Opoponax
Newsletter Hesitancy and Unsent Letters
I know you’ve missed me, I’ve missed you, too. In the intensity of summertime, I’ve had a bit of an overflow of work from clients. I tried to keep the whole summer free but work from June poured over into July and has even leaked into August.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful. But the call of summer on the island meant that even I didn’t want to read what I wrote a few weeks ago, which is why you haven’t heard from me for a while. Not exactly writer’s block, more like “sender’s block” - an unsent letter waiting for my engagement again. Enough said.
The hiatus is over and the doors to the workshop are unlocked again. Instead of “open sesame” I just repeat the new inspiring word: OPOPONAX, a name for “Sweet Myrrh”, a perfumery resin, King Solomon’s “noblest of incense gums”.
As the old meme so aptly put it:
And so there IS more, coming soon!
Knock Knock, Who’s There?
I think Karen Dalton said something like, “Sing more quietly so we can hear you better.” It helps to move away from the visual, so we can see a bit further.
I know a new approach is well overdue. Like the demise of the clock and the calendar in favour of the sun to mark the day, the moon to mark the months and the seasons to mark the year.
Things are, as they say, changing, and the waves of social change are gathering in little frothy peaks. What had been unseen during all the pandemic lockdown, is being revealed, as clearly as our full human faces, mostly maskless now. Then masked again, like a dance of the veils, revealing then receding again.
Like the preparation of seeds underground during the winter, there has been a lot of unseen activity going on. In dreams while we are sleeping, the forces of our lives have been moving about, shifting the furniture around. Our lives are communing with the lives of all the others in our species, rumbling in the undersurface “OM drone”, preparing something yet unrecognizable to come to the surface.
We emerged as if we were returning home after a long journey, but the premises are not the same. The child was switched in the night by fairies, the disfigured and wounded husband who returned from the war may have been an imposter, the wolf wore Grannie’s bedclothes, all while the kingdom had fallen asleep for a hundred years because the princess was pricked by something hidden and forbidden: not just the spinning wheel, but the fulfillment of the curse of the bad fairy.
So we search for another way to discern the new pattern. The old ground becomes a new figure, and by the time we see it on the surface, there is another unseen ground being prepared. That’s why we move over from the emphasis on seeing to listening. “Ear to the ground.”
What was the old ground seems to us to be something “new” but it has been dormant and preparing itself to emerge for some time now. It has always been present, and perhaps even somehow known or intimated in our purview. Nothing actually new is happening, just what was underfoot is now overhead, what was overheard is now in your face, what was facing you is not there anymore and what you think is going on hasn’t been happening for years, much like visible starlight that hits our earthly eyes even though the star itself has been dead for lightyears.
Given that we are in a new version of the simulation, do we step forward? Or do we watch and wait? This pause-and-step-back mambo cha cha we’ve been doing so far has really messed up the linear field of action, adding loops to what had formerly been direct routes. Doubt has made life action more of a labyrinth than before.
Despite being unseen and often unknown even to our dreamlife, we can trust that these seemingly new fields of being have been here all along, and are part of the bigger picture. The pattern is acoustic and we resonate, drumming our own part. If we can remember that all this has been going on for some time already, we just didn’t know it yet, then this, too, is part of our life’s purpose and trajectory.
What’s underground now is looking after the future, while the surface is known to us if we can open our eyes and no longer project what used to be there. Open to what is here. Now. That is surely more than enough.
It’s time to live in this active field, actually present. Not projecting. Not recollecting. It’s easy to direct action when we understand the lay of the land.
Looking across the globe we can see one another, shining perhaps, waving hello.
Time for a little night life?
It’s a hoot! https://www.owlsnearme.com
Resonant note: As a Tibetan glacier melts, ancient 15,000 year old viruses locked in ice now come into view!
Thanks so much for reading and staying on with my newsletter. I always love to hear from you and hope your August is going swimmingly!!!
I've never heard of "Opoponax" but I am intimately familiar with Oplopanax--the Latin name for the genus that is mostly known for "Devil's club", the heavily-armed shrub of coastal forests. "Panax" is an important botanical name because it includes various related plants in the ginseng family. For example, the native ginseng so hunted-out in eastern woods is Panax quinquefolium ("five leaf"). It is worth knowing that devil's-club is also medicinal. And has some remarkable qualities for anyone who can get past the devilish aspect of the numerous small spines that cover every twig and limb. It's a lot like being around beehives--once you learn how to get along with Oplopanax, it's very much an ally and not devilish by nature.
Reading this as I sit watching the glorious rain up here in the Yukon! Goog to hear your voice again!