Chihuahua Medicine, Grandmother and the Infantile Ego

This week, as a summer job, my son is taking care of our friends’ four dogs: three chihuahuas and a pug/spaniel mix with digestive issues. This means that in the dream that is my life, I’m spending a good deal of time negotiating with the needs of little raw nerves.  There’s nothing extraneous on these animals.  Barely any hair, no fat, just the trembling, uninsulated response to absolutely every sound, movement, smell, emotion, or need around them.  It’s fascinating; nothing is hidden.  I watch amazed for  extended periods of time as raw experience ripples through their tiny bodies.

Alone, they would expire.  They need to be swaddled and snuggled, sheathed in warmth and love.  They bundle together on soft things, preferably something much larger and warm-blooded.  Unenhanced by other mammals’ seductive allure, they seem to be the perfect representation of nature’s raw need for connection, that root part of us that needs desperately and doesn’t have anything to offer in return except the palpable relief of being saved from the terrifying overwhelm of isolation.  They don’t know how to buy love the way we’ve been taught; nobody told them it had to be earned.

I had a vision a while back of the liminal place between what we come from and what we do with it.  A Grandmother sat tending a fire in a cave, though the night sky above was open space.  I handed her a crying baby, the child of a young friend, and immediately the infant settled, went from squalling need to serene awareness experiencing everything around her with limitless wonder.  All of creation drew a deep breath of gratitude, and Grandmother smiled and told us to go be grownups. 

My life hasn’t been working lately, and all roads of inquiry as to why lead back to this place, the part of me that is designed only to connect, the circuit fallen away from the motherboard that makes it all run.  I’ve sat bewildered by my inability to respond, wondered what I needed to do or become to make it all better, not realizing that this part of me does not have the equipment for any of that.  Without this piece in place, nothing is as it should be. 

Life thumps us and parts of us go missing, dislodged from where they are meant to be, essential links in the grid between matter and spirit.  Dissociation, soul loss, winked-out lights in the DNA chain; such terrible and bewildered sadness.  All aberrant behavior can be traced to this infantile ego exposed on a hillside, not wailing for fear of attracting predators. 

But we are designed to self repair.  In every cell is the instinct to seek the warmth and light that has temporarily gone out of us, if we would only remember it is ours by definition. Lives spent in shame-based scheming and strategizing may have taught us otherwise, but this love is our birth right, and like anything that is truly ours, we need only claim it.

So I’m here on my couch surrounded by these gentle little dogs, cherishing their shameless pleasure in the comfort offered by soft blankets and a warm body.  I think I’ll just close my eyes and breathe with them for a while, then see what I can do about this business of being a grownup. 

With love,

Mia

What Can I Get You?

Crow Mother, Her Eyes, Her Eggs ~ Meinrad Craighead

Last night I dreamt I was part of an espionage team on a mission that had gone terribly wrong.  We were in danger, and we broke into a dusty old mansion with heavy curtains over the windows, planning to regroup and prepare for the next assault.  Each of us proceeded to do what we do, what we were trained to do, but everyone was shaken and frightened, not sure we were going to survive what was coming. 

Then someone brought in the Specialist.  She was an older woman, Eastern European, with a helmet of dyed black hair.  She was plump and wore a short sequined tuxedo jacket with tails, and spangly tights, like a magician in Vegas.  Her overly made-up appearance seemed laughable, and a younger woman on the team sneered and said, “The fuck is she gonna do?”  But the guy standing next to her smiled and said, “Just watch.”  

The Specialist proceeded to set up and begin tending bar with a quiet professionalism and dignity.  As we looked on, enthralled, it became apparent that she was doing much more than tending bar, that she was a practitioner of great power and skill, and she was not serving what we at first thought.  The younger woman watched with open admiration and said only, “Wow.” 

The Dark Goddess.  She is not serving cocktails and she is not in service to the caricature that is her disguise.  The truth of what she serves is frankly a little scary, remembering that she has been called in because we are in danger and she is here to get the job done.  

If you were foolish enough to catch her eye and she asked, “What can I get you?” would you place an order?  Would that be wise?  Is there a single thing you could ask of that kind of power that would not have consequences?  For me I think I’ll just stand off to the side and watch.