nourishment through story :

old stories have always been part of my first-aid kit. 

one day with sue li i caught a glimpse of why. 
we were smiling at how we adore walks. 
she loves city walks. i love nature walks. 

and we’re actually seeking the same thing there.
to dissolve into the greater organism. 

to flow through the veins of the city, its architectural bones and flux of busy, brightly-colored people. creative ventures and music and surprises at every corner. 

or wander through the cathedrals of rustling green boughs, peopled with silent antlers and beavers trails, the swift ballet of birds building nests. short-lived insects, resilient moss and spirits hovering around the cracked trunk of a tree sleeping in the lake.

in some ways, we both seek the comforting smallness of being a tiny part of something so beautifully bigger.

and i seek the same relief in old stories - because they’re too rich to be born only of human imagination. they stink of badger fur and stardust and weyrd plot twists woven by spiderwebs. they hum in that unmistakeable frequency of a wide co-creation.

i really love the fantastic colors of animation movies, for example -  but their million-dollar budget plots often taste thin as poor man’s soup.

i think of this bland aftertaste as characteristic of single-species creation - of what is bred in the tiny vacuum of what the human mind breeds only for itself, without a pause in for watching ladybirds, checking how the stars are chattering, or sharing back with a spoonful of honey for the fairies.

these kinds of creation, to me, lack the wild spice. old stories are the bone broth of the human world - they have imbibed every terrain of life slowly, steadily, for millenia. they sit me in a grandmotherly lap of vastness, and spoon food of wonder and reverence for my spirit, mind, inner child, inner king, inner wolf.

may we always find exactly the nourishment we need. 

i am hosting my first of three Baba Yaga Temples Saturday, May 18th to experience through the body hinge moments of the old stories. Details here.

Photo by Philip Stehlik, of weaving old and new stories together…