More from my continuing project with my past journals.
Written in April 1994
Imagine a protagonist who is depressed and despairing, who doesn’t know what to do about it, whose life “looks fine” from the outside. What would be the story that would unfold from that, that would both redeem and validate this person’s malaise? I think someone would have to come in from outside, some information or event, that would change things, not change the protagonist but change how she looks at things. I think of when Trudy came and told me about candida and how it gave me both an explanation for my continuous ill health, and a program to follow. I think of the enormous relief I felt when I first understood that I had been sexually abused, even though I then slid back into denial. But both those insights led to hard work, a few immediate gains, then a lot more hard work, and the final realization that the solution wasn’t that simple, I had to address more factors, and I had to keep struggling with these issues every day. This doesn’t make a good story, one wants a story that ends, that finishes up at a place of triumph, or at least some arrival at a success that can be acknowledged. And in my story, I don’t want the new information to be about what’s wrong with the person, but to be about what’s right, and to place their suffering in a larger context.
So I imagine the person, or the information coming from outside, to bring this message: “Your malaise is because you do not fit in with the culture that is around you. But that culture is sick and wildly off base, and it’s always putting pressure on you to leave your own center and dance attendance on the things that are important to it. But you don’t belong here at all — you are actually from another planet, or part of an underground network of spiritual revolutionaries — and your misery is because you have lost contact with your real function and your comrades. Your job is not to buy more things, organize your house better, write books, give workshops, etc. Your job is to…” But here I bog down. I’ve not been writing this out of the lefthand space, but constructing it from what I know — “making it up” in fact. OK, so now “make up” a job, that does not involve reaching out to the culture in which this person does not fit, and trying to reform/transform them.
What we need is a job that relates to the underground network, some organic function that the protagonist performs, just as she is, something necessary for her comrades, but invisible to the materialistic, greedy, short-sighted culture that surrounds her. Something like the “navigator” role I imagined long ago, a “job” that is meaningless until one remembers/recovers that she is part of the crew of a starship, and her job is to remember the patterns of the stars, and recognize the one that points the way home. The Keeper of the Calendar fits the criteria: invisible in the general culture, yet important to my fellow co-conspirators. And if my “job” is to know about the cycles of the sun & moon, and to keep them alive in my life, and to create celebrations when it’s appropriate — i.e. when a group of fellow co-conspirators have gathered around me — then I’m doing fine. And it’s not my job to rescue mom from her alcoholism, or to try to make things better for Eleanor, or to attempt to awaken the general public to the reality of child abuse. If I think those things are my job, then I break my heart trying to do what can’t be done. But in order to stop losing my energy to doomed battles, I need some validation from “outside”, to tell me that those battles are doomed, that I can’t rescue Eleanor, or my mother, or the culture, and that keeping the sacred calendar alive is a valuable life’s work. Well, of course, in a work of fiction, I don’t want someone to tell me that, I want it to be shown, to have the protagonist be found by a group of people who have been looking for her, who will rejoice in the recovery of the sacred calendar, or else for her to stumble in the back door of the house of the shamans, or find them engaged in some ritual, and be challenged only to discover that she already knows the passwords.
(A week later)
I read over my “story” about the person who is despairing and depressed and then some new person or event comes into her life and gives her a new look at herself, a wider context, a sense of connection and meaning. And lo and behold! that’s exactly what happened when Bess and Mary came here to film me. [for the video about Journey into Courage] Their interest in me as a person, and in my house as a reflection of my creativity, and Bess’ carefully thought-out questions, gave me back a sense of perspective on myself and my life, a chance to see my gifts and my accomplishments, instead of just my struggle. And that lets me see that I am not only the Keeper of the Calendar, an esoteric function which is of value only to the few who are trying to live a sacramental life, but I am also a reporter on the front lines. My job is not to change the culture or to wake people up, but to just keep reporting as honestly and objectively as possible, the conditions on the battlefield.
That is still true, but my vocation as “Keeper of the Calendar” has become more obvious and meaningful now that Neskaya is open, and bringing in Sacred Circle Dancers, a wonderful ever-growing community of “co-conspirators” invisible in the culture at large, and part of an “underground network of spiritual revolutionaries.”