Category: Authenticity

The Taxi Driver

I’m sitting outside on the patio anticipating the sunset. It’s about an hour out. And it’s a warm winter day. About 58 degrees Fahrenheit. I’m quietly reflecting on who I want to be in 2024. How will I define myself? In what ways will I be boundless and free from definition? My skin is pale and my eyes sensitive from being indoors so much this year. Its like I lived in a bunker all of 2023. Listening to shells drop all around me. Waiting on someone or something to save me. To airlift me out of the hellscape.

People walking their dogs here in the complex have no idea what dwells inside the woman who is sitting on patio furniture gazing silently up at the sun. I have no idea what’s inside of them either.

I hear a car radio, factory grade, thumping coming down the parking lot. At first its behind my back so I only hear it. My mind’s eye begins to project images of what it might look like once it appears in my field of vision. It is factory for sure. Someone is absolutely juicing their factory car radio. I love that. Its likely a sedan. Probably grey or silver with shimmery undercoat that glistens in the sun if its clean. I imagine its probably a 2018 model and has a child’s car seat in the back with Cheetos covering the back floor board. I guess it has tinted windows. All of this my mind conjured before I could see it.

It was a taxi driver. The car was a tiny 4 door. Big, bright, green, logo on both sides. Indeed it was clean. Windows were tinted. As it pulled up to a garage I could hear the 1981 song by Olivia Newton John, “Let’s Get Physical” erupting out of the driver’s open window. I wondered to myself, “who am I gonna see get out of this taxi that’s been BUMPING Olivia Newton John?”

A lady in her 70’s opens the back door and slowly climbs out. She seems active but also a bit frail. Strong but fading. Definitely filled with the spiciness and zest of life. Big smile on her face. The taxi driver opens his door. He’s a white guy and balding. When I tell you the setting sun was beaming off the top of his head….I guess he’s in his 40’s. He’s wearing a black t-shirt that gapes at the bottom struggling to cover a pot belly. Dark, inky blue, straight cut jeans, that look like Wranglers. Black socks with taupe, open-toed, rubber sandals. 2 straps across his thick black socks. Olivia Newton John was still reverberating thru air. I wondered if the music wasn’t so loud it made it hard to hear his passenger. But, they both seemed happy. Pleasant. She’d had a great ride. Maybe the music was her choice? As someone born on the cusp of the 80’s I did enjoy that sound and I’m assuming the taxi driver is older than me and also an 80’s fan. But, something tells me that was her song choice. And, as someone who also drives I would never have the music that loud, or even choose the music. The volume and genre are always per my rider’s request.

He had the energy of a driver who had just started their shift and wasn’t thinking yet about the long night ahead. As he helped the passenger get some things out of the back seat another man comes out of the apartment. Older than the taxi driver, but younger than the passenger. He extends his arm to the driver and I’m assuming was paying and/or tipping him. Maybe that’s why the driver seemed so energetic and happy? Maybe it was the tip? Maybe he felt exuberant from his interactions with his passenger? I wondered at what the source of his joy was. It did seem more than happiness. The scenario tasted like genuine joy mixed with a large helping of abandon, with a dash of ignorant bliss. He laughed with the man who came out to meet them as he rounded the hood of his car to get back in and wait on another fare. A cigarette dangled from his lips.

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My Soul Screams: Stop Tripping Over Trite Things

Was staring around my dark room & thought I’d write and express. All I know is that 2023 taught me that many things aren’t what we’ve been taught they are. Specifically, the death process. I say, “death process” because it is a separate thing from the, “dying process”. It just is. It’s not like I was taught and because I saw what I saw I can’t very well force myself to believe what I’m told over what I’ve experienced. There’s a quote that applies here, that goes something like, ” A person with an experience is never at the mercy of a person with an argument.”

I’m doing all I can to summon my own essence, courage, wherewithal, mental health, and emotional fortitude to reignite my YouTube channel, Cozett Contemplates .

Life just isn’t what I’ve been taught. It doesn’t work the way I’ve been conditioned to think it would. And when you think about life…really really think…about the ontology of it….it suddenly feels like a wake-up call, where your eyes flap open in alarm because you’ve just realized that well-intentioned, good-hearted people had it wrong. All wrong.

And I’ve been grappling with this to some degree over the years but not like I have since 2023.

I’m experiencing levels of physical, mental, and emotional depletion. My nervous system is processing thru dysregulation. But, my soul….that essential part of me that never tires wants to scream. I want to scream that narrow perspectives cost lives. In 2 ways. One, in that a narrowed perspective keeps us from having a robust experience. One that fills us daily with solid education, experiences of people, places, and things that actually prove or disprove if what we always believed is real or not, a full and broad spectrum love that easily encompasses and holds space for humans who don’t believe the way we do or haven’t experienced what we have, and ever unfolding paradigm shifts that keep our minds, bodies and emotions healthy and growth oriented.

I have so much to say. But I think like Jesus, I’ll have to wrap it all in parables lest I’m crucified before it’s my time to die. And knowing what I know now about dying and death….I want to be able to be honest so that even if it doesn’t ring true for others, I will at least not trespass my own conscience.

There is so much crisis in the air. And I want to love and live. I don’t want to spend time parsing and mincing words and finding fault and accusing and playing the expert of some other human as their judge and jury.

I want to spend my time healing, teaching, holding and not tripping over trite things that have little to no value in the grand scheme of things.

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Divergence: Part 1 (Cowritten with Margo Holder)

Divergence: Part 1

I open the well and dip my quill
Each scratchy stroke on the parchment,
a step along my path

Naive navigation of the terrain ahead
I prime my heart for my fears to shed

With growth as my goal
I’m not sure what to extol

So childishly I tread,
Running, skipping, leaping ahead

Trusting that the next step will catch me
It is only when I fall that I know the truth …

The truth is that in the falling there is an emergence
A clear confrontation of choiceless divergence

My head swims with courage bigger than me
My stomach churns with lifetimes of inappropriate duty

I should. I must. But it feels so unjust.
It’s right, I’m told. I just need to be bold.

I take a step onto the path
I chose the one that I should have

Should have, would have, could have
For these pressures there is one salve

That healing balm an eternal calm
I sing out an autonomy psalm

Free me from duty! Let me roam free
This is your path, it is not for me!

I turn the page.

The blackness of the ink settles into my scars
Through tears, I tell my story to the stars

But it was hers not mine
I had no intention of building an eternal shrine
Weeping mother wound to the constellations I crooned
Becoming a woman my childhood was pruned

Do as I say and not as I do
Tell me who could integrate that? Who?

I turn away and run hard and fast
My feet burning as the jagged rocks pierce my skin

Each step is my own, each choice another try
To forge my own path, to not write another line that isn’t my own, and yet, here we are again

Was irony supposed to be a part of the lesson?
This prismatic labyrinth buffets my progression

Choice after choice line after line
Each chapter my own to define

Maybe love will be my guide!
My pulse quickens as I hasten my stride
Into the arms of the one in my dreams
He is perfect, or so it seems

This box checked and that one too
Could this relationship be a healing brew?

I laud his kindness and his sheer humanity
And of course he does appeal to my vanity

Could he be my needed polarity
Yes he is the one to bring me clarity

I feel the subtle prickling in my heart
Little words, gestures, small things really
It’s probably nothing, I tell myself
You’re just being silly.

But the voices grow louder
Impossible to ignore
He’s not the same person
He was before

And I am alone

My soul is in pieces strewn across the pages
As if they no longer belong to me
I am coming undone
Word by word

And somehow I know within the depth of me
I’ll reintegrate these pieces beautifully
Tattered pages will be alchemized
The herald of my triumph wasn’t surmised

My sharded soul will become an impressive mosaic
The guarantee of my happiness written since times archaic

I’m ready to move forward and to turn this page

Older. Wiser. An expert in learning from my mistakes.
My hair is gray, my body feeble. I’ve transfigured my heartaches.

I close my eyes and I am no more
But yet I know
As I am known

The book opens before me, a clean page
What will you write, asked the mage
Who appeared in the ether

There are lessons still to learn
My soul, ever seeking
To go deeper

And I begin to write…

For more of Margo’s writing and thoughts visit her blog here: lessonsfromtherearview.com

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I Am The Cedar Queen

Hiding in the woods my branches like a broom

Hidden behind a veil

I exist in a liminal loom

I am but a shell

Impending winters dark, deep, and long

My sadness evergreen

Nightfall settles in my heart with a rusty song

I am the cedar queen

My arms raised tipped in green tipped in snow

I am planted & there’s no place for me to go

Cedar resin tears and things cling to me

Multi-layered matter grown inward and prickly

Sunlight filters thru neighboring trees and I wonder if they wonder what its like to be me

Moon rise means for many sleep

Yet the silvery light is for me a lunar keep

If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it does it make a sound?

My primordial cries subliminally rise from the frosty ground

The agony of my being alight on the beams

Moon beams or wood beams? Yes.

What has and what will become of me?

I supposed that’s up to the woodsman and the sea.

©️ Cozett Dunn

Chatttown_poet

November 15th, 2023 11:59 pm

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The Haunting Aspects Of My Mama’s Death Part 2

I’ve never experienced such a black, jagged, grief. I’ve mourned my whole life, people, places, habits, homes, cars, health, opportunities, etc. But, as traumatic as my life has been nothing has ripped me open like the death of my mama and it’s because she and her death was so complex and haunting for me.

I want to sit down in the middle of about 5,000 acres of grassland. Low-cut. No trees, no flowers, no creeks or streams, just low cut grass. I don’t know how expansive 5,000 acres is but that is a number that my soul resonates with in its estimation of the amount of void space I need to fill with my mourning. I want to be the only energy in the space. No birds, rabbits, spirits, field mice. Just me.

I want to wear my ratty pair of sneakers, my favorite pair of jeans, & a t-shirt. I want my hair pulled up. No makeup. I want silence and a gray sky with dull green grass that looks like it needs rain soon.

I want to stare, not think, only feel. I am desperate for this. I’ve always been a thinker. But lately I find myself so tuned out of reality. Not at all present. Busy but with no verbal thoughts floating through my mind.

I want a massive, quiet, space to unpack my grief and mourning and flashbacks and not be judged.

The grief in me feels so chaotic, unbound, and boundless. And I think that’s why my usually wordy thought life has been blunted, shut down because the trauma in my body has grown to the point that it is requiring all the energy from me. The trauma and shock in my body has silenced my thought life and it feels like my mind is taking a ready bow to my body because it recognizes this is the first time my body has ever required this of me and so it is willing to defer.

I need to heal but I don’t know how because I am a healer. And, I feel this sickening dread that as I approach the broken American system for help that I am going to be handled by incompetent, impatient, underpaid, overworked, degreed professionals who don’t naturally operate with foresight or expansive emotional intelligence or are trauma informed.

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The Haunting Aspects Of My Mama’s Death Part 1

I didn’t know it was even possible to feel such unbound grief. I feel like have thousands of acres and millions of miles of black grief radiating from the deepest part of me.

I’m having flashbacks of when I was 4 years old & feeling despair and hopelessness because my mother wouldn’t take care of me. I felt helpless hearing her screamed at during her many fights with my stepdad.

I see myself, tiny feet, walking into my bedroom and setting my alarm clock and laying out my clothes for head start knowing she was probably unconscious in the living room. The whole memory is shadowy and muted in color.

I feel so much grief and now I’m remembering that when I was little how acutely I felt the weight of impending consequences to my mother if I didn’t go to school. It would mean her issues would become apparent & that I would miss out and be delayed in a necessary step of my life. At 4, I understood that educational delay for me would have serious consequences and whether she mothered me or not I would be responsible enough to get myself ready for school, walk to school at the end of our driveway and come back home only to pull a chair up to the sink & wash dishes because that was my assigned chore….at 4. Then she would at least run my bath because I couldn’t figure out the hot and cold water knobs and I wasn’t strong enough to turn them.

The entirety of my life has been spent in dread of her death because she was as dangerously irresponsible as she was charming & fun to be with. I loved her with fiber of my being. But the only memories I have of her are of her leaving me. I’ve felt her leaving my entire life & when she died the horror of it felt logical.

I still feel that longing for my mama. And the pain of her leaving. Like she always did. Except this time she’s not out orbiting somewhere soon to return when s*** hits the fan.

She was epic in so many ways. So cool in so many ways. Unique. Such a fiery, tiny little feminine force. But, she was nearly intolerable for as much as anyone wanted so much to hang on to her. A walking conundrum who wouldn’t allow you to get enough of her. To want more time with her would necessarily mean to want to feel wounded because to be close to her was to be wounded. But wow could she make you laugh, make you feel beautiful, important, special, unique, valuable. I think these were her kind of projections and that the pain she caused so often wasn’t anything she was actually fully aware of. She was never malicious or ill intentioned. She just couldn’t live her life in a manner that wouldn’t cause pain.

I always knew that when she died her death would haunt me in unimaginable ways because of the complexity of who she was as a human. Amazing, magical, etheric, untamed, untouchable, mysterious, funny, and absent.

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The Greater The Depth The Darker It Gets: Pioneering The Pathless Path

Whether the ocean, the earth, the cosmos or the psyche….the greater the depth the darker it gets.

Shadows still exist because they are the egregores of our ego. But, their borders bleed into the blackness. Doing the inner work here is harder. You can’t see anything at all. You can’t feel anything at all. You can’t smell anything. And, there is no flavor. Yet it is not “nothingness.” When taken to this depth you experience sensory deprivation and your integration process looks much less coherent than what is trending and being discovered in even the health and holistic wellness world. Things like Kundalini awakening, or plant medicine trips, or exorcisms, carry a busy energy of a human life trying to survive and progress. There is a frenzied, frenetic, frantic, or even euphoric feel to these processes.
And while they all are wonderful rites in and of themselves they are also in and of themselves mere entries into a life that is pure consciousness, awareness. They can serve as portals to important journeys but they are just that….keyholes through which we get to peer into what’s next….beyond the body and beyond the mind.

As one who speaks from the deep….I’m understanding there is a disabling stillness that overtakes the psyche that forces the soul to switch off to allow our spirit to come online. We depart from understanding the world and the people around us physically because we experience a break, a disconnect from the physical even while we are still in the body and we sojourn into a metaphysical knowingness.

From physical understanding to metaphysical knowing. This is the path of shamans, healers, oracles, prophets, and poets. This is where the pathless path begins. This transition is the junction where we meet other souls who are longing to go deeper but need the guidance of those of us who had no choice but to pioneer the poignancy of what its like to live between worlds.

For years I’ve felt a jealousy, a scornful envy even of those who never seem to venture below the surface. The ease that they experience in their unawareness has seemed so unfair to me. And up until my mother’s death, which has carried a level of complexity that no one should have to experience, I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand why so many people get to walk around having done little to no inner work, existing in pure ego completely unbothered, and untouchable in spite of the harm that their willful ignorance has caused.

But, now I do. I do get it. I believe there is a subconscious mechanism within each of us that will allow us to go only so far into understanding humanity, emotions, spirit, soul, shadow. It is the “thing” within us that determines when it is our own unique time to learn certain lessons. And until it’s time to learn those lessons….these people act as lessons to those of us who are inwardly turned.

We learn how to deal gently with a collective that isn’t ready. We learn how to meet people where they are….without judging who they are. In the end its all about survival. The survival of the body. The survival of the psyche. The survival of the soul. The survival of our spirits that get so attached to the identity of our physical existence and feel terrified at the thought of the moment it loses the body. Because that will happen for all of us. We are all moving towards that moment of no longer being “the us that we know.” The us that is grouchy when we wake up. The us that looks in the mirror and sees thinning hair, banging bods, stretch marks, chiseled jaw lines, on point brows, and unwanted chin hair.

There is life in the deep. Beyond the body. And, beyond the mind. I’m here. But, I’ll be back. And, when I come back…I’m bringing my soul with me. I’m not politically correct. I’m not religiously correct. I fit in no where but because of this I’m equipped to go everywhere. Spreading boundlessly as threads of my energy finds the energy of other wandering souls like mine.

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The Masculine Man And My Mirage: Foundational Context For Bidirectional Learning And (hopefully) Community. Pt 2 Mushrooms Make Rain.

Long ago I learned that there exists a parable within every moment. And, moments exist in a continuum. Because of that we stand to learn very profound lessons whether they are wrapped up in the mundane or the chaotic.

As a childhood trauma survivor and someone who has had an equally as traumatizing adulthood I have spent the entirety of my days in a state of “trying.” Trying to feel anchored, trying to be centered, trying to be grounded, trying to feel firmly placed in life, trying to identify with my body and feel embodied. I’ve always felt like I exist at the end of a tether. My body and my survival instincts constantly preparing and adjusting with every gust of wind. And for me the winds have only ever oscillated between that of a summer storm or the finger of God. There have been few days of calm where the tether could hang limp, relaxed, or still.

Because of this constant state of “trying” to find things that will help me feel rooted into the fortitude of the earth I’ve found myself consumed in studying and creating my own system of symbology. As wordy as I am it is imagery that helps me get still. It is symbolism that reigns in the racing of my thought life. There is always more than meets the eye and I am always exploring “what the more” is of every symbol that I study.

Without a written or spoken word a symbol can be a fully understood herald that draws and teases out the wise and wonderful tendrils of our intuition.

When trauma has been as unrelenting as it has been for me there is a loss of a sense of human dignity. And the pride of youth and ego no longer exist. There is nothing to hide or cover or compensate for because all parts of you have been exposed. When trauma becomes a frequent experience there is an accumulation that happens that outpaces the ability of our faculties to process and integrate it. This is why it is imperative to invest in your emotional, and mental well-being by taking care of and optimizing your nervous system (This is another post entirely. Learn about and tend to your nervous system.)

Over the last year the symbolism of all things earthy have been a growing interest for me. Which is no surprise since my greatest life’s pursuit has been to feel grounded and nourished from a foundation that feels wide and deep and solid.

One of the most traumatic elements of my life has been the bad behavior of men and the absence of the protective force of a father. With that said I need to add here that due to circumstances that were unmanageable I never got to meet my father until I was 18 years old. My grandfather was my father figure growing up but he was very stoic and emotionally removed from me. We rarely interacted with each other and the majority of interactions we had were me being being cussed and name called for things that are inherently normal to a child’s development. Such as asking too many questions and being annoying, or being on the phone too late at night. I was never terribly mischievous and never got into any major trouble in school. But, he just didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to deal with me and so he was reclusive. Growing from that foundation I went onto being around serious domestic violence against my mother from men who would beat her. One even picked me up by my throat when I was 14 because I told him he couldn’t tell me what to do because he wasn’t my father. Then of course my own experiences with first love, dating, and then marrying at the age of 21. With each relationship I was cheated on in spite of how soft, yielding, and available…and truly good I was. My most recent experience is being cheated on by someone I had agreed to marry. So, I’ve not had the opportunity to have good personal experiences with men in general.

Now, interestingly enough I’m reading a new book by, Sophie Strand titled, “The Flowering Wand, Rewilding the Sacred Masculine.” I have been admiring her and her work from afar for quite some time and when I heard her on a podcast yesterday morning I was so moved I decided to spend the last money I had to buy her book and thankfully found it locally. I bought it because of the earth imagery and because I’ve been so impressed how she through her own suffering and study has found an intersection between myth, mushrooms, and masculinity from which she shares her own unique vision of how we can collectively rewild masculinity by placing its roots into the narratives of soils that are not toxic. Her articulation and use of terms that are not part of normal conversation or entertainment is so powerfully romantic to me that her work is irresistible. Little did I know the magic that would enrapture me from the first few pages.

It is in this space of wonder and awe that I had to share what I learned about how mushrooms make rain. Doesn’t that sound magical?? Truly. And, while this isn’t the author’s intention I think there is a segue here for me into a potentially healing parable and that is the iteration of mushrooms as masculine symbol and rain as a feminine symbol. I feel there is some special tidbit of wisdom that is tucked away in that imagery. I’ll unpack that later though.

For now….check this out.

“Research into cloud formation and rainfall has yielded interesting results. One of the drivers behind rainfall is something very curious indeed: fungal spores. The group of fungi that produce mushrooms, called basidiomycetes, grow through an osmotic inflation process, their hyphae bonding together and filling with water in order to “bloom” above the soil. Once the mushrooms have developed, tiny stalks (basidia) grow underneath the mushroom cap, culminating in tiny spores. A drop of water forms between the gills under a mushroom’s cap. Finally, the water droplet condenses against the spore, jettisoning the spore out of the mushroom. In his book, Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save The World, mycologist Paul Stamets estimates that the force with which mushrooms eject spores is ten thousand times the force undergone by astronauts as they exit the gravitational pull of Earth’s orbit. Some land many inches away from the original mushroom. But most are buoyed upward by the wind, into the sky. Every year, around fifty million tons of spores enters into the atmosphere Some of those spores will immediately land in the dirt and begin, hypha by hypha, to root into the underworld. But millions of tons of spores do something else entirely. Some make it fifty miles up into the air and ride the currents for weeks. They follow the wind. And….they generate rain. Sugars on the spores’ surface cause water to condense around them once they have been ejected. Spores become a nucleus of sorts in a floating water molecule. These water-coated spores bump into each other, again and again, millions of times, until they accumulate into rain clouds.”
(Sophie Strand, The Flowering Wand, pages 11 and 12.)

Amazing right?? Mushrooms make rain. I will likely have a poetic response for this at some point.

I will unpack this in my next post of my series, “The Masculine Man And My Mirage: Foundational Context For Bidirectional Learning And (hopefully) Community.”

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The Masculine Man And My Mirage: Foundational Context For Bidirectional Learning And (hopefully) Community (Pt 1)

Man. Masculine. Mirage.

If you follow me closely enough you will be acquainted with my contemplations about life & how trauma has intricately shaped my evolution. Truly, as I write this I understand that no one can really understand…unless they can go tit for tat on the count of traumatic events that happened over the course of my life. But, what I’m writing here isn’t a peeing contest. It is however my first public post and write out loud sessions of how I will be processing a segment of my life that I wish to have a happy conclusion on before I die. An integration that leaves me satisfied.

At 44, in what is my mid-life, I realize we never stop learning of course. And, one of the things I admire about myself is that I’m adaptable. Life has taught me there is literally nothing that is set in stone. To live life with an inflexibility and disdain towards new or divergent views or information is to willfully agree to devolve, desist, subsist, and invite nothing but contrast and frustration. It is to live small and to exist within a very narrow scope. I don’t know about you but for me the thought of this makes me feel claustrophobic.

My intelligence is emotional. It is circumspect. It is agile.

From the age of 4 the big question of life has been at the forefront of my conscious awareness, “WHY?” As a trauma survivor and someone who has very unique & unusual lived experiences I’ve always wanted to know, “why?”

When it comes to God, truth, and faith I’ve been able to distill perspectives from quantum physics and cosmology to feel absolutely satisfied in my understanding about their origin (or lack thereof), nature, mechanism, purpose, and of course relativity.

Having these “figured out” now affords me the mental space to try to sift through my lived experience with men to try to understand them in spite of my negative lived experience with them and because of them. From my lived experience and my “hope springs eternal” approach to exploring what is my inescapable counter part it cannot be said that I’m not courageous. And, as a heterosexual and heteromantic woman the issue of romantic love is inseparable from my deep desire to understand the masculine amongst us. One day perhaps I will stop touching the hot, glowing, red eye of the stove. But, that day is not now.

The journey to understanding anyone or anything will always involve looking at the symbology surrounding and characterizing what or who you seek to understand as a first step onto the path. The symbology of a person, place, or thing is what comes before any verbiage is ascribed. Humans existed before language and it is because of symbolism that we gather our first bits of information to inform our instincts about what we’re learning about. Whether something is large, or small, quiet or loud, sharp or soft helps us determine how to approach our subject.

If a willing harmony and oneness can be achieved there is no doubt in my mind that the careful exploration of our symbolism is the genesis of that state.

It is at this point of genesis that I begin my personal journey in exploring, understanding, and relating to men. And, as I process, integrate, summate, and find my own conclusions I wish to make a promise to all men. My promise to you as a man, if you’re reading this, is that I will not be satisfied or tricked into holding a narrow, media swayed, post modern opinion of you. You are as ancient as I. And, I long to understand you from the beginning of time not from the middle of the feminist era. I am here to see and help you see your timeless qualities that are without reproach. I promise to be a safe place of feminine softness that is conducive and receptive and ever curious about the multi-faceted masculine that is you. Sans toxicity. I wish to separate you and perhaps take you on this journey with me to reexamine the symbolism that has been assigned to you. Maybe you can tell me at which points the symbols feel fitting or ill-fitting. Then this blog post will become a living bi-directional, learning adventure. And, who knows maybe in this way to I can create a community! The thought of this makes my heart feel full as I’m about to embark on what could be a journey of a million miles. Are you with me?

With bare feet I walk upon a new canvas and I leave behind narrative paths that do not serve our collectives

My souls and toes so sensitive to the vibration of the earth and my feminine arches serving as etheric connectives

When I meet the collective him my eager and keen intuition will open for unbound observation

The shoes I could have worn to get here would have been familiar and comfortable but would have perpetuated his obfuscation

And, I’m not interested in self-sabotage or treachery.

Many questions are building in my mind. I wonder what the image of him will make clear in me. All this before words.

In exploring your imagery throughout the history of humanity we cannot evade the primal iconography of your phallus. It has come to be defined (with words) as a symbol of power. However, it is also the regenerative part of you. It is a procreative part of you that delivers a bodily elixir of life. Without you, there would be no us. Since you are both how do you feel that the only characteristic concerning your penis that gets mentioned is “power” and not also regeneration and procreation? This reduces men to a narrow scope I believe.

Divine Masculine tell me your thoughts on the words below by Sophie Strand:

“Do we want to hand the masculine a sword of a flowering wand? The sword slices, divides, and subdues. Its tip drags imaginary borders across ecosystems. The sword does not embrace. It does not connect. It does not ask questions. It is not an instrument of intimacy. It either attacks or defends, affirming that every interaction is conflict, and every story is about domination. The sword, perfected by the Romans as the “spatha” (or short sword) for the specific task of maiming and executing prisoners, quite literally cuts the mind off from the body. The sword proposes that we can wield our intellect without our somatic intuition and without our rooted existence in ecosystems. The sword encapsulate the material reductionist idea that we can “cut” something up into discrete parts and thus understand it as a whole- that we must kill the animal to study the animal; that if we dissect enough brains, we might find the secrets of consciousness. The want on the other hand creates connections.

Some of the earliest examples of wands are the apotropaic hippopotamus tusk wands or “birth tusks” used in Middle Kingdom Egypt (1900 BCE), which were carved with lions, snakes, and frogs and used to magically protect pregnant women and children. They are thought by some to have been used specifically, to draw a circle of safety around a woman in labor. Inscriptions on these ancient wands tell us they are “the protector of night” and “the protector of day,” which may indicate a belief that they helped establish temporal order. We also have the snake staffs of Aaron and Moses in the Hebrew Bible, which were used in spiritual debate, to part the waters of the Red Sea, and to draw water from a stone. These magical staffs that flicker between the solid and the serpentine flow into the healing caduceus of Hermes, a winged wand encircled by two snakes. Rhabdomancy, or dowsing, once used forked wooden wands to magically survey the land for water, a practice that may date back nearly 8,000 years, as evidenced by art in the Saharan Tassili caves. Homer makes numerous references to magical wands in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, putting them in the hands of Circe, Athena, and Hermes. Celtic mythology also features many wands, rods, and staffs; for example, in the famous legend of Fionn MacCumhaill, the hero uses hazel wands to transform people into animals, as a divination device, and to defend himself from harm.

The wand encircles us with protection during biological rites of passage from birth to marriage to death. It draws us to water. It enchants us into closer kinship with animals and plants and landscapes by literally transforming us into them. It mends broken bodies, knits wounds, and softens minds hardened by anthropocentrism (human centric existence of all things). While swords are made only by human hands, wands, it may be argued, predate human beings themselves. All it takes is a woody shoot bursting into blossom. A cedar branch. A sprig of hawthorn. A tree erupting in lichens. For that very reason, perhaps, wands have been central to magical and ritual practices since before human history began to be recorded.” (The Flowering Wand, by Sophie Strand).

My question here is what resonates most with the masculine? The sword or the wand? The answer to that is very revealing and is worthy of sitting around a fire with.

Lots of love,

Cozett Dunn

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Alchemizing Our Loads: A Dedication To The Women In My Circle

I am a tree of life but my branches are breaking

And the thought of enforcing boundaries leaves me shaking

I knew this day would come. The catalyst has arrived.

But her appearance is nothing I could have surmised

The cool soil beneath the souls of my feet

This well-worn path formed by my heart beat

Everything! Everything is important to me. My heart wants to hold it all

My wise woman’s words telling me I can’t carry it all or I’ll fall

From an ancient wild forest she emerged from a bank of dew-laden moss

And she says to me “no, my child some of what you’re carrying is dross”

Statuesque with a tall basket upon her own head

She pulls from my load things that I dread

Complex emotions and situations from my past

I hadn’t realized so much had amassed

Ancestral traumas and narratives that defeat

She placed her hands on my own and laid these at my feet

We’re going to the stream she said…there’s cleansing work that needs to be done

We’re going to alchemize your load until your battle is won

Wading out into an emerald green pool

The water so refreshingly cool

Together we reached a briskly swirling eddy

She looked deep into my eyes and asked, “are you ready?’

“Lay your burdens down in the stream and watch them flow away

I’m teaching you how to release through the magic of play”

As I laid my burdens down into the bubbling flow

I felt a rush of tickles on my legs as I watched them go

My consternation gave way to a relieved smile

I looked at the creek bank where there was waiting for me a tiny pile

The wild wise woman began splashing her way back to the shore

I danced in her wake and reveled in her lore

Through her parabolic ways I learned how to discern piece by piece

What to carry close to my heart and what to release

As we stood together on solid ground I gathered to my chest

My lighter load that resembled a nest

Suddenly I noticed I had grown wings

And that they were made up of broken things

This leg of my journey now felt so complete

My energy and joy had become replete

It truly did all work together for my good

The profundity of my strength was being understood

As she walked away the wise woman gazed up to a clear bright sky

As she uttered the words, “and now you know why”

© Cozett Dunn July 25th, 2023

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