into a cave
There is something happening with words lately. When I select a word to write, I’m not feeling the traction that I usually feel on a page. It’s like the word is there but its architecture is not. Not like a collapse of beams or walls, or even a dissolving of shape, it’s more like an opening into ocean. I see the word, can feel into its lineage and potential, but the word itself holds no meaning.
Perhaps the job of meanings is done. The words want to do more. And they’re waiting for us to be ready to play in this new terrain. For us to move formless into and through what we previously held as known.
And this word—unknow—this beautiful word who has let me play in its landscape for the whole of my life so far, is begging me to unfold into something else. I feel its tug, sometimes nudge, sometimes forceful swell of wave. I don’t understand it. It isn’t presenting itself like anything has before. I can’t hear it or see it. I don’t have clear messages or stories. I get glimpses of an expanse beyond what the word can tell. And I seem to know things differently. But I can’t explain that either.
I knew to come to Tennessee. I am here now. There is no reason for me to be here that I can explain. And, full disclosure, I have spent the last few days full of angst inside questions of “why am I here?” and “what am I supposed to learn?” It didn’t have to be so full of discomfort for me, but it was.
On Saturday, I walked into some caves in the Smoky Mountains. While there, I was also in a church I had visited in Rome almost a decade before. I felt my footsteps on the clay floor, the fluttered embrace of spirit, and rivers inside the cells of my body. That night in my dreams, I was flooded with reels of fear images, times in this lifetime and beyond where my physical body was threatened, where I protected myself or died. The next day all I could do was dance or cry. The day after, I walked and screamed. Today I wrote this, and my words helped me see.
I’m used to working hard for my meanings. I’ve learned to ponder deeply, excavate layers of signs and symbols, let words tumble and combine to carve new understandings in the hopes of finding something profound. Yet this doesn’t seem to work anymore. Meanings aren’t showing up in the same ways. What I understand as meaning is dissolving (expanding) into something else.
So here it is. I came to Tennessee to go into a cave. I did. It shifted things in me that I don’t understand. It was an upgrade to my timelines on earth, who I am and why I’m here. I don’t need to know anything else about it because I already have the knowing. I’m ready for more.