I took this image last summer when Hades came to visit us. It was the turbulent last few weeks of the Trump sectarian regime, our ability to breathe was literally taken from us and all of nature screamed in agony as she burned and choked to death.
This was the challenging ending of the hardest four years of my life. Scott Ferry wrote a powerful poem about the tearing away of the skin and I thought, my god, if that doesn't just nail it. I left the link on his name active for those who would like to subscribe to his poetry (which will peel your eyeballs btw).
A few years ago when I was a regular free diver and lived in water more than on land, I would sometimes miscalculate the strength, PSI, and depth of water. This put me in situations of suffocation, one scenario was a near-drowning event. You never really forget that pain. Your brain wrenches on the mandible muscles of your lower jaw to open your jaw wide, tilt the head back and pull deep. Another message screams in an override to keep to mouth firmly shut and to block off upper sinus pull, to protect the lungs from filling with water. Cortisol immediately floods the system and panic spread through the system in a matter of milliseconds. It takes a few seconds and then the cortisol accumulates in the lung region to energize the upper thoracic region to ready itself to do its job, but the brain is blocking the instructions. Pain spreads like fire throughout the chest and upper body as panic worsens.
The world's most experienced divers can override this terrible malady and rise more effortlessly to safety. Most of the time the nervous system's response is too much to bear, it's one of the most excruciating nervous system scenarios one can be in. I mention this for a reason, that reason is, that growth can sometimes feel like this. Renewal, change, pupae, chrysalis, hatching, blooming, this time of the year when we see all of Nature modify herself in experience and presence. I can't help but wonder if the impetus isn't just a hint of suffocation? That painful path just before the changes begin to unfold? I wonder... I wonder when I watch the egg count rise in a little Robin's nest just outside my office door, or when I watch the Mallard flock present their hatchings, two by two, and swim fearlessly into the great big world.
Isn't it just the slightest suffocation that forces them to kick the egg open and emerge into the massive expanse of oxygenated air? I wonder as I grapple with working 80 hours a week, juggling rebuilding, post-pandemic, juggling creativity, study, and a consultancy. I watch my movements, this earth dance I do, change in its choreography. Adulting as they say, in ways I'd not previously done. It's uncomfortable, and it feels as though I've left a confined space with too little oxygen to meet the present needs. In these moments where it can feel so exhausting and near unbearable if I can remember the feeling on the other side? Remember the beauty that comes from it. Perhaps this is what gives us the drive to persist. I guarantee you, if Hades decided to return, it would find an entirely different creature in its midst. Spring, the season of growth.
