Memory

the frozen air of our own departure. Lorca

It’s everything an infinity of absolute darkness I imagined would be.

This particular underground cave of memory is preserved nearly intact and in accordance with the shifts and shadows of my remembrances; by ancient accumulations, layers of passing time affected by the fading intensification of erosion. Salty tears, spit and stagnant breath run through the rocks while this occasional explorer (me) crosses the maw of the cavern's entrance.

Yet it is this simple act of willingness to contemplate these memories that alters my underground and hence, my above ground. And I grant myself this as I’ve no time to waste. There is no time to waste. I will no longer be beholden to anything like the past. And that’s exactly why I’ve come, spelunking into caverns of memory, traumatic and otherwise. And this is what I’ve been preparing for whether I understood it or not.

Status Report: I spent 12-14 hours of winter darkness in silence except for convening with the cats. It’s well below freezing outside, blustery and the clearest of clear night skies. I pray-speak Thank You.

This night started and ended with prepositions, harnessed in metaphors; inside my room, on my bed, under a down comforter, a sheep skin, beside the cats, alongside the wind. Safe. I am safe I pray-speak into the darkness as I went down as confident as I could be, into these yet unexplored depths. In order to reach up and out the other side. In order to move through and to let go. Falling down order to rise above. To transform my fear, shame with forgiveness and self-compassion.

This darkness requires light and air to dissolve, to dissipate. These memories cannot hurt me. That is the point of this spelunking expedition. And I’m much better attuned, more safety conscious and pragmatic than I used to be. Amen to the crone. My safety precautions include; cats. The bedside lamp could be turned on at any time. I could distract myself if I needed to. Make a cup of tea for my anxieties. Open my laptop, listen to an audio book, my meditation app if/when exploring these locked away memories got too much. But the point of my travels was to stay. I repelled down into those memories in order to disarm them.

For those long hours I shuffled and scuffed dry and crumbling bones of memories while mythical creatures went scurrying. My guardian bats and guiding butterflies flew around me while legions of frogs leapt for their lives.

Colors: green.

Season: summer.

Shoes: clogs.

Shape: Ictalurus melas

Smell: sweat.

That’s enough.

I expected this. Not one memory was surprised to see me. As a matter of fact, they’ve been expecting me; patient and so fucking arrogant. I breathed in their stagnant greed and breathed out release. Unheroic. Shallow to deepening.

We’re done now.

We. Are. Done. Now.

Breathing in fear, breathing out compassion. My god, I pray-speak from inside my cocoon of featherbed and sheepskin–multitudes of ego, power, spite, pettiness and self-acceptance abound in this cave.

Old narratives left to their own devices, can be a destructive force. Though worthy as my lived experiences, I know very well now how a person–who grips grimacing without breath onto the past–can turn into a judgmental, compulsive and destructive energy.

I can surrender. I choose freedom.

“His hero travelled into the past: and there, very properly, found raindrops that would pierce him like bullets and sandwiches that no strength could bite–because, of course, nothing in the past can be altered.”

~ from C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce

The new day comes, sun on the rise, I begin again. Lungfuls of bracing winter air and I make my first cup of hot sweet coffee. The moon is brilliant again.

Today is trash day, I have things to do. I’m expecting a book. The wood stove needs to be cleaned out, there is a menagerie to care for, laundry and writing to tend to. A barn to finish. In this daily dust of life I add layers of sediment while I commit to carefully scraping away at my own geology so it doesn’t bury me alive.

The thing about these caverns is they can’t grip me in fear any longer because I will not give them that kind of power. I will not give them my life.

They are like what Benedictine monk David Steindal-Rast calls a “personal holy place,” My geology—my pick ax. In darkness, I turn on the light. To be clear, these are not my favorite places to explore but like an undertow they’ll drown me if I’m un-attentive. So I am here safe and of clear-calm mind enough to take the chains of my past off from around my neck and put them across the cave entrance, posted by my authority with this sign: “No Trespassing. No further explanation required.”

With this new ritual, I thank my ecosystem of guardians and guides—the bats and butterflies—who hang out alongside the countless creatures feasting on the cave’s detritus, transforming it from one thing into another. I am calling on everything that my one and precious life provides including these memories ripe and juicy, the fodder of creation, of wordscapes, the big fish, as David Lynch writes. And like the wizard behind the curtain, they are only as powerful or powerless as I grant. Either way, these memories are mine alone. No one can nor dare try to tell me otherwise. That would make me and my creatures very wily indeed.

On this new day I’m happy to report that all my parts are accounted for and no worse for the wear. I get on the floor and stretch. Even the vexing lump in my throat—the thing I could not swallow nor spit, is nearly gone. My body is tired from the long night of spelunking. From the emotional bumps, bruises and scrapes. And the shame? Well, there are on-going remedies for that: meditation, self-compassion, the presence of now. Love and grace. Swinging from a trapeze, the softness of a dog’s ear, the heartbeat of a horse, lanolin depths of a ram’s winter fleece. Calendula, raspberry leaf, nettles, mugwort. Pen and paper. Creation. Joy.

Living today in this body with its ongoing story and mysteries, it is time to let go. No more lingering in the past, my dear mind, it’s time we get a move on. This helps us both by safeguarding against causing any harms to myself and others. Because I am determined to not be like her.

Blowing out morning candles I go to bake some molasses biscuits for my family. See the recipe below. I’m closing with this from the poet Lorca (and from whence I titled this piece)—another charm or better yet a map? I’m available to keep journeying in wonder, curiosity and light—upside down and in the air–onward to my places yet unknown.

“The chopping knife, and the cartwheel, and the clasp knife, and the prickly beard of the shepherds, and the baldheaded moon, and the fly, and the dank cupboards, and rubble, and the images of saints covered in lace, and quicklime, and the stabbing outline of eaves and bay windows, they all have in Spain the minute grasses of death, associations and voices which an alert mind will perceive, which recall to our memory the frozen air of our own departure.”

Lorca: The Poet and His People by Arturo Barea

Thanks for reading, I’m so glad we are here together.

~ Alice

Bonus round: a short list of some things I’m finding compelling, timely:

David Lynch’s book, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity. I order new books from Everyone’s Books in Brattleboro, VT.

As always, Jessica Dore’s Tarot of Change.

Rider-Waite deck: The Six of Cups, The Tower, The Star

Annie Dillard’s collection of narrative essays, The Abundance

Molasses Almond Flour Biscuits, adapted from The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook by Elana Amsterdam, her recipe for Classic Drop Biscuits

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups of almond flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 cup sunflower oil or other neutral oil

1/4 cup molasses

2 eggs

A splash of lemon juice

Optional Add-ins, scant half-hand fulls of:

Chopped crystallized ginger

Chocolate chips

Nuts like chopped pecans or sunflower seeds

Dried fruit like cranberries, raisins or, apricots diced

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet or two with parchment paper.

No electric mixer is required.

Mix all dry ingredients together in a large bowl.

In a small bowl, whisk eggs, oil and molasses together. Add the wet mixture plus the lemon juice to the dry mixture. Add in your Add-Ins. Mix thoughly

This batter is sticky. Using a wet soupspoon, scoop up some up and drop it onto your papered baking sheets. These don’t tend to spread much and I prefer a smaller biscuit but you can make them larger if you want. Just watch and adjust baking time according to your oven and the size of biscuit you’re baking.

Generally speaking: bake for 7-8 minutes then rotate the pans and bake for another 7-8 minutes. You can feel the doneness by pressing down on the tops of them. Let the biscuits cool for a couple of minutes on the baking sheet before letting them cool on a rack.

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