Brown Pelican
Everyday I need to do something to rebel against my good mother and meet my witch in the woods. I saw Baba Yaga, the grandmother witch, in my dream last night—I saw her and felt her. She was there to remind me of my constant issues with the balance between my intuitive woman, my wild woman and my societal woman. The societal woman is what I have to be in order to make money and encourage safety. I don’t feel the need to explain the wild and the intuitive. The triality of woman. In the dream, a wild boar wrapped his teeth around my shoulder ready to bite. But he didn’t. I just felt his warm breath run down my torso and then back up again. My mom called my name in the distance, when I saw her she was looking at me but then she looked away, slid down a river of rocks. My dad looked at me too, but then he dove off a cliff and it was just me and the boar until Baba Yaga appeared. The three of us stayed still— minus the boar’s breath which I continued to feel moving up and down my torso. That was the only movement. In a way, the boar's breath became my breath. When I woke up, I walked down to the secluded beach with nothing under my soft dress and I listened to the sound of oxygen going in and out of my body.
A bug landed on my nose and it bit me. I thought about children. It was odd because it was like that bug touched me and with its touch my mind shifted. It dawned on me that being a parent would be extremely hard, unless, like anything, you have money and/or are already living at least a significant portion of the life you want to live. For example, if the life you seek is a modest one, where nature and art are at the forefront, and you’ve already figured out how to live in a village by the sea, surrounded by a community of artists, then having a child won’t leave you further than you started. If you aren’t living the life you want—nature, and those familial artist communities you dream about, are distant places you visit sometimes, relegated to your dreams, then having a child might feel counterproductive—you may no longer be able to do what you need to do in order to get to the place you desire to be. You are inextricably dedicated to something else—your time split. Baba Yaga dissipates, the triality of women dissipates, and you become the mother. I know, people with children would argue this point, and it’s important to say that understanding this truth doesn’t work in conflict with the other truth—that giving birth will be a beautiful and life changing experience that enlightens your being in a multitude of ways. But, when we become extremely dedicated to something—live for it even—we absolutely sacrifice other parts of ourselves and that sacrifice may be the greatest sacrifice we ever made. I think many of us understand living as a responsibility rather than an opportunity. I believe life is an opportunity but I still live it responsibly because I am tied down by the details. The conceptual options are interesting—maybe opportunity requires responsibility, maybe responsibility requires opportunity, maybe opportunity and responsibility are moot, maybe responsibility and opportunity are distractions. Maybe that is what the boar was saying—just breath.
What happens when your breath is too close to electrical wires and the breath of others—millions of others. Maybe everything is an intricate balance, so intricate we can’t even begin to pull out the different parts. Maybe it’s all a dance in the air that we only see when our eyes are closed. Maybe the life we seek only exists in the imagination.
Transmissions Circa 2014 The Exumas
