birds in a jungle

 

1

A woman in her twenties came up to a counter of an old hotel. Her dark hair almost reached her knees, but she walked as if nothing in the world could entangle her. “Hi dear, I’d like to speak with Maya Deren.” she said to a teenager sitting on a wooden chair opposite a computer. He smiled politely, opened the guest book. “She’s dead, she is no longer with us unfortunately. But she still does Haitian dance rituals if that is what you are looking for.” he was not surprised by such a preposterous demand nor by its viability. The long haired beauty produced a mermaid like squeal, apparently of joy. “Can I be in one of her films? I don’t mind taking the elevator for a few weeks, I could also learn how to be a real turtle if that’s necessary.” Now that those humble words have been pronounced it might be the right moment to zoom out the back door into a peculiar little street and take a look at this edifice. While her slender fingers filled out a very suspicious looking questionnaire, the pencil pressing deeply into the A in Dana, outside millions of triangles reflected a dying sunset. They are hotel windows pointing at the sky, they want to touch slowly appearing stars while lifting their building up like a rocket.

“How many rooms are there in this hotel?” The fact that this question was particularly annoying was written all over the mermaids face, her pencil stopped for exactly two minutes, making a big dot out of a star next to the question mark. *Your answer will determine how many people you are allowed to meet on the premises.

“Who reads these… does this information become a file on me?” her eyes tried to pierce a hole in the teen spirit, but he couldn’t care less behind his sunglasses.

“The more windows you fly into, the more rooms there will be” he knew she got stuck and he was not impressed. Dana’s skirt started tugging at her, moving her legs in the direction of a dark green stairway. The teenager’s attention was now preoccupied with a horse that demanded better room service, horses never had it fair, he was very insistent. The stair went in only one unexpected direction, down. Again Dana’s skirt expressed impatience as her occupant struggled to get to the bottom of what appeared to be an endless winding pit. Finally a dark opening presented itself and Dana jumped safely onto warm sand. Sand? Yes, this was definitely a beach. Something familiar about it too, as if someone had reconstructed a night she spend as Nada with her parents in South of France at age 11. Only this time there were no parents, no tourists and no shops. The only visible coordinates were little yellow lights far off into the distance, a city buzzing with electricity. But here one could only hear the waves and soft footsteps of an enigmatic woman approaching the bewildered mermaid.

“Maya! Is that really you? I left the moon, I wanted to become a mother, but on earth everyone is even more lonely. I walked to the belly button of Gaia and found there an old oak. It became this incredible hotel. Then I came down looking for you. Do you know what all this means?”she was out of breath, so many nights she spend wishing Maya would appear in her dreams.

Maya’s curls were alive, they twisted calmly into flowers on her head, small spirals appeared and disappeared on her shoulders. “A hotel? That’s quite amusing. We are on my beach now. This is the ocean you dreamt of when you were a child. Do you remember? Many creatures come here when they look for sand that will transform them.” She became a rose for a second and then a tulip.

“Yes, sand is a secret time producer on earth, a memory of Gaia’s connection with her child, I know that now. From your films I learned that women are in a constant flux, we are in a continuous process of becoming. But all the women I met on earth go to beaches to get tanned, meet their daughters to feel proud or dismayed. I tried to find my mother, but she looked just like the rest of them. Happy to be paralyzed.” Dana’s hands felt cold. She tried to hug herself, suddenly her hands were in a warm pillow, she looked down and discovered a fish bowl filled with sand, her fingers dug deep into it.

Before she knew it the two of them were walking along the waves, white foam caressed their bare feet and both felt happy to finally meet under bright orange stars. “Dana, you are not alone, yet in a way you are. You made it here, you found the tree that is between two worlds. We live here because we became free, so free that we could choose where to dwell. This place is in between, it is a medium, just like you and me. You can learn how to move here, if you remember how you moved in this hotel when you go back, then you will find a way to wake up the mothers.” she started to swing in the waves like a pendulum. Dana’s head felt like a balloon as she joined the water goddess in her trance dance. They twirled around each other faster and faster, from a distance it looked like a hurricane came over the ocean’s surface. But between the dancers, in the eye of the hurricane, grew a tall pine tree, its smell gave Dana a boost of inexplicable joy. She was peaceful and determined, without pronouncing a word she pushed down on her knees and jumped with all her might onto the pine trunk. Instead of losing her orientation in fear, instead of holding on tighter, her legs bounced off the stem and landed on another branch of another tree. Instinctively Dana continued like a mature squirrel, there was no more water in sight, only pine trees, she could see with the back of her eye how the other woman was performing a similar ritual parallel to her. An increase in speed didn’t seem to matter anymore. They were weightless animals following their wild nature.

Pine cones fell into Dana’s hands, they literally flew into her hands looking for a new home. Her surprise was immense when she opened her palms and found cone shaped rubies. Maya told her the rubies needed someone to take care of them before they hatched, that in fact they were ruby eggs. The forest was behind them now, people were dancing and singing everywhere, a chaotic festival engulfed Dana. She lost her companion, but now she knew where to look for her next time, a seagull flew high over her head meowing like a kitten. Dana stood motionlessly because a music festival was the last thing she anticipated. Her wild blood was still running fast through her legs and arms. A friendly clown came up to her, he juggled only for her delight until she finally granted him a questioning smile. He quickly put away his toys. “They are waiting for you upstairs. I understand you are looking for a comfortable room, they have just what you need, please follow me.” Without hesitation he took her little finger, curved it around his gloved pinky and somehow managed to transform both of them into a black panther with a red nose. They were back to being human in front of a closed door within five seconds. Dana knocked.

2

 

Where normally the door number would have been there was a small plaque with a simple indicator, DOOR. That much Dana could have guessed herself, the clown stood nearby dancing on one spot, successfully making it clear that no further information would escape from his bright red mouth. Great. Is this fear or excitement streaming down her neck, why would Dana be afraid of her fate? “Is this door my fate? What if its generic name means it is a public door, I mean a public fate?” Her thoughts were not yet leading to any radical actions. In a graceful glittering fashion the sign on the door started to alternate. First into Doorna, then Daarno, Droona, and finally Dana’s Door. This obviously changed everything, nobody before has ever had their own door in an obscure hotel that was a world between worlds. Her knocking fist transformed into an open palm as she pushed the door into a dark hallway. The clown waved good bye, he was busy turning into a field mouse. A field is what I need were his last utterances.

Inside. It felt so different from the corridor outside, the smell was a sweetness that is contained within herbariums locked away in old photo journals. It was a silence with a hint of someone breathing. The dark hemp drapes were closed allowing for a dimmed bright light to penetrate through tiny holes in the fabric. At the other side of the room Dana saw an old woman sitting on an edge of a bed facing a wall, with her back to Dana. The woman looked like she just woke up with her messy short white hair and a simple night gown. “Dana, please come towards the window, I need to look at you.” Her voice was extremely familiar and painfully warm, reminding Dana of grandmas who always sat outside of her building, gossiping about everyone who lived there. They took care of her once when she got bloody knees after chasing some pigeons. But this woman was not one of them, her voice resonated a distant memory of a person she met in her imagination when reading books. Whose books did she ever allow into her deepest fibers? “Virginia!” Dana whispered and frightened herself because her own voice seemed so estranged in this realm.

They met in front of the dark curtains. Virginia Woolf had very soft caring eyes, they looked right into your soul and all you wanted was to invite them for a cup of tea and let them speak poetry for hours. She wanted to know what was Dana’s mission.

“Where to begin? Dearest Virginia, in your books I met people with an inner life, their inner journeys weaved so effortlessly into the outer chaos. I found that real people, the ones who do not inhabit your novels, are much simpler folk. They put on a lot of disguises to appear deep but in fact there is very little knowledge of what it is we love, of what it is that we are about.”

“I see what you mean sweet Dana, poetry no longer touches anyone. You came here looking for reality? For love? No one can explain why there is such a fear of change on earth. I can tell you that from here it all seems irrelevant because the ones who can they will eventually transcend cultural boundaries, the prisons we are born into. You see, you are now one of the travelers and now you know how far one can get.”

“Is it change they fear? Maybe, I did meet many women on earth who were determined to change the world as it is. But it is practically impossible to change oneself because there is no more self. There are labels, categories, status, stereotypes. They all swim between them thinking one works better than the other, but to change oneself they would need to know oneself and knowledge is time, travelling in time, to be precise. I used to be Nada, a girl from nowhere going into nothingness. It was all fine and natural until I remembered that I am a daughter and I have a mother and that I will soon be a mother. That would mean I have to move from the moon to the earth. I travelled with the help of sand through generations past and future, I saw all that was destroyed through ignorance. And I decided I would not be complicit in continuing with the inherited pattern of splitting daughters from mothers, moon from earth. That’s how I ended up here.”

“Yes, the split, the abyss that controls our feelings, our desire to love, it is a scary thing when love is defined through fear of the abyss. Yet, I think you need to consider gravity.”

“Is gravity love? I often thought so, my intuition told me that there are forces stronger than any cultural, or technological constructs. But Virginia, when a woman becomes a mother she forgets the daughter that she was, she abandons her daughter soul on the moon, they live like shadows there. They yearn for acceptance, for someone to listen to them and to love them. But on earth mothers are savages who are attacked from all corners, disciplined into forms that are unnatural, just like the nature itself on earth. Pushed into production schemes for demands nobody questions. How can they remember anything beautiful, anything real when their freedom is defined by how big their cage is. The bigger the cage, the bigger the success, that’s what they are trained to want. Many daughters now refuse to be mothers, they prefer to live in isolation rather than perpetual paralysis.”

“Dana, you appear to be in a state of shock, I understand that after being on the moon, where you felt alone, yet free, the conditions on earth shook you to the bones. You want to grow there, you want to plant there, but right now it is a place of survival. Not only for mothers, you know. Humans invented civilization in order to eliminate the wilderness, it is still within them, it is haunting them, making them into killers of body and soul because they forgot how to listen to it. There is another way, I assure you. Do not despair.” with those words Virginia opened the thick curtains to an unprecedented view. Their window was an opening into another world. Right beneath it was a stream with an incredibly strong current, its flow glistened with bright blue ribbons reflecting golden light. Some cold drops reached Dana’s hands. She saw how near to the other bank of this rivulet there were tiny happy men in tiny boats rowing terribly fast, they were wearing colorful clothes. All around them was an atmosphere of joy with green forestation and exotic flowers as tall as humans moving together to some unknown melody, it was one big dance.

“Who has dark brown eyes?” Virginia asked in a very serious tone.

Dana had to think of her university friendship with a Japanese girl, they shared many hours in parks, avoiding standard education principles. Before she could tell Virginia about the girl whose eyes she knew so well everything became white covered in a fog. Long Japanese flowers grew very rapidly, filling the fog with immense tenderness. Dana could hear her own voice only within her head. “This happened because I thought of Miaki! The thought itself changed everything!” She felt an incredible heaviness take over her body, she fainted.

Within a few moments Dana was on the floor below the magical window, next to her was a teenage girl with long dark blond hair. The girl looked intensely into Dana’s face and started talking as if nothing happened, she had seen things, her information was meant for one person only.

“So Dana, you are a dreamer, life presents many mysteries to you and you find it absolutely necessary to be active on many levels of reality. You move between different times and realities with ease, it terrifies you when a person, a situation or an institution try to hinder this practice. You think that you are a seeker of love, you do not realize that you overflow with love, love is the feeling you constantly talk to within you, it is your guide. I saw in your window that your inner quest is for freedom. You avoid that word because they taught you freedom as a concept, it has been corrupted, you never believed a word they said. You gave up on the reality of freedom, but consciously you decided to heal a damaged cycle that exists within the female psyche. You will manage to reconnect mothers and daughters, the ones that live within each woman and the ones that walk on earth. However, your path lies further. You have to go deeper into the jungle, you have to learn the meaning of freedom from the birds here. Once you become one of the birds you will find the answer to the question you are not aware of yet. It is that question that will shape your life and lead you to another window, the world beyond that window is what you seek.”

Dana listened very carefully, she even tried to memorize certain phrases, but her head was still in a fog where words had no companions, it was all too much for her. After her final words young Virginia stood up and dived into the blue river, her head reappeared with a beak, she was a noble eagle heading for the clouds.

Dana tried to recollect the last words she had heard, seek or was it seed? Seeds started popping up, pinching her naked knees. She thoughtfully planted them into moist soil that covered the whole floor of the hotel room. What was it the young girl was telling her with so much precision? It all sounded so true, but as hard as she try, Dana could not remember a thing.

 

3

Dana’s feet felt something tickling them from below, soft yellow tentacles were not letting her get upset about her absentmindedness for too long. She almost screamed expecting some creepy beast to grab both of her legs. Instead of being dragged down she was raised by gigantic stalks of wheat. “I just planted these! Wheat, you are so sweet.” her thoughts were scattered, but one thing was clear, she was on her way up. A few mice could still be seen down below, embracing huge wheat kernels, singing “Maaaamaaaa, MA MA, maaaamaaa”. Dana had to listen very carefully before it occurred to her that they were not praising their mothers, no, they were singing about their mammal kingdom. “I am also a mammal, just like you, and I also like seeds and cheese…” she threw some Gouda she found in her lap into their extended paws.

The wheat elevator suddenly halted at a very peculiar nest. At least for Dana this was surely peculiar, at first she was mesmerized and then delighted, a sense of wonder replaced her inner fogginess.

“Hah, what a way to spend my time! But what can I do, these ARE mine.” said a woman of round proportions whilst reading a newspaper, under her was a well structured nest filled to the brims with rainbow colored eggs. She looked at Dana and winked at her, directing the wink at a nest near hers. As if saying “Go on, what are you waiting for?”

Dana loved her new golden carpet, she could wait forever, besides it was not her style to sit on some funny looking eggs. Wait a second, those are the rubies she adopted in that forest when jumping in unison with Maya. “I hope me and Maya can go for a swim again.” she sighed. The nesting woman didn’t look pleased with Dana’s indecisive posture.

“Hah, you don’t even know why you are here. You are just lost. Or maybe you forgot why some nests deserve your cute bum for some years.”

“Years? What kind of monsters are in there?” Dana looked suspiciously at her gleaming little oval rubies, their intensity frightened her.

“Hahahahaaaaaah, Dana, you caught them, you put them there and now you are afraid they might take too much of your time! Oooohhh, I just love these first encounters.” the woman’s face was welcoming, her eyes strict, her voice was made for laughter.

“OK, listen Emma, I feel like everything here is so familiar, but still I am not sure exactly where I am, nor where this is leading me. Please do help me if you can.” but how did she know the woman’s name was Emma? It just slipped from her mouth and now she was sure that the big smile belonged to Emma Goldman, the one who opened minds. Dana trusted Emma, she lifted her long mermaid hair and placed her bottom on her new ruby throne. What next?

“We are not just sitting here, you know. We are quite active birds, you and me.” Emma uttered those words while folding her newspaper, it was filled with information on never ending wars and blood sucking economies. Only now did Dana notice that Emma’s body was that of an owl. An inexplicable fear started to take over Dana’s organism, she could not help it. What if she was dead?

“I guess you are more worried about the nature of this jungle rather than your little hatchets at the moment. I can assure you that even though it might feel like the contrary, no, you are not dead. That is not why we are birds, we are not angels after all! HAHAHA” this time she roared in laughter and Dana had to giggle as well, she was no angel for sure.

“Like I said, it might look like you are just comfortably sitting on some twigs, but you are now officially one of us, you are participating in the creation of this magnificent place. Get it?” Emma rolled her sleeves, reached for a few butterflies underneath her and with one swing she send them into the wilderness. Immediately a few more eggs appeared to replace the old ones. The butterflies grew heavy and fat, they became flying books. Within seconds all the pages burst out of their seams, liberated, rushing towards north, east, west and south.

“What, did you think we were making babies here? Thoughts, visions, songs, adventures, formulas, dreams, and lots more, this is what the place is made of. The babies we brought into this world are not only the ones who cry at night. We cried many nights to make a world that transcends boundaries of time and space. We started building this paradise in our earthly prisons, where one has to fight to speak, to think, to be a woman. Mothers and daughters united within our earthly bodies, we started to change the world on earth, here is the continuation of that work. The world we want to inhabit, where your creative soul can be born and reborn any moment. Or did you think this was some old hotel? HAHAHA.” yes, she knew how to laugh.

Dana tried to look at her rubies, what if they were ready to be send out, to join the rest of the creatures here? She could not see beyond her feathers, from her beak to her feet, her body had transformed into a swallow. What kind of feet she had was not clear at all.

“What a pretty swallow. Look, I know the sun can damage fragile tissue, but photosynthesis is something I need to learn, there must be a way to activate it…”the words of two distant voices attracted Dana, she saw a beetle and an ant passing in front of her nest. They were tiny specks in comparison to her majestic throne, yet, as they crawled further away their contours started to take on human form. The result was two women jumping off the branch on which Dana joined Emma, now they stood under the tree in their human clothes and continued talking without any interruption.

“Yes, Frida, there is a way to activate it. I will join you next time when you bloom on the other side of the hill, there are many ways to open yourself without getting hurt.” the two women kissed on the mouth and walked into the sunset.

Dana couldn’t take her eyes off the silhouettes in the distance, how she wanted a female companion. Not necessarily to kiss, though that should feel amazing, she had no doubt. But to explore together the possibilities of the feminine creative process, the absolute freedom that exists within their psyches. Suddenly she realized that one of the women had not turned around the corner, she was facing Dana and looking straight into her eyes.

“Don’t forget the sand! It’s all over that place to remind you of what is possible. It would not be there if the moon didn’t make tides, it changes everything.” she whispered into Dana’s mind without even once opening her mouth.

“George! Are you still coming with me to write while I paint my portrait? George?” Frida stood at the corner of a winding path with a bright orange sun behind her back. Their long skirts were soon two swinging bells, producing music for the stars that now surrounded Dana’s tree. She looked around, Emma was gone, she left a note written with big shining letters since it was dark now.

“Dana/ swallow! You are alone again, swallow your pride, your rubies will guide you, they are a part of you that you don’t know. I am sure your loneliness will not prevent you from reaching the view you need for your soul. Let’s move it.”

Dana got up on her short swallow legs. Funny lights were rising above her head. They were fireflies climbing out of the ruby eggs, making together the shape of an arrow pointing up. Dana was exhilarated to see her little fires, all smart, showing her where to go. It felt easy to spread her wings and follow the little mysterious dots of light and hope. She was prepared to fly all night, to see the vastness of this jungle and to learn how to transform her creations. However, all those aspirations soon came to an end, the fireflies entered a dark hole in the trunk of the old oak tree that she squatted all day. Her beak inside, she could smell humid sweetness, for the rest it was pitch dark. She remembered the mice, their mammal song had an easy melody that she whistled louder and louder. Her squirrel paws were back, she slowly started climbing through the narrow dark passage. The fireflies awaited her at the top, she hoped.