That's WILD
On Seeking, On Stories, On Wanting, On Answers
HAPPY TUESDAY, F WORDERS!
This week, on THE F WORD: myths! Legends! Why we’ll never get answers, and why we should never stop asking!
I am so, so happy and so grateful that you’re here! This newsletter would not be alive if you were not here to receive it. For all of the darkness and stress of the end-of-year, all of the soft evenings and quiet moments to be found during the holidays, how fucking magical that we chose to spend these next few minutes together. Connection, man! It takes two! You are amazing.
Onward!
Is there a more natural state of being than to ponder our own humanity?
Is there anything truer to our essence than to question our relationship to the world around us?
We yearn for that which is wild because we yearn for that which is free.
We dream of escape to the far reaches of the earth; the most solitary and wild places where we can walk along cliffsides, through untrampled meadows; wade through springs of melting winter.
We find our own humanity in the places that are not human.
And yet. We are tethered to this life and to this earth because we are human, and it is a natural state of being to question that which is our natural state of being. We become trapped by the bonds of our own humanity:
-physically (our aliveness depends on our physical flesh, bone, and blood)
- to the natural order (e.g. we cannot fly on our own, we will all die)
- to the systems which we have created for ourselves (patriarchy, capitalism)
We have bodies that bleed and that cry; that can hold one another and harm one another and can run great distances and sit in silent calm. Thinking about the myths of ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian and Celtic and Roman and Greek and Norse and Native American and African and the innumerable cultures that have ever existed or exist now or will exist in the future—
Myths and epics, those cornerstones of belief, the self-made definitions of human-ness, all draw from one simple and salient thing.
Throughout every dealing with Gods and Goddesses and human beings; about the characters within the tales as well as the human beings writing and telling the tales themselves,
our relationship to the world around us is
driven by desire.
We want something (survival, sex, riches, knowledge, explanation).
Our tales are all of GAINING: that which we do not have.
Our tales are all of movement, momentum: to propel our Selves and our Condition of being Human…forward. —>
Icarus and his wax wings. Hades kidnapping Persephone. White Painted Woman of the Apache, who birthed Child of Water and Killer of Enemies. Ishtar, Gilgamesh, and the Bull of Heaven. Jesus of Nazareth’s resurrection.
What does it mean that the very pith of the-state-of-being-human is GAIN?
We seek to change our fate. We seek to change our houses, our spouses, our jobs, our daily rhythms and patterns. We seek to gain connection, while reveling in the inherent, innate experience of loneliness. We live in The Wasteland. We embody The Wasteland, and somehow we find connection from it if we look hard enough.
Mary Oliver, Loneliness I too have known loneliness. I too have known what it is to feel misunderstood, rejected, and suddenly not at all beautiful. Oh, mother earth, your comfort is great, your arms never withhold. It has saved my life to know this. Your rivers flowing, your roses opening in the morning. Oh, motions of tenderness!
We seek. We tell stories of seeking. We are seekers. In spirit, in blood, and in the thousands of generations who lived and died before us.
From The Epic of Gilgamesh:
“Life, which you look for, you will never find. For when the gods created man, they let death be his share, and life withheld in their own hands.”
Death is our lot. But we still have the ability, the desire to question. Our humanness does not come from that which is human, it comes from the wildness of dream. Of curiosity. Of desire for something more. Our humanity is not, and never will be found in concreteness and sure answers. Death is our lot. That is as sure an answer as any.
But while we are living, we get to be wild and dream of more—that is the entire point.
Until next week.
Love, light, and binoculars,
Steph xx