For anyone still reading this occasional blog, here is a sketch inspired by a beautiful metaphor I have recently read in The Flowering Wand, by Sophie Strand.
The sight of a coppiced tree has always twinkle in my poet’s mind, reminding me that we are never limited to a binary, never stuck to one ”tree” or one course of action. Sometimes we need to cut down the tree of a monomythic idea in order to get to the more generative root belowground that will spring into a polyphony of trunks aboveground. I’m not saying we need to throw out the hero’s journey. But we do need a biodiversity of stories. We need multiple sprouts from one trunk. We need stories that don’t center around human beings. And we need stories that do center around human beings. This is an invitation to cut back our idea of a linear progress and battle. To soften into the yellow sap of our stem for a moment. And then to be talking and singing and sprouting into as many stories as there are spores on the wind, bacteria in our gut, unsung loves in the forgotten corner of our feral hearts.
Hope you all get to cut down some monomythic ideas this Fall