The canvas is leaden, grey. A snow-white swan lies crushed under a glacial boulder. Her neck, majestic, juts from beneath the angry red rock; one knowing black eye blinks in astonishment and resignation. The swan’s soul has taken flight, embodied in a reluctant Nightengale – with every mournful note, roses stream from a plated golden beak.
This morning, I feel unspeakably tired. Unspeakably. Yes, an adjective. Yes, I will pay a quarter for that descriptor. My fatigue needs it. Needs it desperately, in fact.
If I could do anything today, I would read a well-written thriller novel, like the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The dark intrigue of that book matches my mood. I’d relish the scene where the heroine tattoos her rapist – the one who was supposed to be her guardian. I’d sit in a bathtub all day, sip a bottomless Reisling in one of our wedding day wine glasses and pretend that I don’t hear doorbells.
“Each single angel is terrible,” Rilke writes in his First Elegy. Angels are bearers of light, but more than I like to acknowledge they come costumed in darkness. Someday I may welcome harbingers of change, yet, for today, they bring cold dread, a sword in the gut, a glacial boulder of wrenching rejection, markers of irreconcilable loss, the disruption of injury. Death stars yielding grave secrets.
It’s been a tough year. I tended a broken husband. I was demeaned by some members of a so-called spiritual community, fair-weather friends. I suffered a repaired shoulder that ached and ached and kept me tossing and turning at night. I published a book. I learned that promoting a book is pushing a boulder up hill. I grew older. I grew tired. I grew as my steps faltered under the weight of it all.
I want to pull up out of this paralyzed mood. There are clients to see, taxes to file, books to edit. Tonight, I have an author’s group to attend. I will paste on a smile and network with sophisticated professional writers who dream of a bestseller and die a little bit each day as their precious words, smart covers, smart pages, smart testimonials, fall on a trash heap of books, 4 million published this year alone. I will fall into bed tonight, crushed.
NO! Not this Nightengale. I will sing for the right to have a day when it all seems too heavy. I will sing for the right to suffer rejection and resentment. I will sing the injustice of it all. I will sing. I will sing. I will sing. Until my song changes, as it does, when an angel of light lifts the boulder.
I am a supernova, a powerful and luminous exploding star. There is no being, no injustice, no mood, no rejection, no judgment, no muzzle strong enough to silence this Nightengale’s voice.
It’s time to put on my big girl pants and get moving. I am a rebel warrior. There is nothing and no one who will take me down for long. My body worker acknowledged that I have known trauma, but it has healed and healed well.
************
Copyright 2024, Linda Sandel Pettit, Ed.D.
Photo by Slavisa Tomanovic, courtesy of istockphoto.com
Nightengale was written as a Method Writing exercise called Birthday Cake that layers elements of surrealism [artistic expression of the unconscious], lost world [a deep poetic voice], read and sung [an inspirational, repetitive style] and writing like you talk, what I think of as plain speech. To explore Method Writing classes see www.julesswales.com. Jules is a remarkable teacher!
Dr. Linda Sandel Pettit is a visionary guide and communications creative who assists people to have transformative insights for effective living, creating and leading. She offers individual consulting, intimate group programs and has a special fondness for supporting writers of creative nonfiction. She hosts the Intuitive Way of Love Podcast, available on your favorite podcast platform and at https://drlindapettit.com/podcast/. Find her blog on her website https://drlindapettit.com/blog/. Her award winning, best-selling inspirational self-help memoir, Leaning into Curves: Trusting the Wild Intuitive Way of Love premiered in April, 2024. Her next book, MAGIC: Releasing the Power of Spiritual Consciousness is planned for 2025.
Check out another blog post: https://drlindapettit.com/elegy-8/
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