Blue Raven and Murmurations by Margot Van Sluytman/Raven Speaks

Meandering
 Murmurations.
Myth and mystery
Beckon. We do not
[As yet]
Resist.
© Margot Van Sluytman

I have been fighting with myself to eradicate or somehow fit in the fact that I am in the throes of a profound transition. With “the new adventure’s” approach, death, roommates we have been for decades and decades, a new conversation between us is unfolding. Me and my compelling companion, daily and diligently, engage in what can sometimes feel a relentless row. Sculpting our symbiotic connection with meaning. Aligning dull and divine evocative evocations, as we share tea, toast, temerity, tempestuous alarm, sympathy, chagrin. Intermittent joy. Explorers we are. Searching out hope. Seeking sightings of simple strength. Seated at simple repasts. Inviting courage. Encouraging surrender. Crying out for creativity. Debating and discussing if Camus is correct in writing that suicide is disavowed because the meaningless of life, is, in fact, its very meaning.

When particular dates appear on the calendar, I take great care to be present, noting how certain seasons speak memory’s tone. I begin, yet again, to address the rawness of loss and longing. I spy, with wavering degrees of clarity, how my heart is jarred. Dates and days that underscore, if pin-point, expectations, yearnings, aching. Revealing unspoken, though persistent, presumptions of how and what family and friends “must do”. Expectations where joviality and joy are supposed to be rife. An eleventh commandment, of a type, in its vulgar vigour and tenacity, that does not placate the fearful and fraught eruptions of emotions that beg for quelling. Issuing spells I must, in order not to cave to the call of the grave. To too, too much gravity.

On one particularly brisk early, early morning, Thanksgiving passed. Halloween quenched. Christmas galloping at its insistent pace, I sit typing meaning. Onto the page the words spill. I am awakened to the fact that Blue Raven awaits. The fondness that I have for my ancient bicycle is akin to poetry. Like poetry, it is my flight for freeing myself from the calendar’s dates. Dates and prepondorous demands that inflame my heart’s dread.  My fondness for Blue Raven’s two wheels readying to once again meander over saturated autumn leaves and to slipping and sliding through snow-strewn streets, cloaks me. Blue Raven shares with me a name, for I am Raven Speaks. Shares with me the command to be enlivened by dawn’s crows gathering in denuded maples and dew-soaked conifers. The day, barely begun, feels attuned to my chaos.  

Diving into sharp winds, I pedal. Pedal heartily. Unruly drivers and streets redolent with gaping pot-holes do not curtail us, me and Blue Raven. They spur us ever onward. Wheels whirl as my feet pump and pulsate with the rhythm of life’s call to journey. Life’s call to journey. Life’s call to journey. Acknowledging life’s meandering murmurartions. Myth and mystery beckoning. Betimes boisterous. Betimes blurred as many tumultuous, teeming tears sting my cheeks.

“The present of being present matters too. Sorrow. Sadness. Screams of rage. Matter too.”

Again, I am reminded that dates on the calendar are but minuscule signals. Pointing, they do, directing. Like stop and yield signs. Traffic lights. These dates conjure a remembering that change is the only constant. And death and its unmanacled whispers and roars are as an invite to witness the sacredness in not only surrendering to, but to trusting, existential angst and loneliness. Posturing as a summons to terminate the ride well before its time.

Blue Raven

I am become the myth of
Sisyphus.
I am the boulder pushed.
The arms that push it.
Pulse racing.
Breath raw.
Sweat dousing me.
Me and my meaning-making
Machinations.
No boulder, though, for me.
The spoked-wheels of
Blue Raven
Make contact with the Earth.
[The body of Godde].
Appealing.
Pleading.
Bleeding yearning
For liberation from
This toil
[This bubble
Bubble
I am become the myth of
Sisyphus.
I am the boulder pushed.
The arms that push it.
Pulse racing.
Breath raw.
Sweat dousing me.
Me and my meaning-making
Machinations.
No boulder, though, for me.
The spoked-wheels of
Blue Raven
Make contact with the Earth.
[The body of Godde].
Appealing.
Pleading.
Bleeding yearning
For liberation from
This toil
[This bubble
Bubble
I am become the myth of
Sisyphus.
I am the boulder pushed.
The arms that push it.
Pulse racing.
Breath raw.
Sweat dousing me.
Me and my meaning-making
Machinations.
No boulder, though, for me.
The spoked-wheels of
Blue Raven
Make contact with the Earth.
[The body of Godde].
Appealing.
Pleading.
Bleeding yearning
For liberation from
This toil
[This bubble
Bubble
Bubble
Boil.]
That is life’s insistence
Living.
I am become a heated cauldron.
A stone soup of
Gaia’s delight.
For She too knows
Grief. Gravity.
And persistent
Surrender to
Meandering murmurations.
Myth and Mystery
Beckoning.
Rebirth.
© Margot Van Sluytman