This week I did not feel like writing. The loss of our cat Twilight had me not want to feel any more than I was feeling already, but I am taking a writing class and wanted to complete the assignment. This week we are exploring surrealism and this is what came through. Don’t try to understand it, but let yourself feel it and see what moves inside of you.
My eyes shine with the power of galaxies of constellations behind them lighting up life. My presence is felt more powerfully in my absence. My small ways of being reveal themselves as the glue of life. And I have now come unstuck. My eyes turn blue and my mouth opens into a fierce grin. I float in this bottomless pit where darkness reveals truth in ways that the light can hide it.
I dance on my tippy toes on the point of a needle that pierces me through to my core. Sap drips from the opening, covering me in its cloying stickiness of attachment. But the gods and goddesses turn it into molten lava and it melts away who I am leaving me ice-cold and brittle.
Dark mulch is my bedding, for my decomposition. Elemental forces strip away the layers of cotton wool I have used over the years to try and protect me from the sharp edges of stories.
Now my bones are exposed. They are white, dry, and brittle. Hard and rigid. My skeleton is in pieces left in a pile. All jumbled together. Metacarpals are mixed with ribs lying on top of a humerus next to a clavicle. There is no order. And there is no freedom in being stripped to the bone.
My bare bones sing a melody of longing for the voluptuous flesh of life. A calling for the juice of a fruit that can be ripped open with bare hands and in the face of such violence release the succulent sweetness of giving. I want to drink the syrup into my veins and have it fill me with sugar and spice and all things nice.
But I cannot be reconstituted. I am a powder now. Finely sifted and ready to be sprinkled over cakes and patted on noses. I can float in a sunbeam and land on Mars. There are no limits. I can be snorted and swallowed. I can be licked and pinched. I can be rubbed on or thrown free.
There is no weight. There is no form. There is no shape I cannot take. I am nowhere and I am everywhere. I am with you and I am gone. I am nothing and I am everything.
I am the dust mite that makes you sneeze. I am the food you place on your tongue. I am the empty container you place in the recycling. I am the space between the atoms.
My emptiness is your fullness. My invisibility is what you see. My nothingness is your everything.
Let the force of my absence rip you apart at the seams so you can become unglued and untethered even if only for a little while. I want you to know the lie that is at the heart of existence so you can live more freely and fully. There is no escaping it, but a lie well-lived is the next best thing.
If you would like to listen to the Rewilding Love Podcast, it comes out in serial format. Start with Episode 1 for context. Click here to listen. And, if you would like to dive deeper into the understanding I share along with additional support please check out the Rewilding Community.
Rohini Ross is co-founder of “The Rewilders.” Listen to her podcast, with her partner Angus Ross, Rewilding Love. They believe too many good relationships fall apart because couples give up thinking their relationship problems can’t be solved. In this season of the Rewilding Love Podcast, Rohini and Angus help a couple on the brink of divorce due to conflict. Angus and Rohini also co-facilitate private couples' intensives that rewild relationships back to their natural state of love. Rohini is also the author of the ebook Marriage, and she and Angus are co-founders of The 29-Day Rewilding Experience and The Rewilding Community. You can follow Rohini on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. To learn more about her work and subscribe to her blog visit: TheRewilders.org.