between stories

apokalyptein and the revelation of the new seeds

some life experiences change you forever. i didn't know that until after it happened. i went from small town girl to college kid during a russian revolution. 1992-1993. it's not a small thing to witness and experience first hand, the collapse of one system, and the birth of the new, in a foreign language. 

i don't think i quite had a voice, if you know what i mean, before russia. but after russia, my voice got swallowed. i saw more than i really understood, experienced the energetics of a story so much larger than me, a true life political wolf.  i was little red riding hood, seeking a cross cultural understanding to what my professor invited me to explore first hand: russian soul. 

baba yaga was inside that wolf belly. her hut, her bones, her pestle and mortar. she churned me into bones, not butter. a part of me died. that part would not be reborn for at least 14 years. some stories want you to simmer inside of them long enough to be seasoned.

when i came back from Moscow, age 20, there was no voice. depression, yes.  and a strange in between, not quite here, not quite there liminal before i knew the word liminal existed. 

nothing made sense, because the world i'd known, even though i had returned to it, it was completely dead to me.

the world i experienced in Moscow, the survive through massive political/cultural/economic transformation revolution, was the new world, only it was also a language i didn't quite have words for. 

my professor saw that i was kind of a shell to what i'd been, but also, i was more than a shell. everything was goopy and coming undone inside of me.  i think it was the first coming undone but i didn't now that was what it was called.  back then (it was 1993) it was called depression and anxiety.  

nonetheless, that amazing mentor of a man suggested i read dr. zhivago. he said, while things now don't make sense, they will after you read it. i promise, he said.  all of it will make sense. 

in a nutshell, dr. zhivago is a novel (epic, brilliant) about the end of a world. it starts with death.  zhivago, the name, means, 'living one' and there are so many symbols throughout which are archaic, and philosophically brilliant and beautiful and heart wrenching and deeply thought provoking.  essentially, when the world is thrown into revolution, words take on greater meaning.  depth is born.  

the Slavic soul, at its deepest essence, in the sense that brought me to russia, is a soul of sisterhood, brotherhood.  it is a soul of depth and a soul of meaning, made from out of suffering, but also, made from out of grit and depth.  it is a soul of resurrection. not in the christian sense, but in the gnostic sense, in the sense of flowers being born out of cold bare russian winter earth.

for some crazy reason, i dove head first, feet first, soul first, naked and clamouring for meaning into that novel, and discovered, that it had a lot to do about the apocalypse, and revelations, in the biblical, but not in the biblical sense.  in the symbolic sense.  so i dove into the book of revelations and studied it deeply, to understand the symbolic significance that pasternak was pointing to in his profoundly moving story. 

what dies and what will be reborn?  inside the thick muddle of the middle of it, who knows?  at some point, we're all shaking and quaking in the middle of it together, alone, but together.  

apocalypse might be a word that triggers all sorts of hell and brimstone.  but on a deeper sense, it goes beneath and under to the heart of revelation.  from Greek