Where do we begin to flourish, when recovering from a life quake?
What do I know to be real?
I feel myself in my body. There are things around me that I can touch. They feel real, solid.
I place my feet on the floor.
I have a foundation. A context to place myself in the world.
Beneath the foundation is the ground, the earth. Even if it shakes sometimes, everything is pulled down toward it by gravity.
I can fall to the ground and it will support me. I can stomp, or pound or wail.
I can lose all control of my bodily functions, and the earth will absorb it all, and make use of it.
It is the foundation of all life. It doesn’t do it alone, but it provides the base.
The healthiest soil is a mix of moisture, manure, minerals, and microbes.
Bathed bowel bombs, bones and bacteria.
Precipitation, poop, petrified people and pathogens
Soaked shit, skeletons and slime?
The ground, the basis of my reality, the foundation.
Even in a dry desert, where the land has been denied water or nutrients, enough tears and piss and shit will nourish the dead earth and bring life again. It’s what we flush.
All the things that we don't want to pay attention to – all that we hold back to release in designated areas, all that is uncomfortable…when life quakes, when the earth quakes, it shakes all that up. It's a crack, an opening into the dark. It's looking deeper at what has been buried. It's things coming up to be seen in the light.
And that's where we start. At ground level.
F-words: Flourish, Feel, Feet, Foundation, Feet, Fall, Functions, Flush.
