Be a Vulture

I swiped this short play from Ada Limon's post on linebreak:

Owl & Deer Discuss Poetry: A Short Play

Deer: “Wouldn’t it be nice to take a break from writing.”

Owl: “No.”

Deer: “Yeah, you’re right.”

Owl: “I know that I feel my best when I’m writing. It’s like, I think I want to just give up and then suddenly I’m writing a poem and it’s like, wow, life is awesome! Poets may be the only people in the world who could save themselves by writing their own suicide note.”

Deer: “It’s true, I love the new book I’m working on. I mean, it’s completely incomprehensible and unreadable, but I love it.”

It's adorable, yes, but when the owl said, "Poets may be the only people in the world who could save themselves by writing their own suicide note." I thought YES! That kind of eternal yes that reacts to more than what was said, but beyond it to reflection, experience, and hope. I know personally that when things get bad, and whoa they have been pretty bad, I always, inevitably think: there is a poem in this.

Even if you're not a poet, you still don't need to kill yourself. What I mean is, when you are desperate and life is pulling out your fingernails, there is still a jewel there. A story, a painting, anything... whatever floats your rubber ducky. It's a driving force toward expression and change.

I was reading The Secret Language of Birds by Adele Nozedar and discovered that the word "cathartic" comes from the Latin word for "Turkey Vulture", "Cathartes Aura." This is because of the vulture's habit of eating rotting flesh, and in the days of no sanitation or plumbing, this was truly a gift. The bird was often seen as a deity in many pre-Christian cultures including the Latins, Egyptians, and Aztecs. Nozedar writes,"The birds were seen as transformers of waste and decay, rendering everything clean and wholesome again. In addition, vultures only take what they are given; they do not kill in order to eat."

Be a vulture. If there is death, decay, waste, and gore in your life, then process it into something "clean and wholesome again." We can't avoid pain, but we can use that experience to broaden our understanding and practice of love.