The Portal and the Snickersnee

I wake from a dream, just an image. A tunnel, a portal. Just barely wide enough for a body to move through, surrounded by sharp, but beautiful curving blades, like petals on a dangerous flower, a treacherous passage.

I look closely at the precise, cutting edges, and I hear, in my mind's ear, the word “snickersnee.”

I learned that word the summer before ninth grade, as my mother's second marriage fell apart, as my body matured, just as dreams of adulthood began to form. In a terribly racist, yellow-face community theater production of The Mikado - wearing a kimono and a black wig like all the other white girls in the chorus, snapping my fan percussively - as some baritone sang: "I drew my snickersnee, My sni-ick-er-sneeee!"

I was passing through a dangerous portal then too; I just didn't know it.

As I hover before this snickersnee-ed portal I suddenly know a thing or two:

If I am to pass through, I must strip down to my most essential self. My beating heart, my breath. Anything else, my ambitions, any desire for status, for security,  anything extra must be shed, or it will be stripped away. I am to pass through this as vulnerably as a newborn.

I’m not sure where this will lead or where I am headed but there is a strong sense that this bloom of blades is the shape of whatever is next.

I wonder what more I can give up, what else is left to surrender. I think of the parts of my identity I once believed were essential, elemental and how, once they were amputated and disposed of, I learned that they were not: my profession, my city, my home, my practice, my lopsided loyalties, my philosophies of living, my fees, my office, my parenthood, my title, my accomplishments, my reach, my platform, my goals,  my future, my health,  my desires, my ambitions, my strivings, my expectations, my illusions of safety, stability, and continuity. I lost or released them all through the years of existential uncertainty.

And as I sit, having let go of so much, in a world that feels like it is tearing apart at the seams, I consider what may be left for me to release.

My first strategy is to aim for the sweet spot – perhaps it is not impossible to thread this needle in the dark.  Maybe, in the moments before the cutting I can still shed anything extraneous and curl myself in a naked ball to avoid the slice.  

But then I consider all the portals I have passed through before. How I thought I was as prepared as possible, and how I was not prepared at all. And how recently, even, I've had to release aspects of my identity that I was sure were permanent and indelible. And how violently they were torn away. I remember too, that parts of my being that I wasn't aware of at all, that were utterly invisible  to me, would regularly snag on the barricade between one phase of life and another, and I would have to allow them to be cut painfully away before I could pass through.

“They that are in nothing wrong and know they are in nothing right."

– The Mirror of Simple Souls

I doubt, as I seem to be pulled ever closer to this strange passage, that I will be able to do it perfectly. I am not likely to pass through unscathed, I never have before. Going around, under, or retreating aren't even options in this scenario. So, I must also brace myself  for the cut,  the snag, and hope for only minor injuries, and to willingly let go of any appendage that catches or bleeds. I brace myself for the sorrow, for the pain, for the severance.

There are likely remnants, protrusions that I cannot perceive that I would be better off, more of my essential self, without:

The overactive desire to please others.

The introversion that keeps me alienated from locality and community.

My primal pleasure in a flight of selfish yet gorgeous ideas that can too easily feel more compelling than the human who is sitting in front of me.

Whatever shadows emerge while parenting,  teaching, mentoring, facilitating that only recipients can see, like a run in my stockings, a stain on my pants, toilet paper stuck on my shoe.

My shame at my post-chemo memory impairments and the reluctance I feel to ask others if I am repeating myself, when I see signs on their faces that I probably am.

The things I cannot face about myself that others necessarily carry on my behalf because they are unknown or intolerable to me.

My discomfort with my glaring human frailties.

The dissatisfaction, and longings that seems to haunt me no matter where I am, or what or who I have drawn near to me.

My fear of assuming leadership roles, and my fearful, impatient willingness to grab the reigns and steer when it looks like no one is driving even for a split second.

My starvation to talk and talk and talk and gather with others who are interested in shared ideas now that I am seen as occasionally, intermittently “wise” - after so many years of feeling dismissed and cockamamie.

The fantasy that I am simultaneously smarter and more foolish than most people.

The deep desire for mutuality that is too often disrupted by the notion that I should be providing more than I receive.

My preference for books over people.

The wish to find rest and peace in a world where so many are working harder than I am,  facing far more strife and suffering.

My sneaky fear that I am not a good enough parent, mentor, group leader that likely subtly pressures those I try to support to reassure me more than they should have to.

My hopelessness and certainty that most people don't care about the things that are important to me, and that what I have to say is simultaneously utterly important and utterly ridiculous.

My underlying desire for "credit"  – whatever that is – for ideas I have merely passed on that I truthfully received from others.

The equally balanced fears of success and admiration against the fear of failure and devaluation.

All the ways I can be seduced into reaching for more instead of appreciating what just is.

An infinite list of unnamable obstacles and distractions that lure me from what is most essential, from serving my community more effectively, from living up to the work I am here to undertake.

Take from me what I want,

Take from me what I do,

 Take from me what I need,  Take from me, everything.

Take from me, anything that takes me from you.  

~ Mirabai Ceiba

All these things, and more may be ripe for pruning by the flowering array of snickersnees (yes, I checked the plural of snickersnee is snickersnees), and maybe I will even be glad to see them go, if the cut isn’t too painful.

 How would I feel, who would I be if they were all sliced away?

I don't know that this challenging passage this portal that demands we dial down to our most elemental priorities is mine alone. Sometimes it feels to me that nature itself is requirung this of us: all the extras, all the unnecessary luxuries and conveniences, all the certainties, all the binary reactivities, all the unessential essentials- the screens, the paper towels, the time-savers, the hustle, the commutes, the indulgences, and habits we cling to that damage the earth and each other. Can we release them willingly? Can we aim for the sweet spot? Can we release it all for the sake of justice and a healing world? Or will these unessential essentials need to  be sliced away before we can pass through to a new life?

I only hope the blades are sharp, and the cuts clean and true.