6. alive

What about those moments when you sit down to write, and nothing comes? 

What about those times when the crippling perception of the imagined external gaze haunts you, and it feels impossible to get beyond the wondering of what they want as the impetus for your creative energy?

What about when you are certain that it will be shit, so you just sit staring blankly at the blank page, wondering what the blankety-blank you actually have to say? 

What about if in those moments, you sat quietly until you heard the wise little voice within ask you, ever-so-gently,

Well, darling, what’s alive for you?

I sit (impatiently) waiting for the question to seep into my body. Scanning, I send the question from my head down into my body. It travels down, moving past my inner eye, which is scanning too, albeit ineffectively, its gaze darting back and forth rapidly looking for something to jump into the inner plane of vision. 

I let it travel past my lips, carrying breath, asking aloud, “what’s alive for you?” 

Swallowing it down, I sense the question in my throat, a swirling energy of percolation and possibility. Tingling, it trails down into my heart space, a warm blossom of electricity that moves from my center towards the periphery, sending little shivers to my fingers as they rest on the keyboard. 

What’s alive for you?

I ask the pit of my stomach and strength of my core to inform me of the fury or passion that lives at my navel. It defers, directing my focus lower, to the point between my hipbones, the heavy-with-blood center of softness and womb-wise guidance. Today, the edge of death is alive there, only interested in downward flow, release, and the void. 

“What’s alive for you,” I ask my root, as though my vulva has the flash of inspiration I’m seeking (maybe she does?!) She’s quiet, so I tell her to pass it on to my things, calves, shins, and feet, and I feel the resonance of the inquiry travel down to my toes, and stretch into the Earth. 

THERE it is. There’s the magic. There’s the full-body chills, lighting my body up, from soles to crown, an unspoken confirmation that regardless of whether I can put it into words, something is decidedly alive here - way down here, in the place where my human body meets the greater body of the mother. 

What’s alive is the question itself, because in sitting with it, even impatiently, the generative creative impulse awakens and returns. In chaotic uncertainty, in intermittent clarity, in sensing intelligence, it flashes in, swirling up the legs like a rainbow serpent, winding its way through the body and turning on the capacity for consciousness.

The aliveness is all the things: 

Tension in my feet, legs, and thighs that is yelling at me to run far away from this project, this promise, this vulnerability I am sending into the ethers. Muscles coiled and ready to spring, evade, avoid, change course. Ready for action when you are, they say.

Fullness in my genitals, the blooming of a bleeding womb, the death-portal wisdom that tells me of course you don’t feel like creating today, it’s a death day, let yourself go into the void of non-doing.

Coldness in my usually hot solar plexus, disinterested in desire at the moment, and the bored ennui of my belly, more interested in a hot cup of cacao or coffee, and maybe a turkey sandwich. Feed me and let me rest.

Devotion in my heart, which radiates into my hands, flowing on a current of trust that tappity-taps on the keyboard, believing that in all my moods and modes and forms, I am still worthy of creative commitment and connection.

Quietness in my throat, a quiet that carries a tenderness within it, not fear, but awareness of the preciousness of speech, knowing that it’s not always necessary, but optional within my sovereignty and agency. Your voice, your choice, it says.

Flowing through my brow and crown, divine inspiration that spoke this experiment onto my heart whispering of the fruits unknown of taking this journey into the realm of creative continuity. You don’t have to know what’s coming. Just keep going.

I read back over my own words, looking for oracular wisdom. My eyes catch just the italics, just what asked to be emphasized. She speaks to me from the page:

Well, darling, what’s alive for you?

What’s alive for you?

There it is. 

Consciousness. 

Ready for action when you are.

Of course you don’t feel like creating today.

It’s a death day. 

Let yourself go into the void of non-doing.

Feed me and let me rest. 

I am still worthy 

of creative commitment and connection.

Your voice, your choice.

You don’t have to know what’s coming.

Just keep going.

For today, at the entrance of winter, with my animal body bleeding and asking for rest, since I have no fucking clue what to write, I will just listen to Her instead, and trust that something is alive in me.