by Emily Walker
She wasn't crazy. She just saw things in a different way. Her universe
had an order that she made up as she went
along, and rules that only she understood. She traded in her sense and
logic for a naive view of a world bathed in
beauty. She traded in her safety for a new adventure every day. She
traded in old acquaintances for new friends who
taught her of colors and womanhood and mental peace. She lived in
moments defined by music, not time, and spoke in
fantastic lyrics that nobody wanted to hear.
They didn't like her new life. They watched her eyes truly light up for the first time and they were scared. They watched every part of her body become a living, breathing being and they tried to put her back together. She tried to follow their rules while she was in their world, but soon she escaped to her own, and danced at night with the water, sang with the moonlight, listened to the grass grow, and felt the heartbeat of the earth that was so much like her own. She had a place she owned with her appreciation of it, and it became her world, the place where she was safe and whole and even the birds fell quiet in her presence. One night she found a man there, just standing and breathing in this strange air. She took his hand and led him up the hill to where they were the tallest living creatures on earth, and they danced, and tried to see through the other's eyes. He tried to see magic and she tried to see order, but instead they only saw each other. And for a moment, she thought this meant she wasn't alone. But this is not the story of a moon maiden finding her prince. This is the story of a woman finding her own heart and inside it, a home. This is the story of a heart full of love and truth and wonder that saved a woman and made her whole. She tired of dancing to a contrived rhythm, of changing her words so that he would understand. She left him on the hill and hoped he could be silent long enough to hear its heartbeat. She walked until she came upon a field where the wind howled, shaking the trees and begging to be heard. She sat in the wild, roaring grass and whispered, "Tell me." The wind sang, then, of the world it had blown through, of history and lessons learned, growing loud and insistent at the horrifying parts, sweet and gentle as it came to the happy ending. She felt all the places each breeze had touched, like an animal who can smell the stories. And after days of telling, the wind finished, and the woman told her own, sometimes singing, sometimes shaking, but always strongly and with a wisdom she never knew she had. Slowly, people appeared in the field, disenchanted or banished from the world she had also left. They yearned to find her peace and ached to see the beauty she described. They held each other, bonded together by their common frustrations, and they looked to her to show them a way out.
But this is not the story of a misfit and her colony of followers. This
is the story of a woman finding her voice, a voice
as loud and strong alone as when others were listening. They found the
truth they sought in the power of her voice,
and in it she found her soul. And her voice summoned back the wind,
which in turn brought the rain, and the earth
drank from her soul.
Emily Walker's "June" appeared in the September, 1997 issue of Grrowl! |