Reflections on Becoming – Green and Grey

Just a few words

When I’m sad or in pain, I won’t tell you. You may figure it out on your own; you might know me well enough to see through the thin veil that I hide behind. Or maybe I’m so transparent that even my most hidden feelings are in plain sight. Even so, I won’t tell you.

My not telling you doesn’t mean that I hold it in; that I’m silent; that I put everything in a box and put the lid down tight. I might do that but then again I might not. Sometimes I scream alone in my house where only my cat can hear it. Sometimes I rant and words pour out of my mouth like poison. Sometimes I crush something soft in my hand – like bread or maybe a flower; Something that can be crushed. Recently I started tearing paper before adding it to the recycling. Occasionally how I feel will come out as a poem or song – a rhyme that carries with it that which was poisoning my insides and at the same time heals the wounded flesh.

My not telling you doesn’t mean that I don’t want you to know. Sometimes I wish you would notice that I’m here, that I feel, that I need. But what good will telling you do? You’re busy, and I’m a pain. I irritate people so much just by existing. My presence grates people and I get on their nerves. If I try to speak my words come out wrong and are misunderstood. They make things worse not better. You knowing is worse than you not knowing. Knowing angers you; makes you feel guilty or responsible or some other bad thing that somehow becomes my fault. Even if it is just in my head. I see how you tighten your face, I hear your tone change from warm to ice or fire. I tell myself that I am to blame.

My not telling you doesn’t mean that I am swamped with hate, or guilt, or something else that you should worry about. I am not about to slit my wrists, take a bunch of pills, or in some other way harm myself. That you think I will just makes me more silent. I censor myself so that you won’t worry. If you are worried then I end up having to carry that as well – pick it up, whether I’m meant to or not, and try to figure out what to do with it. If you worry then it makes everything worse, not better. If you ask, I tell you what you want to hear so you will just go away.

My not telling you doesn’t mean that I’m self-sabotaging and constantly pulling myself down. Telling you means that I will be told not to feel sad or be in pain; like it’s not important to feel such things or that the experience leading to those emotions should somehow be negated or erased or removed from existence. They are important and valuable and deserve to be expressed.

My way of expressing myself doesn’t have to be the same as yours for it to be valid. If I am screaming, it doesn’t mean that I’ve lost control and need someone else to control me. It means my pain needs to voice itself and be heard. If I am rhyming something dark and foreboding it doesn’t mean that I’m suicidal; it means that my pain is being transformed into something else – something dark, yes, but also something wonderful. Creative. Vibrant. Real. If I am crying, it doesn’t mean that I have to be comforted so that I stop; it means that there is an ocean inside me needing to flow naturally through me and roll out onto my flesh. It unclogs the hidden pool inside me so that it doesn’t stagnate. It frees up muscles I didn’t even realise were clenched.

My way of expressing myself is healthy; it feeds that within me that needs to be fed; it makes me more human and less like some lost wraith. My writing was born in such emotion and continues to be fed and nourished by it. Some of my most beautiful and creative pieces have started here. The poetry and song that just erupts from the emotion is transformative and takes on a life of its own. Feeling pain and sadness leads to feeling other emotions – excitement, joy, gratitude, contentment, and a whole bunch of others. Like colours standing out more with a black background they become more vibrant and I see and appreciate them so much more.

I’m not writing this to lecture you, and I don’t need you to lecture me about it either.

I need you to understand and accept that I am a divine human being; I feel and express how I feel in my own unique way. I live, and dance, and sing, and scream, and rant, and howl, and rage, and laugh because I am alive; I am vibrant; a being of energy, a play of shadow and light. I embrace my darkness so that I may also embrace my light, my fire, my glow. Both are me – and the many shades of grey that live in between.

There are things that I do, or like, or say that you don’t understand – that you will never understand. That’s OK. There’s a lot about you I will never understand too. That doesn’t mean we should stop trying.

One last thing.

I love you.

All of you.

Even those dark shadowed spaces that you try to hide from me. They are precious because they are part of you.

And I love you.

My Foolish Child

My foolish Child
Your voice is
Mine
Yet you use it to
Bleat
And whine

Come sit
Beside me
Under this tree
Take my hand
Sweet Child
Let it be

This tearing inside
Your bleeding red
Hart
This scratching and
Biting to
Find your art

All is illusion
Yet all is right
Here
The wonders before us
The thorns
You fear

We are all shredded
But
We rise again
Face our
Dark shadows and
Horrors within

This flesh that
Repels you
Holds secrets my deer
Your task to
Unravel
While you are here

Too soon back
To the Infinite
You’ll head
With a mind
Full of fears
And a heart
Full of dread

Each treasure
Taking
Hiding away
Dropping deep down
Into some nameless
Bay

Closing a door
And locking it
Tight
Shrouding its location
Under cover of
Night

Not mapping out
Nor seeing it’s
Worth
Fooling yourself
That all’s well
On this Earth

But you forget me
That I am
In you
That we are
Entwined
We fated two

Your soul
And mine
In endless silver dance
Of spirals and
Serpents
And sweet happenstance

Whispered threads
Of who what
And where
Of when and of how
And all things
You dare

For every door
You
Lock away
I hold a key
All I need to do is
Say

It shall be opened
And open
It will
With things passing
Through it
For good or for ill

The hollows within you
Were once
In the hills
For you are my door
Through you my
Form spills

So foolish Child
Do you yet
Realise
You hold Earth
In your bones and
Stars in your eyes

A thing of wonder
Each part
Divine
An ocean of brightness
Our soul
Sublime

© AM (Xander) Hunter October 2020

Harrowed by Song

Songs are their own special kind of creature. Sometimes they are like butterflies that flutter around me, just out of reach; distracting me with their colours and their delicate dance. Sometimes they barely touch me as they come through and out into the world. And sometimes, they bludgeon me about the head and gouge out my insides as they demand to come into being.

In your Eyes was that kind of song.

I was in the middle of a spreadsheet for work when it started to come through. A tidal wave of emotion flooded through me, blurring my vision and I had to stand up. Stop what I was doing. I grabbed my handkerchief (who can find tissues in these days of bare supermarket shelves) and burst into tears. Not the gentle, delicate tears of something wonderful and euphoric. No – these were the body-bending, gut-wrenching sobs of something deep and intangible; something so complex that naming the emotion that swept through me was just impossible. I was desolate, confused, torn by something jagged and thrown aside to be flayed by the winds.

There were no words. No tune.

But along with the sobbing were pictures. Yuzuru Hanyu skating his world record breaking short program from the Four Continents Championships earlier this year. And watching him, from the sidelines, his Pooh Bear tissue box.

I didn’t understand. Not at first.

To find the words I had to return to the sobbing and travel through it to the depths it came from. The Pooh Bear was the key.

Watching.

That which is perceived by another is often not seen by the person being scrutinised. Hope, beauty, love – all concepts that some of us find extremely difficult to consider when we look within. But through someone else’s eyes, if they see that within us, we can be lifted up and carried along. We emerge like the phoenix from the ashes of our despair and the death of our love-starved souls. For those of us who are often seduced by our Dark Lover, death, a message of hope, a reminder that life is beautiful and worth living, can be hard to believe if someone isn’t there to show us the way. And that someone is often not the person you would expect; in fact it is often not a person at all.

The tune came from Yuzu’s skate routine, with its twirls, its jumps and glides. Uplifting, enchanting and wondrous; a serenade for the beloved who sees more in us that we could ever see in ourselves; taking us to heights we previously thought impossible to achieve. And we reach them easily as we almost believe every word.

I knew there would be a backlash. Recording the song once I finally finished catching it the next day required me to embody the wonder and enchantment seen by the one who watches; to feel intensely how amazing, beautiful, strong and courageous I am; to know that life is beautiful and that through everything that is happening there is wonder in this world; that I have a future.

It was evening when the backlash rained down. Like a dark dragon of night it was on me before I had time to fully prepare and I was glad I’d clipped my nails a few days earlier. Self-loathing like a poison spread through every part of me and I tore at the air as I allowed my pain to find its voice. It’s poison harrowed me through the night and into the next morning. My throat was raw from ranting and sobbing. My eyes were red with tears still waiting to be shed. My heart was cracked and broken.

But my song. Ah, my song is wondrous!

Enjoying the wonders of creation

I am a song writer, not a singer. Although I do record myself singing, it’s illustrative more than anything else.

I love singing!

The joy that comes from the simple act of air moving through the vocal chords always catches me by surprise. Even on my worst and most negative days singing along to my favourite songs, or just singing the words in my heart, never fails to lift my mood.

Singing is one of the hidden wonders of our world; a sacred act. It connects us in profound ways to the vibrations of life; the beginning and end and renewal of all things.

Singing brings us home.

Writing songs is not something I do. It’s who I am. The songs come as naturally as breathing and are as nourishing as the most exquisite feast. They spiral through my heart, my soul, to my head and give me no peace until I capture them. Sometimes I imagine them as butterflies dancing around my eyes. Their colour, beauty and design so close, so wonderful. And yet if I reach out and grab them it’s so easy to end up with something squashed and twisted beyond all recognition. My songs as I catch them are never the way I hear and see them. My voice is not good enough; I can’t sing that high, or that low; I’m not a soul singer, a jazz singer, or whatever the song calls for.

What I catch is an impression of what I experience in my head.

The other week I was watching the X-Files season one. It was the episode of the Jersey Devil. The wild woman lay dead in the leaves and Mulder, his eyes filling with emotion, looked into the smug face of the Alpha Male who shot her and said ‘why’.

And my head sang:

In the thrall of our own trauma
We thrive on the pain of others
To numb our own.

It came as a Gregorian Chant, repeated over and over again like a delicate bell tolling the marking of some special occasion. And I kept seeing Mulder’s face, hearing him asking ‘Why’. And thinking of the Wild Woman dead in the leaves. The Man of Authority who shot her. How happy he was to have done so.

I wondered: why those words and that scene – together?

Singing the chant over and over as I moved through the next few days I began to realise why the Wild Woman had to be dead in the leaves. Why Mulder’s face while he asked that question was so haunting. Why it called to me so profoundly and touched me so deeply.

I am Mulder asking myself – that part of me that curbs my passions and corrals my creative imaginings into something ‘acceptable’ – why I am laying dead in the leaves. My wild soul; my true self.

Focusing on the pain of others means I don’t have to focus on my own. Confronting my shadows is a revolutionary act if I can allow myself to feel the pain, and see the beauty; to experience love, truth and wisdom in the darkness as well as in the light. And yet facing that particular mirror is terrifying.

I don’t trust many people – especially myself. Anxiety traces the spider’s web of fears that threaten to splinter my soul. It creeps out of the corners and lurks just out of sight.

And yet that simple, almost childish question of ‘why’ reminds me of how beautiful and freeing compassion and empathy are. I remember that they are my strength. The innocence of the Wild Woman, killed for following her nature and daring to be her true self, contains such courage. It’s the kind of courage that I constantly forget because society continually tells me that I should be something other than who I am.

And I am complicit.

That chant, that scene, is my call to arms to myself to be courageous again. To act with compassion and empathy. To be in tune with my heart as it sings that silvered otherworldly glow fluttering behind my eyes into life.

My Dark Lover

He beckons to me
My Dark Lover
In secret whispers
And hidden sighs
Come to me
My broken beauty
Dance with me
On shattered lives
His voice is deep
And full of longing
Like sunset light
Among darkened trees
Fingers reaching
Pale shards of bone
Piercing skin
Like tattered leaves
And I lay wrapped
In his silken blackness
Parted lips wait
To breathe their last
Till teasing smiles
Crack me open
Silvered tears
Break my fast
And I sigh
One long breath out
A holy prayer
To he who waits
For me to grasp
His outstretched hand
And dance the dance
Of Wyrd and Fate

About the poem

Life Between the Veils; a reflection

My life is spent between the veils of the seen world and the unseen worlds. What I mean by that is that I see and need to navigate both, often at the same time.

The world shimmers around me as a I walk, sometimes quite vividly and others barely noticeable. But the veil is always there.

In my workplace the walls of the corridor become the walls of my Patron Deity’s temple. I see the stone, smell the incense, trace the designs with my mind’s eye as they shimmer in the torchlight before blinking back to being office walls.

Driving means being very aware of the road in the here and now and of other traffic, despite perhaps seeing houses change to forest with faces staring out from behind the trees. Grounding and aligning are practices that I do daily; sometimes several times each day. I use my tools to help with this navigation so that I remain aware of all worlds.

Navigating the worlds as a Seer (which is how I choose to label myself) has its difficulties.

Raised in a Western society that views the unseen as imagination or as madness, I was fortunate to have people around me who patted me on the head and attributed my difference to the former. Even so, I learned to be careful about engaging with the unseen in ways that might upset the others around me. I could not disguise the fact that I was ‘different’. Nor could I escape the consequences.

I remember vividly my first ‘vision’, which happened when I was a teenager on a train packed with my fellow class mates. We’d been on a field trip, it was late and dark outside, and I was tired. I remember drifting in a way that I had developed instinctively during class-time when I had to pretend that I was there when I really wasn’t. Eyes open, but unfocussed, picking a detail to stare at and then look beyond.

The air shifted.

Picture book Jesus was there before me, in white, with black neat beard and long black hair. He was very bright and shinning with an inner radiance. Around him the sky was rose coloured. He smiled at me and held out his hand. I was filled with such indescribable joy that it overwhelmed me. I held out my hand and reached toward him. We spiralled around each other as the sky changed colour from rose to blue. The light became stronger.

I blinked.

And returned to a sea of faces staring at me.

It was many years before I confessed my vision to anyone. I held it close. I did not identify strongly as Christian – my family were not church-goers, at least not at that time, and I really only knew some vague stories about Christmas and Easter.

I was careful about when and where I decided to drift from that moment on.

To say ‘I hear voices’ or even ‘I see things’ is to be open to ridicule and be in danger of being designated ‘looney-tunes’ by the others. There was a hospice for such people near to where I grew up, and a strong negative association with being assigned that particular label. So I allowed others to perceive me as something of a dreamer, someone who may not be ‘all there’ but was largely non-threatening; a little naïve, and a little stupid.

I made myself invisible.

I shackled myself and told myself that the things I saw and heard were not to be noticed in any ‘real’ sense; they were characters in a story I was writing that had become a little more vivid (as story characters often do).

I began to write.

I am no longer shackled, and have embraced my true nature. Being able to see, to sense, to feel is a gift, and like many gifts, one that is not always wanted. But it comes with responsibility and purpose. It can be grown or ignored (at your peril, usually). I chose to grow mine. I have never regretted that decision. Sometimes the gift that is not wanted becomes the one you most prize.

Zooming forward in time to the present, I know that it was my Fetch-mate and not ‘Jesus’ who held out his hand to me. Jesus was just a mask he wore because it was a spirit being that my brain had words for.

A way of engaging.

A doorway, if you like, to which I am a key.

Rebirth: Becoming Whole

I can’t remember when I knew that I was different to the others around me. I just was. Nothing I did helped me to fit in – it just made me stand out more. A freak. Different. Odd.

I’ve tried so hard to be what others expected me to be – the gender people expected me to be. I watched people like Marilyn Monroe, who had such a reputation, and tried to mimic them – or at least the movie versions of them. How they moved; how they spoke; how they thought. The words they used. Their quirks.

But somehow that just made me more of a freak.

I grew up in the midst of the Gender Bending eighties, and felt at home there. But in the conservative, mainstream small-minded place I grew up in, that just made me a target. I remember sitting in class thinking of the words to Prince Charming by Adam and the Ants over and over again – a mantra or spell to ward off the constant spikes being thrown at me.

‘Prince Charming’
‘Ridicule is nothing to be scared of’
‘Don’t you ever stop being dandy, showing me you’re handsome’
‘Don’t you ever lower yourself, forgetting all your standards’
‘Silk or leather or a feather respect yourself and all of those around you’

If it were not for Adam and the Ants I would not have survived Year Nine. It’s surprising what keeps us breathing just one more day when everything seems so bleak.

Every now and then a sale of weird, mostly odd or academic type books, would come to town and set up shop for a bit. I found a book there called “The Gender Trap: The Moving Autobiography of Chris and Cathy, the first Transsexual Parents” by Chris Johnson and Cathy Brown (with Wendy Nelson). It fascinated me! Looking back, I wonder what would have happened if I knew then what I know now. But back then, despite the Gender Bending, all I really knew was binary, and I hadn’t come to the realisation that I wasn’t. Binary I mean. I still have that book – a treasured piece that sparked something in my mind to believe that things could be different. One day.

Of course, I was different in many ways. I never grew into my physical self. I loathe the female things about me. The smell of menstruation, the mess, the draining of lifeforce that came with it. The bumps in my chest that are always in the way and need to be hidden as much as possible – an ugly deformity. The glaring absence of those parts of me that existed only in my mind. My never pairing up or chasing after people. My parents, who visibly and quite strongly showed how much they hated same sex coupling, would tell me that they wouldn’t mind if I brought home a girl. Actually, they wouldn’t have minded if I’d brought home a Martian. Anything remotely resembling human would have done. But that’s not my thing.

And then there’s my being a witch. But that’s a tale for another day.

This tale is about my rebirth. No – it’s about my coming home to myself; my becoming whole again.

It was being in the Pagan community – especially Wildwood and Reclaiming – that I first saw non binary people and people with other sexualities. That I found myself allowed, for the first time, to explore who I was in a safe environment. For a witch knowing yourself is actually quite essential! And it has indeed been quite the journey.

So several years ago now I came out. As non-binary. Then as asexual. And more recently, as Trans.

I remember vividly the intense, overpowering joy that came with speaking my whole name for the first time to a beloved. It felt so right – my soul just shone through me and I felt all lit up, wings proudly stretched. I felt strong. But the naming is just part of the becoming. An important part, and just as importantly to have the naming witnessed. But just a part. Logistics demand that the name be lived; be embraced wholly and whole heartedly. This required more than just asking people to call me my whole name – there were (and still are) forms to fill in, boxes to tick, people to tell and all the rest of it.

But more important than any of that was the honouring of my old self. That part of me that was being laid to rest. I’d lived that other part, however misshapenly, for such a long time. She needed to be properly acknowledged.

And being a Witch, I found myself at a time of year when the veil is thinnest spontaneously undertaking a ritual to lay her to rest.

I opened the cross roads, called on the Watchers, the Guardians, the Maidens, the Sacred Four – and other beloved spirits – to witness. And they came.

I conjured her up and held her one last time, as one holds a beloved, and found myself singing

‘Bone by bone I honour you
Bone by bone I honour you
Bone by bone I honour you
Bone by bone I honour you
I lay you down
For all that you’ve been through
I lay you down
And promise to remember you.’

(Song by Sefora Janel Ray with some help from Dani Phoenix Oatfield)

Tears started to flow as a stream of past lived experiences – good and bad – flowed. She was real and heavy in my arms. And I felt such love for this person as I sang – such joy at having known them – valuing them and everything they’d gone though, thought, felt, done. She smiled up at me as I promised to remember her.

And then I let her go.

Cried till there was no more need to cry.

I stood, whole unto myself, and called out my whole name. And again. And again. Smiling with the euphoric release of acknowledging who I am to myself, and to my beloved spirits.

Standing there, feeling whole, feeling complete, seeing my path clearly in front of me.

To honour the occasion I pulled a Tarot card – the Magician. It felt so apt.

Thanked those who witnessed, closed, and stepped away.

Renewed.