Butterfly Language for Caterpillars – Soulmate Seeking with Alysse Aallyn

Youth = RESILIENCE: “A Bruise, A Cut, A Fever”

Snap back!

Youth is hungry long before dinner is ready. We recall youth as a rollercoaster of highs and lows, a mix of aspiration, beauty and joy keen as a knife’s edge. Let us never forget that sense of Spring when all things were possible and we were the linchpins holding up the universe.

Youth’s sense of power is so disproportionate to reality it almost seems as if wisdom prohibits action rather than informing it. Like the smarter you are, the less you can accomplish! Youth rushes in places Wisdom fears to even think about. Yet the sense of possibility and the delight in discovery are so heady nothing balks Youth for long. It’s all over far too fast.

We have discussed the fact that if you want a soulmate, you will have to kill dragons – both yours and theirs. There is trauma potential, to say the least. Every one of us have experienced trauma, many of us have forgotten it, most of us deny it. How we represent the scars of life to ourselves has everything to do with how we represent ourselves to others.

Today’s meditation is about “snapping back,” not just “recovery” but Plan B. We may need a Plan C, D, and E. The fact that the dragon got the best of us on one or two occasions is no surprise. Remember learning to drive?

We are really about learning to learn, learning what to fear and not to fear, learning how to react to constantly new sets of circumstances. We are resilient, we are flexible. We are cagey, we are wily.

By the time we meet our soulmate we will have our own dragons under control, and we will have many stories to share about The Ways of Dragons.

A BRUISE A CUT A FEVER

Dragons exist.
From my tree perch I watched them
Uncaring of rules and bored by
Their games, I wrote down
Statistics
In gold crested diaries.
Fairy-tale beginnings
Augur sour endings.
Pole-axed by Europe.
“This stuff matters frightfully”
And I was affrighted.

Culture-mad-Mother
Forced us to look
Then forced us to blink;
Her timing was off.
Dad sought his oceans
In history, in pictures, in
The madness of Nature;
Encapsulates daughters in
Unsinkable Fiberglas;
That captain lied when he said
We were all going home.

Loathed masculine privilege
I disliked you on sight
Teased your editorials
Insulted your proctoring
Reviled, you prevailed.
Kindling a clove-scented ecstasy;
Inflaming my fevers at the same time as
Quenching them.

Sweeping West you
Pulled the Atlantic behind you, smothering
Both of us; I fought back with
Monogrammed luggage.

Swimming nude in your rapture we
Posed for Swedish love manuals
Under the falls.
I thought I knew everything till
I met your parents;
Your father’s impressionist:
Your mother convinced me
That monsters can flourish.

I dust you with my glitter as
you peel my shock-pants;
Our children wait impatiently
To get their lives started.
“Ask him to marry you Mommy!
Ask him! Ask him!”