Burning Sage

I am trying to be more ritualistic when I burn sage. Last night when I burned it in my apartment I repeated out loud what it was that I was trying to clear out of my life. It’s interesting how home spaces can carry energy. Last January was particularly brutal, and in my fleeting moments of sobriety I remember the heaviness that hung over my living room.

I am reading Women Who Run With the Wolves for the second time. The first time I read the book I knew I had to revisit it. It talks about the psyche, the spiritual nature of being a female, and our ability to access our unconscious selves on a deep level.

The book starts off talking about a wolf woman who is fat and hairy. She is free and lives out West, traveling the deserts between California and Mexico. She is feral, the epitome of unleashed femininity. There’s a girl I follow on instagram who leads a similar life, albeit more beautiful. She is always posing with her motorcycle and running around Joshua Tree, barely employed. She posted a video of her playing the guitar wearing a hat, tank top, and underwear. She didn’t look sexual, she looked like someone in the depth of her personhood, beholden only to her nature.

I remember looking at photos of Georgia O’Keefe’s home, have you seen it? It’s a raw, artful space in the middle of the desert. A part of me wonders what it would be like to move out west into a rustic home, perpetually connected to nature and myself. I visited Wadi Rum because I wanted to see the desert, to connect with its spiritual energy. I remember laying in bed and hearing a voice with a thick Arab accent go “hellloooo” loudly in my ear. I freaked out and left a day early.

It’s strange experiencing the self and then entering into the world and watching the world experience your femininity in ways that are deeply contorted. The split between our true selves and how people perceive and consume us can be jarring. It’s in this dissonance that I wonder what it would be like to be seen and understood, to have the depth of my being cradled by another hand.