Interlude: Parallel Lives
When Ravens and strangers speak directly to you
I’ve learned to pay attention to Ravens wherever and whenever they appear. Both out in the material world and within the storytelling of others. Not unlike oracles of Ancient Greece, Ravens can appear from other realms bearing messages in languages we might not fully comprehend at first. They are a sign of affirmation… what they are affirming is up to us to figure out. Blair Speed’s Running Up for Air contains both Ravens and messages.
Her work is amongst a small group of writers whose pieces I save for later reading, for a time when I’m ready to take them in. That readiness is unpredictable other than knowing it will arrive in due time. Her writing carries no manufactured immediacy to “consume” them and then move on the next shiny thing. They aren’t quite timeless, yet they speak to extended chunks of a lifetime. To processes that proceed slowly and with granularity. Where movement may not seem to be happening at all. At least not until you find a place to pause, turn around, and look back. Only then do you see that a journey of thousands upon thousands of tiny steps—some backwards, some sideways into the duff—only then do you realize those steps have taken you a very long way from where you began. This irregular movement brings you to significant milestones; some foreseen, some unanticipated.
On my own journeys of micro-movements, writing such as Blair’s appears when the student is ready. Today was such a day.
Parallel lives: Distance running. Bottomless loss and grief. Messy, very messy journeys toward self-acceptance. Journeys that are continually evolving. And not unlike endurance races in which the framework is not a fixed distance, but rather the number of laps one can complete in a given time frame… well, there’s a certain poetry in that.
There is poetry in these words:
“Grief is its own slow blossom of becoming. Of unbecoming. To become again. Time reaching forwards and backwards.”
These words signaled I was ready to hear her words. Now was the moment. Face down—exasperated… exhausted—on the muddy trails of grief. Only from such an immensely humbling position could I be ready to hear such words. Her words found the depths of my heart. Who could have imagined I’d have found them here?
More resonance:
“Mark’s divorced too. Three times. It’s part of the reason I was drawn to him after Trav died. It’s part of the reason I felt safe with him. Not the divorce but the love and the loss. I couldn’t be someone’s one and only. No one would be my one and only ever again. We’d have to share… I needed to be with someone who had loved before me. Who had loved and lost and was still brave enough to be right here, willing to write our histories together. Willing to try again.”
When you’ve—many times—been through the fires, that “one and only” no longer works. This too describes the connection between me and my wife. We’ve both travelled extensively through the unexpected messinesses of being human and alive. We still are. We need to be with another who gets those struggles… and all the chaotic untidiness, scars, weariness, and frustration that comes with them. A companion who sees a way to keep on keepin’ on despite all that came prior. Someone who comes alongside and is “willing to try again.” Walking the road together.
The piece ends with Mark joining Blair for the last lap of her race. If you know only a bit of their journeys, you cannot help but see how profoundly moving and beautiful this communion is. There is a poetry simply in being outside and connected to the earth. And connected to another. I wish that we all may find such connections as best suits the sparks we carry within.
You can find her piece linked below.
One more parallel as a postscript: I too began running when I was 11. My parents also divorced soon after that. Now I will ponder the connections that lie between these two milestones. And fifty plus years on, I’m still running.
This means a lot, Eric. Thank you. More than I can say. Cacaw!! 🐦⬛