Hey child, stay Wild.

Each day feels like it's about 3 hours long. I have a feeling it will be this way until January. But I'm still in love with the overcast, and the hints of winter being right around the corner. I'm also determined to find the little moments and expand them, so that I don't look back onto another holiday season wondering how I got swept away. Again.

And speaking of little moments. I don't have much time to read these days, but I try to manage a few pages at night of the book my mom sent to me. Women Who Run With Wolves. It was originally sent to her by my cousin Leah (who by the way, is an great writer too...what's with all the amazing Canadians?)

Anyway, this book is not light reading at all. And I already know I'll be re-reading it throughout my life, because it has that kind of relevance. The author is a psychoanalyst, but more importantly a poet, and a "cantadora" (keeper of old stories). She has studied in DEPTH, the 'Wild Woman Archetype' and the ancient stories that describe Her. She talks about how 'stories are medicine' and how over the years, the Western world has whitewashed them into fairy tales, eliminating certain crucial elements so that they would be more 'acceptable'. That this is how "many women's teaching tales about sex, love, money, marriage, birthing, death, and transformation were lost."

She can explain it better than me.

"The word 'wild' here is not used in its modern pejorative sense, meaning out of control, but in its original sense which means to live a natural life, one in which the 'criatura', creature, has innate integrity and healthy boundaries. These words wild and woman, cause women to remember who they are and what they are about."

The modern woman is a blur of activity (AMEN SISTER). She is pressured to be all things to all people. The old Knowing is long overdue."

"Healthy wolves and healthy women share certain psychic characteristics: keen sensing, playful spirit, and a heightened capacity for devotion. Wolves and women are relational by nature, inquiring, possessed of great endurance and strength. They are deeply intuitive, intensely concerned with their young, their mates, and their pack. They are experienced in adapting to constantly changing circumstances; they are fiercely stalwart and very brave. Yet both have been hounded harrassed and falsely imputed to be devouring and devious, overly aggressive, of less value than those who are their detractors. They have been the targets of those who would clean up the wilds as well as the wildish environs of the psyche, exticinting the instinctual, and leaving no trace of it behind. The predation of wolves and women by those who misunderstand them is strickingly similar."

SO interesting. At least to me. And made these even more beautiful too.

Comments

[Kal]

Whew - that's heavy reading for a wednesday. Yowch. Know how you feel about Fall though - here in Manitoba it lasts about a week and then POOF it's winter. So, Fall seems extra, extra sweet.

[cathy]

How could I have never seen Josh de Rox before? I totally started crying, his images are so beautiful, and the questions that you answer before getting into his site and his music. oh my gosh. I am in awe. thanks for sharing his link. :)
btw, today, I do not feel like a wolf at all...maybe someday. :) I do not feel so strong. but I am okay with that. blessings...

[Kate Mefford]

That book is going on my list. Sounds fabulous...thanks for sharing!