Authors: Clarissa Pincola Estes
Regaining lost instinct and healing injured instinct is truly within one’s reach, for it returns when a woman pays close attention through listening, looking, and sensing the world around herself, and then by acting as she sees others act; efficiently, effectively, and soulfully. The opportunity to observe others who have instincts well intact is central to retrieval. Eventually, the listening, looking, and acting in an integral manner becomes a pattern with a rhythm to it, one you practice until it is relearned and becomes automatic again.
If our own wild natures have been wounded by something or someone, we refuse to lie down and die. We refuse to normalize this wound. We call up our instincts and do what we have to do. The wildish woman is, by nature, intense and talented. But because of being cut away from her instincts, she is also naive, accustomed to violence, adaptive to expatriation and exmatriation. Lovers, drugs, drink, money, fame, and power cannot much help the damage done. But a gradual re-entry to the instinctual life can. For this, a woman needs a mother, a “good enough” wildish mother. And guess who is waiting to be that mother? The Wild Woman wonders what is taking you so long to be with her,
really
be with her, not just sometimes, or when it’s convenient, but consistently.
If you are striving to do something you value, it is so important to surround yourself with people who unequivocally support your work. It is both a trap and a poison to have so-called friends who have the same injuries but no real desire to heal them. These kinds of friends encourage you to act outrageously, outside of your natural cycles, out of sync with your soul-needs.
A feral woman cannot afford to be naive. As she returns to her innate life, she must consider excesses with a skeptical eye and be aware of their costs to soul, psyche, and instinct Like the wolf pups, we memorize the traps, how they are made, and how they are laid. That is the way we remain free.
Even so, lost instincts do not recede without leaving echoes and
trails of feeling, which we can follow to claim them again. Though a woman may be held in the velvet fist of propriety and stricture, whether she is one breath away from destruction through excesses or has just begun to dive into them, she can still hear whispers of the wild God in her blood. Even in these worst circumstances as portrayed in “The Red Shoes,” even the most injured instincts can be healed.
To aright all this, we resurrect the wild nature, over and over again, each time the balance tips too far in one direction or another. We will know when there is reason for concern, for generally balance makes our lives larger and imbalance makes our lives smaller.
One of the most important things we can do is to understand life, all life, as a living body in itself, one that has respiration, new cell turnover, sloughing off, and waste material. It would be silly if we expected our bodies riot to have waste material more than once every five years. It would be inane to think that just because we ate a day ago we shouldn’t be hungry today.
It is just as fatuous to think that once we solve an issue it stays solved, that once we learn, we always remain conscious ever after. No, life is a great body that grows and diminishes in different areas, at different rates. When we are like the body, doing the work of new growth, wading through
la mierda
, the shit, just breathing or resting, we are very alive, we are within the cycles of the Wild Woman. If we could realize that
the work is to keep doing the work,
we would be much more fierce and much more peaceful.
To hold to joy, we may sometimes have to fight for it, we may have to strengthen ourselves and go full-bore, doing battle in whichever ways we deem most shrewd. To prepare for siege, we may have to go without many comforts for the duration. We can go without most things for long periods of time, anything almost, but not our joy, not those handmade red shoes.
The real miracle of individuation and reclamation of Wild Woman is that we all begin the process before we are ready, before we are strong enough, before we know enough; we begin a dialogue with thoughts and feelings that both tickle and thunder within us. We respond before we know how to speak the
language, before we know all the answers, and before we know exactly to whom we are speaking.
But like the wolf mother teaching her pups to hunt and take care, this is the way Wild Woman wells up through us. We begin to speak in her voice, taking on her vision and her values. She teaches us to send out the message of our return to those who are like us.
I know several writers who have this glyph taped above their writing desks. I know one who carries it folded up inside her shoe. It is from a poem by Charles Simic and it is the ultimate instruction to us all: “He who cannot howl, will not find his pack.”
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If you want to re-summon Wild Woman, refuse to be captured.
24
With instincts sharpened for balance—jump anywhere you like, howl at will, take what there is, find out all about it, let your eyes show your feelings, look into everything, see what you can see. Dance in red shoes, but make sure they’re the ones you’ve made by hand. I can promise that you will become one vital woman.
CHAPTER 9
Homing:
Returning to OneSelf
There is human time and there is wild time. When I was a child in the north woods, before I learned there were fo
ur seasons to a year, I
thought there were dozens: the time of night-time thunderstorms, heat lightning time, bonfires-in-the-woods time, blood-on- the-snow time, the times of ice trees, bowing trees, crying trees, shimmering trees, bearded trees, waving-at-the-tops-only trees, and trees-drop-their-babies time. I loved the seasons of diamond snow, steaming snow, squeaking snow, and even dirty snow and stone snow, for these meant the time of flower blossoms on the river was coming.
These seasons were like important and holy visitors and each sent its harbingers: pine cones open, pine cones closed, the smell of leaf rot, the smell of rain coming, crackling hair, lank hair, bushy hair, doors loose, doors tight, doors that won’t shut at all, windowpanes covered with ice-hair, windowpanes covered with wet petals, windowpanes covered with yellow pollen, window- panes pecked with sap gum. And our own skin had its cycles too: parched, sweaty, gritty, sunburned, soft
The psyches and souls of women also have their own cycles and seasons of doing and solitude, running and staying, being involved and being removed, questing and resting, creating and incubating, being of the world and returning to the soul-place. When we are children and young girls, the instinctive nature notices all these phases and cycles. It hovers quite near us and we are aware and active at various intervals as we see fit.
Children
are
the wildish nature, and without being told to, they prepare for the coming of these times, greeting them, living with them, and keeping from those times
recuerdos
, mementos, for remembering: the crimson leaf in the dictionary; the angel-wing necklaces from the seeds of the silver maples; snowballs in the meat locker, the special stone, bone, stick, or pod; the peculiar shell; the ribbon from the bird burial; a diary of smells from that time; the calm heart; the excited blood; and all the pictures in their minds.
Once, we lived by these cycles and seasons year after year, and they lived in us. They calmed us, danced us, shook us, reassured us, made us learn creaturally. They were part of our soul-skins—a pelt that enveloped us and the wild and natural world—at least until we were told that there really were only four seasons to a year, and that women themselves really only had three seasons— girlhood, adulthood, and old womanhood. And that was supposed to be that
But we cannot allow ourselves to sleepwalk wrapped in this flimsy and unobservant fabrication, for it causes women to deviate from their natural and soulful cycles and therefore to suffer from dryness, tiredness, and homesickness. It is far better for us to return to our own unique and soulful cycles regularly, all of them, any of them. The following story can be understood as a commentary on the most important of women’s cycles, the return to home, the wild home, the soul-home.
Tales of creatures with mysterious human kinship are told across the world, for such represent an archetype, a universal knowing about an issue of soul. Sometimes fairy tales and folktales erupt from a sense of place, from soulful places in particular. This story is told in the cold countries to the north, in any country where there is an icy sea or ocean. Versions of this story are told among the Celts, the Scots, the tribes of northwest America, Siberian and Icelandic peoples. The story is commonly called “The Seal Maiden” or “Selkie-o,
Pamrauk,
little Seal”; “
Eyalirtaq
, Flesh of Seal.” This special literary version that I wrote for my analysands, and to use in performance, I call “Sealskin, Soul- skin.” The story tells about where we truly come from, what we
are made of, and how we must all, on a regular basis, use our instincts and find our way back home.
1
=====
Sealskin, Soulskin
During a time
that once was, is now gone forever, and will come back again soon, there is day after day of white sky, white snow ... and all the tiny specks in the distance are people or dogs or bear.
Here, nothing thrives for the asking. The winds blow hard so the people have come to wear their parkas and
mamleks,
boots, sideways on purpose now. Here, words freeze in the open air, and whole sentences must be broken from the speaker’s lips and thawed at the fire so people can see what has been said. Here, the people live in the white and abundant hair of old Annuluk, the old grandmother, the old sorceress who is Earth herself. And it was in this land that there lived a man ... a man so lonely that over the years, tears had carved great chasms into his cheeks.
He tried to smile and be happy. He hunted. He trapped and he slept well. But he wished for human company. Sometimes out in the shallows in his kayak when a seal came near he remembered the old stories about how seals were once human, and the only reminder of that time was their eyes, which were capable of portraying those looks, those wise and wild and loving looks. And sometimes then he felt such a pang of loneliness that tears coursed down the well-used
cracks in his face.
One nig
ht he hunted past dark but found nothing. As the moon rose in the sky and the ice floes glistened, he came to a great spotted rock in the sea, and it appeared to his keen eye that upon that old rock there was movement of the most graceful kind.
He paddled slow and deep to be closer, and there atop the mighty rock danced a small group of women, naked as the first day they lay upon their mothers’ bellies. Well, he was a lonely man, with no human friends but in memory—and he stayed and watched. The women were like beings made of moon milk, and their skin shimmered with little silver dots like those on the
salmon in springtime, and the women’s feet and hands were long and graceful.
So beautiful were they that the man sat stunned in his boat, the water lapping, taking him closer and closer to the rock. He could hear the magnificent women laughing ... at least they seemed to laugh, or was it the water laughing at the edge of the rock? The man was confused, for he was so dazzled. But somehow the loneliness that had weighed on his chest like wet hide was lifted away, and almost without thinking, as though he was meant, he jumped up onto the rock and stole one of the sealskins laying there. He hid behind an outcropping and he pushed the sealskin into his
qutnguq,
parka.
Soon, one of the women called in a voice that was the most beautiful he’d
éver
heard... like the whales calling at dawn... or no, maybe it was more like the newborn wolves tumbling down in the spring... or but, well no, it was something better than that, but it did not matter because ... what were the women doing now?
Why, they were putting on their sealskins, and one by one the seal women were slipping into the sea, yelping and crying happily. Except for one. The tallest of them searched high and searched low for her sealskin, but it was nowhere to be found. The man felt emboldened—by what, he did not know. He stepped from the rock, appealing to her, “Woman...
be... my...
wife. I
am... a lonely...
man.”
“Oh,
I cannot be wife,” she said, “for I am of the other, the ones who live
temeqvanek,
beneath.”
“Be ... my ... wife,” insisted the man. “In seven summers, I will return your sealskin to you, and you may stay or you may go as you wish.”
The young seal woman looked long into his face with eyes that but for her
trae
origins seemed human. Reluctantly she said, “I will go with you. After seven summers, it shall be decided.”
So in time they had a child, whom they named Ooruk. And the child was lithe and fat. In winter the mother told Ooruk tales of the creatures that lived beneath the sea while the father whittled a bear or a wolf in whitestone with his long knife. When his mother carried the child Ooruk to bed, she pointed out through the smoke hole to the clouds and all their shapes. Except instead of
recounting the shapes of raven and bear and wolf, she recounted the stories of walrus, whale, seal, and salmon .. for those were the creatures she knew.
But as time went on, her flesh began to dry out. First it flaked, then it cracked. The skin of her eyelids began to peel. The hairs of her head began to drop to thie ground. She became
naluaq,
palest white. Her plumpness began to wither. She tried to conceal her limp. Each day her eyes, without her willing it so, became more dull. She began to put out her hand in order to find her way, for her sight was darkening.
And so it went until one night when the child Ooruk was awakened by shouting and sat upright in his sleeping skins. He heard a roar like a bear that was his father berating his mother. He heard a crying like silver rung on stone that was his mother.
“You hid my sealskin seven long years ago, and now the eighth winter comes. I want what I am made of returned to me,” cried the seal woman.
“And you, woman, would leave me if I gave it to you,” boomed the husband.
“I do not know what I would do. I only know I must have what I belong to.”
“And you would leave me wifeless, and the boy motherless. You are bad.”
And with that her husband tore the hide flap of the door aside and disappeared into the night.
The boy loved his mother much. He feared losing her and so cried himself to sleep ... only to be awakened by the wind. A strange
wind...
it seemed to call to him, “Oooruk, Oooruuuuk.”
And out of bed he climbed, so hastily that he put his parka on upside down and pulled his mukluks only halfway up. Hearing his name called over and over, he dashed out into the starry, starry night.
“Ooooooomuuuk.”
The child ran out to the cliff overlooking the water, and there, far out in the windy sea, was a huge shaggy silver
seal...
its head was enormous, its whiskers drooped to its chest, its eyes were deep yellow.
“Ooooooomuuuk.”
The boy scrambled down the cliff and stumbled at the bottom over a stone—no, a bundle—that had rolled out of a cleft in the rock. The boy's hair lashed at his face like a thousand reins of ice.
“Oooooooruuuuk.”
The boy scratched open the bundle and shook it out—it was his mother's sealskin. Oh, and he could smell her all through it. And as he hugged the sealskin to his face and inhaled her scent, her soul slammed through him like a sudden summer wind.
“Ohhh,” he cried with pain and joy, and lifted the skin again to his face and again her soul passed through his. “Ohhh,” he cried again, for he was being filled with the unending love of his mother.
And the old silver seal way out ... sank slowly beneath the water.
The boy climbed the cliff and ran toward home with the sealskin flying behind him, and into the house he fell. His mother swept him and the skin up and closed her eyes in gratitude for the safety of both.
She pulled on her sealskin. “Oh, mother, no!” cried the child.
She scooped up the child, tucked him under her arm, and half ran and half stumbled toward the roaring sea.
“Oh, mother! No! Don’t leave me!” Ooruk cried.
And at once you could tell she wanted to stay with her child, she
wanted
to, but something called her, something older than she, older than he, older than time.
“Oh, mother, no, no, no,” cried the child. She turned to him with a look of dreadful love in her eyes. She took the boy ’s face in her hands, and breathed her sweet breath into his lungs, once, twice, three times. Then, with him under her arm like a precious bundle, she dove into the sea, down, and down, and down, and still deeper down, and the seal woman and her child breathed easily underwater.
And they swam deep and strong till they entered the underwater cove of seals where all manner of creatures were dining and singing, dancing and speaking, and the great silver seal that had called to Ooruk from the night sea embraced the child and called him grandson.
“How fare you up there, daughter?” asked the great silver seal.
The seal woman looked away and said, “I hurt a human ... a man who gave his all to have me. But I cannot return to him, for I shall be a prisoner if I do.”
“And the boy?’ asked the old seal. “My grandchild?’ He said it so proudly his voice shook.
“He must go back, father. He cannot stay. His time is not yet to be here with us.” And she wept. And together they wept.
And so some days and nights passed, seven to be exact, during which time the luster came back to the seal woman’s hair and eyes. She turned a beautiful dark color, her sight was restored, her body regained its plumpness, and she swam uncrippled. Yet it came time to return the boy to land. On that night, the old grandfather seal and the boy’s beautiful mother swam with the child between them. Back they went, back up and up and up to the topside world. There they gently placed Ooruk on the stony shore in the moonlight
His mother assured him, “1 am always with you. Only touch what I have touched, my firesticks, my
ulu,
knife, my stone carvings of otters and seal, and I will
breadle
into your lungs a wind for the singing of your songs.”
The old silver seal and his daughter kissed the child many times; At last they tore themselves away and swam out to sea, and with one last look at the boy, they disappeared beneath the waters. And Ooruk, because it was not his time, stayed.
As time went on, he grew to be a mighty drummer and singer and a maker of stories, and it was said this all came to be because as a child he had survived being carried out to sea by the great seal spirits. Now, in the gray mists of morning, sometimes he can still be seen, with his kayak tethered, kneeling upon a certain rock in the sea, seeming to speak to a certain female seal who often comes near the shore. Though many have tried to hunt her, time after time they have failed. She is known as
Tanqigcaq
, the bright one, the holy one, and it is said that though she be a seal, her eyes are capable of portraying those human looks, those wise and wild and loving looks.
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Homing: Returning to OneSelf
Loss of Sense of Soul as Initiation
The seal is one of the most beautiful of all symbols for the wild soul. Like the instinctual nature of women, seals are peculiar creatures who have evolved and adapted over eons. Like the seal woman, actual seals only come onto the land in order to breed and nurse. The mother seal is intensely devoted to her pup for about two months, loving, guarding, and feeding it solely from her own body stores. During this time, the thirty-pound pup quadruples in weight. Then the mother swims out to sea and the now viable and grown pup begins an independent life.