one thing leads to another
meander and find out
To remember how we came up with the Elk Patriarchy, I had to sleep for seven hours and then dig deep in my memory. Two days ago,
and I were sitting in her garden, engaging in joyful practice to write a book about joyful practice. We weren’t sure what that would look like, but we decided we would draw the flowers from her garden on a large piece of paper (my jet-lagged brain just wanted to write situation: We drew flowers from her garden on a large situation), write down some questions about joyful practice (where did it come from? what’s the most important thing?) and jot down answers as they came to us.The most important thing about joyful practice is making time in your day to draw flowers with a friend.
The most important thing about joyful practice is retrieving and capturing what’s already in your brain.
The most important thing about joyful practice is play.
Other things came to us. Sarah drew lines to indicate creative explosion, but then she decided the lines looked like a hedgehog. The hedgehog made me think of porcupines, which made me think of Colorado, which made me think of elk. I tried to draw an elk from memory and as we talked about the challenge of really seeing things with your mind’s eye (I think I know what an elk looks like until I try to draw it), Sarah also tried to draw an elk from memory. As she was drawing the elk, I made some flip comment about the patriarchy (which was the continuation of an earlier thought, e.g. the most important thing about joyful practice is that it subverts the patriarchy), and somehow we arrived at Elk Patriarchy. In a lovely coincidence, the elk’s antlers adjoined with the yarrow.
All week I’d been half remembering a time after sunset several years ago when my son, maybe eight at the time, sat with me in our wood-fired hot tub in our pasture. We were soaking and chitty-chatting, steam rising into the cool evening air, pink sky turning to gray, when we looked up and there they were: eight stags moving through the pasture. Not at a distance. Right there, a few feet away, their giant racks ornamented with all the magic in the world. They breathed and trudged along. They held awareness of us and no fear. We were just something they passed along their journey. Deer Patriarchy.
Sometimes when I listen to a guided meditation, the narrator asks me to think of my ancestors, to imagine their love and support for me. I have deep curiosity about my ancestors, but I don’t personally experience them as a source of support. I don’t imagine them loving me, and if I try to revise that through imagination, nothing stirs. But I’ve discovered that if I imagine deer instead of ancestors, that works. I imagine a doe, lying in the pasture, and I am me, but also I’m her fawn. I lie alongside her, and she loves me. Deer Matriarchy.
And so, here I am on the other side of the country, jet-lagged and drinking coffee near my childhood home, and I’m also still at Sarah’s garden table, continuing the meander we began on Friday.
a prompt
Make some time in your weekend to draw flowers with a friend. If you don’t have a friend to draw flowers with, no worries, you are the friend. Be as silly or as serious as possible, and take dictation from your brain. See where it takes you.