Wend Wednesdays

Wend (wěnd) v. To go one's way; to proceed on or along

I am in a tea house, writing fervently and padding barefoot upon the wood floors, letting the day flow by, smooth and unruffled like a long, silk skirt. I am a low tide, calmed by the sounds of the beautiful rock, plant and water sculpture beside me, sipping green tea, the taste of it dry and grassy, as though I am tonguing the earth.


I have felt things changing lately. I am likely leaving the country in two months. I am only working four days a week now due to company finances; Wednesday will be my day off. I am getting in touch with the feminine sides of life in more ways than I ever have; I even prefer the company of women to men, whereas in the first 20-something years of my life it was quite the opposite. I am reading books to learn more about my sex.

Woman the bowl, the urn, the cave, the musky jungle. We are the dark mysterium! We are hidden folds and primal wisdom and always, always the womb, bearing life, releasing life, and then sucking it back in again, into those moist, chthonic plaits.
— "Woman: An Intimate Geography," Natalie Anger

I have gone twice to see a man in the mountains that my girl friends and I call "the Oracle," or Boulder’s version of a therapist. The first time, I genuinely wanted to know about every aspect of my future, past and present, and allowed him to do his job and contact my spirit guides.

The second time, I went to see him more as a distressed patient, due to a painful and unexpected personal interaction. I listen to the recording of this session and hardly recognize myself. My emotions were a pendulum caught in a tornado, wild and with many strong, opposing answers. I felt alternately faint and boiling, flickering between a thunderstorm and a generator defeated by one.

Through breath work, visualization and encouragement to communicate (and perhaps not in the way I originally intended, which I scrapped, as it was peppered with insults and nothing but negativity), I released it. It worked, it all worked. I became sea-worthy again, in the way that I always have. There is no slow build up with me, but a ferociousness followed by the quickest calm you will ever see. It is because of my mother, and I thank her for it, and I don’t at the same time.

I asked the Oracle if I should take an east coast road trip to see friends before I leave for Spain in November. Going to Spain is my only plan right now, and one that can only be halted by a salaried journalism/writing job. Although he told me quite strongly that Spain was the right choice (and that I had three past lives there, however you want to take that), he told me not to do the road trip.

"If you have things to say to people from your past, call or write them. But you do not need to go backwards," he said. "Save your money for Spain or go somewhere else for that time, but keep moving forward. Your soul is excited by travel, but it does not like to go in reverse."

I was okay with this, although there still were some people I felt I wanted to see in person.

Less than two weeks later, I unexpectedly got sent on a business trip to Washington D.C., where I got a chance to be with those people. Even someone from the North Carolina portion of my life drove up to see me. Things happen this way.

And now all I hope for is that in Spain, I am able to write consistently. That I will have access to post my writing so that others may read it, so that I may be able to funnel my energies and intentions and, basically, remain sane.

I feel like my writing is a laser inside of myself, and my daily life can make me cloudy. But when I’m in the right place, and I touch that laser, the only thing I can do is follow it to its end, and it is a path I am more sure of than anything else in my life. It is carved, it is set, I just need to follow it. Sandy, smooth, fiery or calm — whatever I need to be to do so.


Ray Bradbury writes in his essay, "The Joy of Writing," about doing what he loves from the core of his being, with passion and pride, even if some editors didn’t adore his work:

"But a lot of readers did. I claim no victory. But there was blood on my gloves when I hung them up."

Blood on my gloves. In the spirit of Spain’s greatest (and most controversial) sport, bullfighting: olé to that.