As we enter our third month in a new country, feelings of longing are surfacing as multiple tendrils connect me to a former existence occasionally tugging at this moment, generating a feeling of being called home.

As I observe its projection onto specific locations and people, I realise that it is not the lovely land of my birth that calls because this feeling existed there as well. Rather, it is a deeper sensation of home, that of the essence of home and of the transcendent dimension that calls. Yes, it is amplified because I am in a new country, but I suspect also because as a species we are in the midst of an evolution.

Places of knowing and comfort are digesting rapidly as essential ingredients to the brewing of this caterpillar soup.

Unfortunately, a fair share of human effort is spent in trying to return things to what once was, to what better suits our record of experiences and beliefs and there are powerful, fear-fuelled currents churning within the collective consciousness driving these experiences. Regardless of where you are in the world or your current status, each person in some way has begun to feel the effects of this process of dissolving, and its emerging grief.

But is it all an amorphous mess? And are there wings waiting to be received at the end of this imaginal tunnel?

Who knows how this metamorphosis will take shape as systems within and without break down. We have all begun to become undone. We are stripped bare of a carefully constructed routine of costume. If not entirely stripped, then in the very least, lost a shoe. There is much ado about this “shoe”, a lot of scrambling to return it to its misshapen foot. Ignoring the fact that our feet are severely contorted after years of forceful wear but despite the discomfort, we continue to suffer on through for the sake of the costume. Now, we are hurled out of what we thought of as a safe, comfortable existence and invited to face something less welcoming in the realm of discomfort and uncertainty.

And it’s in this land of blisters and bunions that we learn a little extra about ourselves. While we receive scatterings of clues, we have a choice of how to build new worlds within our minds and cease the attempts to limp back to normal.

An opportunity to do this presented itself to me this week when I wondered if I caught the dreaded lurgy. It came a-knocking on my door with its moronic anagram status and a basket full of intense body aches, a hammering pain across my chest and underarms, and fever that caused me to contract with shivers. Amira Sahar asked in concern “Are you okay mom?” and without pause or thought I responded automatically with “I’m just coming down with something love.”

With this statement, an instant light bulb moment occurred in which every word ached to be released and for a new sentence to be birthed…

“actually…. I’m leveling up with something”

Climbing into bed, I accepted this lurgy and its task as a friend and throughout the night when the aches and fever worsened and the ringing in my ears escalated, I visualised old structures crumbling and new codes and circuits strengthening as the communities within reconfigured. Over the following few days I would do the same and continually gave thanks for the system upgrade as it worked its way through.

Never underestimate the healing power of gratitude.

With a final flush out of any debris left in the intestinal tract, I felt the recharge that was initiated by the lurgy as frequencies evolve and my body did what it needed to do to adjust to it.

Now on to the dream…

Those that know me intimately know my fear to go beyond the breakers of the sea. I may toss about in her lace-edged waves joyously but I tend to cling to the illusory security of the shelly shore. As I watch my mermaid friends drink in the deliciousness of frothy waves, bodies buoyant and confident in unknown depths, I used to yearn to join them. They would extend invitations through confident lithe limbs and even though I knew that they would support me in the depths, fear always kept my feet rooted to the shore with waves lapping persuadingly at my thighs.

Tidal pools. I like tidal pools. And streams and shallow rivers.

In the dream I find myself making my way down to the ocean’s edge on a raw, cold, damp morning. I feel as frail as the frosty stars that crystallize on a window pane. But with the morning dew kissing the lips of lillies, I know to make my way down to the sea. The morning waters lick at my bare feet.

She is icy, icy cold, and murderous.

In the distance I see a ragged man wearing a cloud of doom like a shawl draped over hunched shoulders. A young, disabled man with the warmth of life knocked out of him by sheer adversity.

The mildew of melancholy smothers his soul.

He tosses his walking stick and with a slouched, dogged gait he enters the churning mouth of the sea.

“That, can’t be good,” I exhale, shocked.

In an instant a wave crashes into him hungrily, gobbling his despair and with it, his form too.

I look to my hands in an attempt to make this dream a lucid one, to willingly change its course, to move myself out from the place of cowardice to that of the courageous heroine who plunges bravely into the depths to rescue a crippled man from imminent death. But it does not work, my feet remain rooted to the shore while he is dragged to the icy depths.

I feel shame for my cowardice.

A ribbon of clouds begin to swirl in the sky. It starts to hail. Marble-sized, ice balls fall from the sky but lands only in the sea. I reach out my hand to catch one and it melts in the warmth of my palm leaving behind a squiggle of a form, a life form.

Beings are carried from the sky in this iced cocoon delivered to only the sea. No time is wasted, they set to work creating with wild imagination. As wild as the waves reflect ceaseless sunshine, a new world is created. As it bleeds over the horizon towards my feet, I find it peculiarly interesting that within the waters of my fear lay a fertile land with death and hope and life unknown.

I feel less shame.

The young man… could there potentially exist a fine adventure that he is now part of? Perhaps in this new world that is coming from the sea?

Perhaps…

I turn to head back home. The world feels busy. Souls are coming and going. New arrivals. Early departures. Mass extinction, multitude births. Death belongs to life like mould to bread.

I’m not sure what to make of it.

I find myself walking through a graveyard. The path is lined with ancient trees whose outstretched branches are draped in souls. They hang like yesterday’s washing. A laundered forest of souls, awaiting resurrection and therefore not wholly dead. A strong scent of rosemary hangs in the air.

For remembering.

A biting wind rises. I feel exhausted from trying to string the events of the morning on a thread of time. I feel to sleep…but yet, I wake,

with the feverish stirrings of an unknown lurgy.