for centuries.  The dragonfly then reaches back to the idea that maybe some of the things I’m feeling and experiencing aren’t so much bad, as misunderstood. This is comforting to me.

I feel like I’ve just scratched the surface of the symbolism concerning color and dragonflies with this post. And, like all other posts on this blog, I’ve just talked about the symbolic meanings that are significant to me–someone else who saw or feels connected to a red dragonfly might have a completely different interpretation. I think that’s part of the reason why I love symbol work so much.

 

Related articles

• What does a Dragonfly symbolize? (dragonflycoachingbyeugenia.com)

“The dagger represents you completely”

A few nights ago, I had a dream. I dreamed I was at a seance (for lack of a better term). I was in a small room dominated by a large table, with many people gathered around. The walls were covered with pictures, plates, and other tchotchkes. The table was covered in a cloth, with many random images painted onto the fabric. The table was also bisected with a line of ash.

The man leading the séance (or whatever it was) instructed us to gather as closely around the table as we could, but to be careful not to touch the line of ash. He began by talking to a young man a bit to my right. As he pointed out symbols on the wall and on the table-cloth that represented the young man, his thoughts, feelings and desires, I unconsciously leaned forward to listen, resting my arms on the table, and disturbed the line of ash.

Pre-Roman Iberian iron dagger  Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

The man turned to me and called me by name–which startled me, because most people mispronounce my name the first time around. He said that I should not have been able to touch the ash, and that in doing so, proved that I had a great potential. He then pointed to an image of a knife on the tablecloth. He said “The dagger represents you completely.”

This dream, especially this line from the dream, have been subject to a great deal of scrutiny and confusion since that time.

A dagger is a weapon, pure and simple. It is designed to stab and slash–it is not a tool for, say working with food or skinning an animal.  It is ancient, with daggers being found from the neolithic era.

It is also a very masculine, aggressive symbol.  It represents conquer and aggression.  Everything about a dagger speaks of aggression, of force, and power. It is a tool of betrayal–to be an effective weapon, the wielder of a dagger has to be close to his victim.

In short, I couldn’t find much of anything to reconcile the dagger as a symbol for myself.

A few days of pondering this dream, and the thought came to me “What makes you think he was telling the truth?”

Huh.

I’ve been dealing with major depressive disorder for over 20 years now. That voice inside that’s telling me that I’m not good enough, not smart enough, not pretty enough, not ANYTHING enough is very familiar to me, and I’m still learning to control it. The thing about that voice is that logically, I know it’s a product of my brain not processing chemicals correctly. Emotionally, it’s really hard to ignore.

By realizing the man in my dreams was a liar, it puts a face to my depression (which would be infinitely more useful if I could remember his face). It also shifts the important symbolism of that dream away from the dagger, and onto other elements–the ash, perhaps, or the fish and rice that played a role in a different part of the dream.

In speaking about depth psychology to my therapist, she said that learning these symbols is like learning the language of the soul. Different symbols, different images will have different meanings to different people. While books and websites like the ones i use as reference materials are helpful, I’m really the only one who can interpret what my soul is saying, and what my personal symbols are.

And that includes characters from my dreams.

 

After the Fire

This weekend, I spent some time exploring the Tintic Mountains of Central Utah with my dad.  In our wanderings, we came across a small stream (Though, that it was flowing in it in mid-October said that it was a pretty significant water soucre) that followed the road for a ways. Eventually, we came to a meadow full of shrubs and grasses, much greener than one would expect for this time of year. This meadow was punctuated by the skeletons of juniper trees that had died in a fire a few years back.

As we were driving through this meadow, I said “This is a pretty area. Or was, before the fire came through”.

Dad thought about this for a second. “It’s probably the fire that made it pretty.” He said. “Those junipers would have taken up all the water that let the other plants survive.”

Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

It didn’t take me long to figure out that he was right. I love the pinyon-juniper forests that cover much of my part of the world, but the trees don’t leave much for flowers and grasses. You’ll see sagebrush and rabbit brush abutting the juniper forests, or an occasional tree in the middle of the sagebrush range, but the two don’t play nicely together. Juniper and pinyon generally don’t allow for other plants to grow in their soil. When you’re in a juniper woods, you really could be anywhere in the west.

I didn’t get a picture of the meadow we saw. I wish I had. I just didn’t realize that it would be the archetype that would stick in my mind.

I’ve been thinking about the classical elements–earth, fire, water, and air–all week. I’ve been drawn to the figure of the Earth Mother, and have started–and discarded–several posts about water. My post “Winds” fits the air category. I would never have thought, then, that it would be fire that got me out of my blogging slump.

I am terrified of fire.  I can handle, say, cooking on a gas stove, or being around a lit candle, but not much more. Even campfires make me nervous. This fear has mellowed over the years, but it was especially bad when I was a child. I couldn’t watch a TV show that had a fire in it after dark. The yearly wildfires that sweep through the Intermountain West were terrifying to me.  My first full-blown panic attack came at the age of 12, during one of these wildfires, when my family was the last vehicle let through on a road before the firefighters shut it down. Even writing about it, I’m starting to hyperventilate.

My point is, I can, and do, connect to earth, air, and water. Fire is something that is to be avoided, if at all possible. Fire is not my friend.

Plants regrow among trees burned in the 1988 Yellowstone fires. (Photo courtesy Daniel Tinker – See more here) 

And yet…

The image to the right was taken after the massive wildfires that swept through Yellowstone National Park in 1988. I was seven, at the time, and can remember seeing (or thinking I was seeing) the smoke from the Yellowstone Fires a state and a half away.

As destructive as they were, the Yellowstone Fires turned out to be very important to researchers because of their size. Yellowstone became a laboratory in how nature heals itself after the devastation of a fire.  And how nature heals itself after a fire is pretty amazing.

When fire comes though, it destroys the trees, but it also clears away for new growth. In Yellowstone, for instance, wildflowers were abundant in the years following the fire.  Fire clears the clutter, so to speak, while leaving the ground unharmed. Fire resets areas the way nothing else can, and the results become a matter of point of view.  Yes, the trees are gone, but they have opened the way for new plants, and new ecosystems.

When I look at my psyche, I see something incredibly dense and crowded. The thought patterns and habits I have are not especially healthy. And yet, clearing them out, setting fire to them, as it were, is incredibly scary to me. I think the image of the meadow I saw, as well as remembering the years after the 1988 fire are telling me that I do need to make these changes. And when I do, the results will be beautiful.

Roads

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler,long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The Road Not Taken

Robert Frost, 1920

Two Roads Diverged in Yellow Wood by Eric Vondy. Link

This poem has been running through my head all day. I saw my therapist this morning, and we talked vocation.  Basically, I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up. And referring back to the incomparable Mr. Frost, my heart is telling me to forget both roads and a random deer trail. My head doesn’t think this is such a good idea.

In terms of symbolism, roads and crossroads are universal enough that it kinda seems silly to be writing about them. But, this is the imagery that has been following me around today, so here goes.

 Roads and paths are all about movement. It is common for us to speak of our “path in life”. Roads indicate direction in our journeys, be they physical, spiritual or emotional. They also give us a way to gauge our movement.

Roads are indicative of a correct way, a way of safety and security. I love to spend time exploring the desert with my dad. One of the things that he taught me is that all roads go somewhere–even if it’s an old mine or an abandoned shepherds camp. Further, dirt tracks will eventually link on to a graded road, and graded roads lead to blacktop. Once you reach blacktop, finding your way back to civilization is a piece of cake. So it would follow, that in my emotional journey, the best way is to stay on the beaten path.

Except that’s not me.

Copyright 2003, Caroline Myss

I’ve talked about being a seeker in the past. This part of me wants to forge my own path, to seek vistas and horizons that are not commonly seen. I want to explore freely, and find my own way–and yet I’m scared to do so.

Two roads diverged–one is a safer, but duller path. The other is more exciting, but also more dangerous. And so very rarely are choices between just one or the other.

In The Book of Symbols, “Road” is listed as part of the human world, in the section of movement and expression. “Crossroad” is listed as part of the spirit world, in the section for rituals and symbols.  Crossroads carry a heavier metaphysical weight than simple roads do. Crossroads are by nature liminal, they exists between worlds.  In some traditions, a person can meet the devil at a crossroads to make a deal with him.

Crossroads represent a choice, both in the physical realm and in the spiritual.  These choices are not to be made lightly–as Frost’s traveler says “I doubted if I should ever come back”.

The fear of making a wrong decision is intense. The only thing I know is that not making one will be a worse mistake than choosing the wrong path.