Years That Ask and Years That Answer. Stories, Ends, Beginnings, Fire, Moon.
- By Kelly Diels
- 8 December, 2009
- 21 Comments
Some of us hover
while we weep for the other
who was dying
since the day they were born
For ten days, a phrase has followed me around like a hungry kitten, mewing plaintively, quietly roaring, threading itself around my ankles, feinting, shadowing me. It wants to be fed.
Two Saturdays ago Lianne Raymond talked to me about women and community and creativity and art-hunger. She said, something is dying to be born.
Something is dying to be born.
It seems such a female thing to say: the flesh poetry of experience. A secret language traded between intimates of the violence of birth and glory of delivery. The wrenching of asunder and the joy of embrace. A story beaten in the pulse of mundane responsibility and cosmic love. Goddesses and bitches and sisters and women. We know this story. It is the story of generation.
It is the story of Kali, goddess of destruction, eater of time, protectress and creatrix.
It is the story of Eve. Of Lilith. Of my feminist friend, Ronna Detrick, who walked away from a church and a marriage but knows with her body, her mind and her faith that all of her leavings have led to profound findings.
It is the story of money. Of power. Of God. He who giveth, taketh away.
It is the story of sex and passion and love, all of which can destroy lives and create them. Women throw themselves on the pyre of love and of loss and say burn me up.
It is the story of Bertha, the mad wife in Jane Eyre who burns down Thornfield, and of the haiku necessity of ember, flame, and ash:
It is the story of cold, clear winter moons and of truths washed clean by icy, white light. It is the story of Foucault and forgiveness, of brooms and brushed floors, and revolution.
Revolution: 360 degees: all the way around. Return. Circles. Cycles. Seasons.
It is the story of winter and of spring, too. Of years, because there are years that ask questions and years that answer.
What – or who – is dying to be born in you?
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Love when one sentence or quip turns into a contemplative flow.
I shy away from the thought that each new creation has to be all-consuming, but I resonate with the Willingness to sacrifice in the process of creation. In fact, often when a new project outgrows the need for constant nurturing and enrichment, creative minds lose interest and seek for new opportunities to risk it all again.
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Many of the ideas I’ve birthed I’ve then had to kill or just leave them to die a slow death by themselves:)But some have flown the nest and gone on to greater things!
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For much of the last three years, I have been growing children, small boys, inside of me. Now I sense a new presence taking shape in the room that is left, ready to be nourished by the same blood and tears. Maybe it’s passion? creativity? the desire to speak and be heard? “Something is dying to be born.” Yes, I think so.
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There is something so profound about the connection between birth and death; something I think women know and experience uniquely – in beautiful and excruciating ways. You’ve spoken to that, Kelly. You’ve not “answered the question,” but left me to ask even more. You’ve reminded my of my own deaths (leavings), as well as the births (findings) that often follow. Many times I’d prefer a simpler path, but indeed, I cannot escape my death wish for continued birth. One cannot occur without the other. Thank you.
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I know. I know. I already posted, but then found (or was found by) this quote:
“The ocean, whose tides respond, like women’s menses, to the pull of the moon, the ocean which corresponds to the amniotic fluid in which human life begins, the ocean on whose surface vessels (personified as female) can ride but in whose depth sailors meet their death and monsters conceal themselves… it is unstable and threatening as the earth is not; it spawns new life daily, yet swallows up lives; it is changeable like the moon, unregulated, yet indestructible and eternal.” (Adrienne Rich)
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hey cleavage – there is a crack in everything – that’s how the light gets in.
Love,
Leonard Cohen.
(the Light, she is being born through me, through the cracks. “2010.” two Oh’s. like eggs.)
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God – this makes me sigh, shudder with startled recognition. All of these stories are familiar, they all weave together with your words and speak on a level as profound as the beating of blood in our temples.
I’m fascinated by the tension and link between creativity and procreativity. Perhaps that’s a less eloquent way of saying “the flesh poetry of experience” – that is glorious.
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I just keep reading this over and over and over. I want to read everything you linked to, but I can’t. tear. my. eyes. away. I’m eyeball deep in the death right now…waiting for the birth. It’s coming, right? Not that I’m just sitting here waiting for it, I’m working my ass off. But, it is coming, right? It has to – the cycle is unstoppable. I wonder how long this death phase will last? Will the birth correspond in intensity to the level of hell that is this death? Goddess, I hope so.
Beautiful, Kelly. Thank you…
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“Something is dying to be born.”
Even someone with a penis can appreciate the poetic complexity of that. Love it, thanks.
Reminds me of another little gem, cut from the same cloth:
“Find something to die for. And then live for it.”
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Here is my illustrated take on this idea. Lianne and you inspired me!
http://napkindad.blogspot.com/2009/12/every-day-something.html
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Gorgeously haunting. Hauntingly gorgeous.
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Wow – I’m blown away by this post, Kelly, and by all these responses.
I read this when you first posted it and have come back to re-read numerous times – I am still metabolizing these thoughts.
Thank you all. xox
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Thank you – I needed this question asked of me. Who knew in the question itself, one can find answers? Thank you.
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Kali.
You might enjoy Kim Stanley Robinson’s “The Years of Rice and Salt.”
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kellydiels
replied:
on March 15th, 2010 at 7:48 am
Dave, I just googled it and I think you’re right – I’m intrigued. Thanks for the recommendation.
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Kelly,
There really is nothing else to say; you’ve put it all here perfectly. Except I feel compelled to say thank you for these words, these thoughts. And for the reminder.
[Reply]
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