“We shall not be tamed!”

Jewel

The Buick’s windshield covered with heavy dew obscures our road in blurry wet shapes.  Up ahead–just to the left!–oh look, it’s a coyote.  No, it’s a fox.  Darn it, it’s a blurry wet windshield reflection moving into tall waving grasses.

Deep longing to know.  To bond with tan-red wild creature skulking into the sunrise.  To know its name.  To feel its feral wildness, its unknowableness.

I will never know.

And maybe that’s OK.

Longing–a constant companion since childhood.  Always something in me longs.  It longs to write, to express itself, to sculpt into words all feelings rising unbidden in the heart, a new feeling every five minutes appearing to contradict the last quivering feeling.

You can try to live a dignified life doing all the right things, can’t you?  Until Lady Passion arises with her desires, her demands, her insistence.  She rues the respectable, the acceptable, the appropriate.  She wants her cup of coffee when she wants it–no matter if the body whimpers.

She wants to check her email when she wants–no matter if she checked it five minutes ago.

She wants to blog when she wants–no matter what the more measured observer thinks.

Lady Passion, Lady Longing, barefoot, long skirt, fishing for creativity beside the stream of your heart, daring to whistle, daring to call attention to herself, her desire ripe as fresh figs.

Ode to longing

She’s a curse and a blessing, isn’t she?  She’s a siren and your savior.  She leadeth you beside churning waters and she sprints with the coyote/fox before the sun rises singing, “We shall not be tamed!  We shall not be tamed!”

Part of me wants to be tamed.  To be measured.  To live as a Business Manager ought.  To live by schedules and deeper knowings.

Not to be tossed & turned & cavorted by Our-Lady-Wh0-Wakes-You-In-The-Middle-of-the-Night to tease with regrets and possibilities, to urge us toward the Huron Mountains when our feet instead pace the path most taken, the black-topped road of civilization.

I’ve fought Lady Longing most of my life, that crazy woman who guided me into Native American sweat lodges, who dreamed me out west into Montana with Brooke Medicine Eagle, who often lullabies these blog posts.  She throws me over the edge, she does, when I want to hang fingertips to the known, clinging to what delighted me yesterday.

Window etchings

I’ve adored Lady Longing most of my life, that angel-savior who gives life meaning, who insists never-ever, never-ever become complacent, predictable, comfortable in the dust of routines.

Some day, maybe today, she and I will sign a truce.  We’ll ink it in turquoise blood.  We’ll place hand-over-heart, hand-over-heart, and pledge evermore to accept what arises.  Perhaps Lady Longing will marry Lord Knowing and they’ll live happily ever after not caring if their children are fox or coyote, or even if you can see out of the blurry windshield of your life.

How has Lady Longing shaped your one wild & precious life?  Do you lock her into the closet of your confusion and throw the key far, far away? Do you run with the wolves, sleep with the mice, and quest beneath thick red roots of cedar attempting to discover her secrets?