Postcard From Home

I.

Widowed hornets nest.

Soft, dark death season.

Eyelids pressed with shadows, owl feathers, fawns turning does, sapric muck, star anise.

I am more animal, more claw and fur and instinct. Grateful to not be dizzy in a city as originally planned.

Instead, I am here in the valley, molting, drying, melting into Earth, being lapped up by wind and animal, becoming something I don’t need to understand.

II.

I am grateful for the online class that breaks my heart open on Tuesday mornings.

Out of my heart comes grief, joy, deep listening, deep tasting.

These things erupt all over my notebook and ritual candle and make me quiet and sore and unsure of the words I speak aloud; I have discovered that I am unfamiliar with the story of where I come from, my lineage, who I am in relationship to loved ones and loved-lands.

I am learning how to place myself in deeper time and space.

I am starting to understand myself as generations of grandmothers and grandfathers and lands near and far. I am a lattice of interwoven routes, a matrix of decisions to leave, leave, leave home.

Lately, most mornings are french press coffee, walking the back door trail to the cattails and mysterious pond animals. If no animals, then I stand by the river and face the sky, conducting sunlight into my eyes, mouth, skin.

This is the same trail I grew up walking in high school. Back then, I didn’t notice the junegrass, goldenrod, grasshopper, or prairie dog. Back then, my body needed alcohol — spirits —to swell with color, stars, love for land and love for others.

Now, I am sober and the spirits are everywhere.

III.

I am a house. The longing to sing, write, and make my shapes has the same texture as the yearning for home. When I accept myself inside and embrace creative practice, I am giving shelter to tenderness and exploration and play. I am a hospitable, warm-bodied structure. There is comfort in this thought. I am a house.

IV.

Kalyanee says the most beautiful path is the one right in front of you.

She also says that when the path to our hearts are closed, there are no channels for grief to flood, flow, move along.

I have noticed that when my heart is closed, I do not walk. I do not go looking for the land around me. I do not see, feel, smell, or taste. When I do not taste the land around me, the land does not live inside me. I do not write, I do not create shapes, I do not become colors, I do not feel the tapping of Spirit on my teeth.

It seems so obvious now, how the senses grant access to hearts. And how grieving is a project of the body. That the most beautiful path is this one, right here.

It has taken me a long time, walking around with a very cramped heart, to understand this. I used to want to leave, leave, leave Bozeman. This season is the first in a long time where I truly feel “here,” with no grand plans to transplant myself elsewhere.

As Winter nears, I suspect even less wind, even more earth.

Folding deeply into my community.

Sprawling my arms wide to create and weave with other arms.

Staying warm-blooded and open.

Communing with my sisterhood.

Spelling “routes” into roots.