wake up the gods

from the sea (5) –  merging and menopause, last part of desire by freda karpf

Except from riding the waves:  a tale about being home in the world by freda karpf    @thewildblues

Peregrinations, the walk-a-bout, the spiraling of questions is often the path of a menopausal woman.  Was that just an auto accident twenty years ago or an awakening? It seems like pieces of her flew off.  Shamans believe that accidents and trauma will have parts of your soul fly off. The healing reunites them into your being.  She had tried prayer. It could bring her focus but then she would feel the thought had panels of questions and worries on either side. If you do it right, prayer is solace, poetry, and complaint. Don't be shy.  Yell a little. Wake up the gods. They're trying to wake us up all the time.   

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     Mrs. Scattergood has been all around this story but no more than a few yards from where Persephone was taken. It was by a well in the terrible hot painful heat of the summer.  In her forties, she told her friend that she wanted fire in her life.  There is a price to pay for the heat.

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     She thought she found someone to bring her out of the silence. What should she do?  She went silent with happiness.

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     There is a murder of crows.  First a few and then they were joined by others. In crow talk, this passage of time known as menopause is like an alleyway because it goes between. Like dawn, like dusk. When Mrs. Scattergood heard the owl call she left the house. That call was an opening.  Since then she had searched for the source.  Desire has many calls.

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Your daughter lost? Taken.  Eighteen years old. The earth opened up, just like she did.

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     The last song from Night Ride Home, filtered into her mood.  She was a chanteuse in pain, seen it all, metal in her veins, adrift in a world which never meant as much to Mrs. Scattergood as it does now.  Two grey rooms, her left brain and her right. One held the resonance of Judy Grahn’s intimate notes to her lover Von as it hit home in full. She sobbed when she read that Von died.  The other room held too much of everything and not enough of anything she wanted. She missed her friendship with Barry, missed the contact.

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     The news of his death rocked her world. One sharp stiletto moment.  Her world was gone.  What had she been surviving on?  She didn’t know.   

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     Many have had this spring and yearning; the pouring forth; words flying out without warning; an abundance of sweet pulsations, pain, and laughter. All of it finally settling into a new comfortable place of maturity and resonance.  Baubo would invite her to take a place in this resonance.

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     Summer is near.  The world and the seasons sometimes feel relentless.  Grief kept her distant from spring and summer.  She was never ready.  She remembered that Barry told her that she tinkered far too long. She had to settle into her work while the sense of passion is high, the longing palpable and the desire to share what she loved was strong and direct. 

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     What is it to want to kiss the land, and the water, to be a part of it? It is an impossible feeling to share.   Like first touches, the tenderness is sweet and wordless. The mind drifts off, it is quiet, peace, heaven, long sweet times without ripples or currents.  It is the place to be.  It is soft.   

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     She never realized how lonely she had been.  She became aware how emptiness can fill up the spaces as well as communion.  How silence speaks its own language. Not to be able to share the rhythm of speech with the people she loved and admired could feel like the hollow counting of dreams.  A shift was needed to reclaim the good, to get into the mix again.

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     She thought menopause would extinguish her fire.  Instead it’s flowing slowly towards the sea like rivers of molten core flowing in steady streams toward the sea.  Why should she worry about passion or following anything with any sort of efficiency or meaning when new lands are forming every day from this flow?

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     ‘Some say that there’s a crack between the worlds at dawn and dusk.  She could feel that in her bones. The daily dawn to dusk shift seems like nothing compared to this seasonal door.  It’s a ripe time for changes, even old laments can come wailing through.  Baubo remembered the words of a poem Mrs. Scattergood wrote when she was younger: “...and the time is ripe for running to the moon.”’  

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     This is M. M means menopause.