A Fire in My Head

The Song of Wandering Aengus    
 W.B. Yeats

I WENT out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,	5
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,	10
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran	15
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;	20
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun

Fire

from an email to a friend:

i am noticing with increasing sadness that my own fire is not nourished by the relationships i have here- no "fire friends" as it were- and missing those connections with friends from the states that were so often a specific and necessary nourishment to that part of me. and the landscape here is rather wet, and cold and in winter very dark, all of which does have a dampening effect on my spark. I have also realized that failing other opportunities,  i have been looking for fire-iness with [ ], which does not meet my needs, leaving me resentful and disappointed. i start things, bring spirit and soul and vision, have flare ups of creative fire and inspiration, am as ever passionate and 100percent about everything i am doing, and then unable to sustain it without the fuel i need, i fall back into a rather resigned sort of state where i think, ach, why bother...and then i am seized with such huge fear that my life will not be of use, that i will not realize my vision, that my fire will die. at which point,  i rally my reserves and throw myself into something else, which works short term, until i realize i am alone again and the fires cannot continue to burn without fuel. 

In my case, my fuel cannot only be self sustained or self created. i used to think that was a failure on my part, that if i could not be totally self sufficient in my creativity, passion and fire-iness, then i wasn't mature enough or productive enough or professional enough or too lazy or whatever. and i would bash myself about it, of course, and commit to being more disciplined and more accomplished and able to do more and finish more. and i am coming to see several things, first that my fire needs people, needs community in order to burn. that my fire is in the between spaces of relationship, co-creation and inspiration. cooking, yes, but for someone. learning herbs, yes, but out in the world with the plants rather than from books. my soul needs people, needs relationship, needs to fall in love over and over again every day with one small weed, or a friend, or a stranger, or my dog, or my wife, or whatever it is in that moment that brings me to life. 

and second my fire needs time without structure and if i am trying to be too structured, it will do everything to break out of it. This instinct for wildness and "ferality"- is that a word? feralness? anyway, you know what i mean is so strong. my soul needs to be in contact with the wild and if i cannot get to it in the outside world- because there isn't any or because i am physically unable to get there- which amounts to the same thing- then my fire takes over in her wild way and burns, sometimes destructively, because there is in me such a passionate longing and need in that moment to GET OUT of society, of my own thoughts, of physical and cultural structures, of whatever it is in that moment and i feel if i don't i will die. I wonder truly how i survived 8 years at a zen center!

It helps to have a dog with whom i get to go every day out for 1 or 2 hours to meadows and a bit of forest and a little brook. outside in every weather. and the water is always wild, the weeds, which i impulsively pick for food and medicine, are wild, the clouds and air are wild and the soil is wild. wild has become for me in the details of living here. even in the forests, there is no real wildness because, as i have written before, europe has no wilderness anymore. it is too small, and too lived in, people have used up and cut down and replanted the forests several times. the forest that now surrounds us is only several hundred years old, basically since the roman invasion and building of forts stopped. and it is still being logged and replanted, like a great farm. i miss bear and coyote and wolf. i miss being out on the land and not hearing cars and planes. i miss walking on small meandering paths through forests and not logging roads with restaurants at all points of overlook. the fire of the land has been reduced to a smolder. Freya, the old germanic name for the goddess here, has been completely forgotten in favor of Rome's "civilization" followed by her "christianization" of the peoples here. There were, once 700 years ago, native peoples here on this land. I miss them and i want them here, i want my own indigenousness awake and alive with others.

i feel like moving here has taught me and continues to teach me so much about myself, about how i am and accepting that and stopping on ever subtler levels trying to change myself. stop trying to put out my fire or get me to be more focused or accomplished or whatever and see what i am doing and am accomplishing and am bringing into the world. the bodywork is starting, i have roughly one session per week, and that feels really good and i am getting good feedback. and tai chi is good. and my spiritual practice flows with the land and the brook and the green plants and the ancestors and the wind and the holiness of this life energy coursing through it all.