I was born into the morning with aggression. I found my existence agitating and irritating like poison ivy massaged into the teeth marks of pent-up masculinity.
Around me, the world carried on with a happy vengeance, determined to grin and jeer in spite of my state.
Do the trees and clouds mock me? Or do they simply recognize the cheerful irrelevance of stormy emotional trauma swirling within a man who is himself inconsequential in the face of the world?
When all seems against me, I am reminded of the woods and their trees who have dutifully carried out their labor of alchemy, transforming my toxic off-gas into viable oxygen.
I am reminded of Coelho’s version of love, wherein the desert nourishes the game so that the hawk may feast, only to one day die and in turn, nourish the desert.
I am reminded of how wolves change rivers and restore balance by their benevolent predation and how the blood they spill leaves fertile space for the wildflowers
Beauty flourishes when duty abides. I am humbled.
May I fulfill my obligation as wild curator of immaculate grace, even when my paw prints leave no record against the resilient carpet of fortuitous life.
May I surrender my baton as conductor and assume my violin in the last row of the second section. For this symphony of thunder and torrent — of sandstone and snow — stretches far beyond my view, and certainly beyond my expertise.
Perhaps I may serve her best in humble contribution as but one voice amongst billions.
And just like that, I am free — soaring above the prison of smallness and self-importance.
On raven’s wings I feast on the irreverent playfulness of life lived in service of love. I offer my soul to the wilderness and feel my chest breathe freely for the first time in ages. The crows remind me that there is no greater freedom than that known by those who consider Death amongst their most intimate friends.
So I die to my aggression and angst. I give unto myself the gifts of perspective and participation in something larger than my meager experience and struggle.
Amidst the putrefaction of that former self who fought so valiantly for control, I catch the sweet scent of surrender. Deep in the decay of my now-deceased self-loathing lies a wadded-up paper label reminding me of my true origin.
Product of Wild Divinity. Hand-Wash only.
How could something made so well become so maleficent? How could this ship hewn by holy hands be reduced to little more than cheap tinder for the ravaging fires of a judgement which settles for nothing less than impossible perfection?
Nothing worth loving is ever perfect, for only in our obsessive fever dreams does perfection itself exist. So let us not associate so closely with such empty promises as those born of egoic desires, no matter how passionate, and instead let us be delivered unto the immaculate divinity of our own imperfect wilderness.
Each of us is born with an exotic love coursing through our veins, pumped to every extremity by a feral heart. We were meant to be uncontrollable. But our surrender to society’s shackle is not our greatest sin.
Our greatest sin is that we measure our success and satisfaction by the ways in which this inborn wildness serves our lives, rather than how well this life serves our wildness.
In service of our existence — especially today — our bristle-haired, long-toothed hearts are largely bothersome, growing ever more aggressive and dangerous until we either answer them, or else quiet them for good, losing the foundations of our vitality in the process.
But if we run wild and drink under the moonlight from the headwaters of our primal rivers, paying requisite homage to the beasts which prowl within us, we just might find them sleeping contentedly by the fire of our souls.
Within me, etched on granite bones and knit amongst chaparral flesh are the whispers of promise which bind me to the wilderness within.
With the wolves which leave their prints upon the beaches of my heart, I howl, and in my cry, I dedicate my being. I will not forsake thee.
