Courting the Wild Twin

by Martin Shaw

I’m not telling you what to pray to, the celestial-or-otherwise shape of the thing, but find something to adore and keep talking to it. It’ll regulate anxiety at the very least. It won’t remove grief, not useful remorse, but the grind of chronic or acute fear can find its expression as an alchemical progression, not a final destination.

Where is your liminal forest? What shady place is allotted in your life to let your thinking lope and purr and get old-womanly? There are books that may bend us sufficiently to expand this way, as well as people and animals. What area of your home contorts your imagination? Where are you smartest? Most eccentric? What time of day provokes the liminal?

My older and wisers always drilled this fact into me: what you exile will grow hostile towards you.

More practical action: if a story is animate, then remember to feed it. It’ll get peckish. It’s not merely a set of symbols, a brocade of allegories, a well-positioned teaching tale; it is an energy field. A field that you are now walking with.

Dress well when you tell. Leave good grub and fine wine in some secretive part of your apartment or garden. Invite it to speak to you in your dreams. Build it a small hut to reside in when resting from living on your tongue. Don’t tell too many other stories in too close a period in case you hurt its feelings. Keep showing up for it.