What's in your pockets? - Giving as receiving and relationships.
After a walk in the woods, I met a friend.
“What’s in your pockets?” He asked. I loved the question. I was at once, asked to relive my walk and relate it to him through those things that I had been drawn to on the way. What had been positioned just right? What had glinted to my eye at the right time, to draw my attention and ask me to pick it up? And then, over all of those encounters, what had I slipped into my pocket to bring home?
These encounters with neither objects, nor subjects, but actants or interveners in experience have been labelled ‘autotelic’ in academic circles, but to me, speak to an enchantment, subliminal or conscious, with the cosmos, as we make our way around woods, moors, mountains, parks, and more seemingly human-centric places.
Think of a walk you have had by water, the stone you picked up to skim. It was made for it. It was asking for it. Sea glass, shells, kids with sticks, adults with sticks, flowers, chewing grass, photos. There are encounters at every turn, and our unique Selves, our obscure little route and timing, creates them.
Later, I thought of how it could be said of life encompassed also. You could fill your pockets with what ever comes your way, always keen, always coveting the novel and shiny. Magpie energy. There is also the option of emptying them as soon as something hits the cloth at the base. There is a spectrum in between, and the ever present possibility of exchange. But I’m not sure many people would know, if you were to ask them, exactly what the contents of their pockets consisted of. What are you bringing here, now?
What we choose to bring to any situation, any meeting or event, it has a significance. It says something about not just us, but where we have been, how we have interacted with that place, what we have received from those places, and then what we have held on to, carried onwards. This might be a feeling, a remark, a love, a loss, a kindness, an advertisement, a belief, a fear, an opinion, a trauma. Those things that we carry, that have made their way to our pockets or saddlebags, we will bring them into the next entanglement.
A teacher of mine has suggested that we should always lose something in the deals of life. That our saddlebags should not become hoarders of stale bread, forgotten spices and lint. Saddlebags and pockets, should function as eddies for the swirling, moving and constant exchange of life’s riches. If a person is out for what they can get, and never gives, this is not a good thing. Not good at all. Behaviours in storage, collection and hoarding of things, emotions or money (for example), do not create a character you would want invite in for a single malt on a cold evening. Scrooge might have deep pockets, but has become intolerable to all but Cratchit, and is unlikely to make the dream dinner guest list of any one who enjoys a nice evening of wine and merriment. His gold has a mold. A tarnish that comes to precious things that are not handled.
I’m drawn to look to images of greedy, gold rich, lonesome dragons here also.
Dragon energy, can rise and take us all into it’s tempting lair of gathering gold and jewels beyond comprehension. We can become tight fisted, miserly, with what we have and with ourselves. But this only makes sense, if there is a finite resource of Self to give. As with all things, Self might just be itching for you to release the chocks, open the dam, loose the arrows and burn the boats on the notion that you are wasting valuable resources, that you alone need. Suggesting that we might have a valve that allows in and one that allows out. We have the power to give and receive. In between those two modes of operating, those two ways of going about our day, there is some kind of vessel, pockets, or saddlebags in which we put all we have to give and receive. The size of this cannot be determined, and may never be known until (as we all know), we run out of space. We discover our tether has an end. Like emails filling up our inboxes, and a warning saying that we need to ‘make space’ appears.
Warnings will no doubt be numerous and become louder and louder to the hoarder of the riches of life, till the dragon is properly disturbed, maybe its riches will become too much for its lair, it’s now too small, it might get fidgety. A fidgety dragon is dangerous, and the bastard shall have to be dealt with. If we leave this too long, and don’t give as good as we get, we will most likely suffer into middle age and beyond. I’m seeing Beowulf fighting with his last slice of elder strength to defeat such a foe, paying the ultimate sacrifice for the good of his younger countrymen.
A cessation of flow leads to stagnation. A swamp. In an old story from the Steppe about a red bead speaking woman, we find a horrific sorceress in such a swamp, unspoken but not forgotten entirely, taking a young naive woman by surprise. If we allow parts of us and our relationships to stagnate and fester with neglect, and go beyond the pail, that creature might just sneak up on our naive lost and lovely traveller, peal off her face, wear it like a balaclava, steal her horse and trot happily to the wedding. So we would do well to look for areas that have not had much moving through them recently. There may even be shiny things at the bottom of them, or a wild, ferris self with gold and riches beyond our wildest dreams.
Where are your swamps? What is it hard to give? What do you feel you have not got enough of? What do you covet above all other things? What is it hard to lend? What is it hard to ask for? Who do you find difficult to give friendship to? Who asks too much of you? What are they asking for? What do you refuse before even stopping to think? When is it hard to accept and receive? What are you carrying into each encounter?
What’s in your pockets?