Beginning

2. Joy

Joy...

. . .We can see that the child’s making of the red shoes accomplishes a major feat: she takes life from shoeless/slave status- just going on one’s way, nose to the road, looking neither left nor right- to a consciousness that pauses to create, that notices beauty and feels joy, that has passion and registers satiation... and all the things that make up the integral nature we call wild. 

The fact that the shoes are red indicates that the process is going to be one of vibrant life, which includes sacrifice. This is right and proper. The fact that these shoes are handmade and pieced from scraps points to the child symbolizing the creative spirit, who, being motherless and untaught for whatever reasons, has pieced this all together for herself using native perception. And brava! what a fine and soulful accomplishment.

If well enough could only be left alone, this situation would progress nicely for the creative self. In the tale, the child is delighted by her handiwork; the fact that she could manage it, the fact that she had the patience to search and gather, to design, to piece and fit, to make her ideas manifest. No matter that at the first the product is crude; many of the creation Gods through all cultures and through all time did not create perfectly the first time. The first try can always stand improvement, and the second, and often the third and fourth as well. That has nothing to do with one’s goodness and skill. It is just life, evocative, and evolving. 

But if the child is left alone, she will make another pair of red shoes, and another and another, until they are not so crude. She will progress. But even beyond her wondrous display of ingenuity and thriving is difficult circumstances, the shining fact for her is that these shoes she has made cause her enormous joy, and joy is her life’s blood, spirit-food and soul-life all in one. 

Joy is the kind of feeling a woman has when she lays the words down on the paper just so, or hits the notes al punto, right on the head, the first time. Whew. Unbelievable. It is the kind of feeling a woman has when she finds she is pregnant and wants to be. It is the kind of joy a woman feels when she looks at people she loves enjoying themselves. It is the kind of joy a woman feels when she has done something that she feels dogger about, that she feels intense about, something that took risk, something that made her stretch, best herself, and succeed- maybe gracefully, maybe not, but she did it, created the something, the someone, the art, the battle, the moment; her life. That is a woman’s natural and instinctive state of being. Wild Woman emanates up through theat kind of joy. That sort of soulful situation summons her by name. 

1. The Feral Woman

<c>Life/Death/Life Nature of Love

The Accidental Finding of Treasure

The Chase and the Hiding

Untangling the Skeleton

The Sleep of Trust

Giving the Tear

The Later Phases of Love

  Heart as Drum, and Singing Up

The Dance of Body and Soul

                  -Phases of Love, With the Wolves

The Feral Woman

In the Oxford English Dictionary, the word Feral derives from Latin “Fer...meaning “ wild beast.” In common usage, a feral creature is one who was once wild, then domesticated, and who has reverted back to a natural of untamed state once again. 

I postulate the feral woman as one who was once in a natural psychic state- that is, in her rightful wild mind- then later captured by whatever turn of events, thereby becoming overly domesticated and deadened in proper instincts. When she has opportunity to return to her original wildish nature, she too easily steps into all manner of traps and poisons. Because her cycles and protective systems have been tampered with, she is at risk in what used to be her natural wild state. No longer wary and alert, she easily becomes prey. 

There is a specific pattern to the loss of instinct. It is essential to study this pattern, to actually memorize it, so that we can guard the treasures of our basic natures and those of our daughters as well. In the psychic woods there are many leg traps made of rusted iron that lie just below the leafy green of the forest floor. Psychologically, the same is true of the greater world. There are various lures to which we are susceptible: relationships, people, and ventures that are tempting, but inside that good-looking bait, is something sharpened to a point, something that kills our spirit as soon as we bite into it. 

Feral women of all ages, and especially the young, have a tremendous drive to compensate or long famines and exiles. They are endangered by excessive and mindless striving toward people and goals that are not nurturant, substantive, or enduring. No matter where they live or in what time, there are cages waiting always; too-small lives into which women can be lured or pushed. 

If you have ever been captures, if you have ever endured ‘hambre del alma’, a starvation of the soul, if you have ever been trapped, and especially if you have a drive to create, it is likely that you have been or are a feral woman. The feral woman is usually extremely hungry for something soulful, and often will take any poison disguised on a pointed stick, believing it to the be the thing for which her soul hungers. 

Though some feral women veer away from traps at the last moment with only minor losses of fur, far more stumble into them unwittingly, knocked temporarily senseless, while others are broken by them and still others manage to disentangle themselves and drag themselves off to a cave to nurse their injuries alone. 

The psychological truth in “The Red Shoes” is that a woman’s meaningful life can be pried, threatened, robbed, or seduced away from her unless she holds on to or retrieves her basic joy and wild worth. The tale calls our attention to traps and poisons we too easily take onto ourselves when we are caught in a famine of wild soul. Without a firm participations with the wild nature, a woman starves and falls into an obsession of “feel betters,” “leave me alones” and “love me- please.” 

As we shall see, the loss of the handmade red shoes represents the loss of a woman’s self-designed life and passionate vitality, and the taking on of a too-tame life and passionate vitality, and the taking on of a too-tame life. This eventually leads to loss of accurate perception, which leads to excess, which leads to loss of the feet, the platform on which we stand, our bases, a deep part of our instinctual nature that supports our freedom. 

“The Red Shoes” shoes us how a deterioration begins and what state we come to if we make no intervention in our own wildish behalf. Let there be no mistake, when a woman makes efforts to intervene and fight her own demon, whatever that demon may be, it is one of the most worthy battle known, both archetypally and in consensual reality. 

Even though she might, as in the tale, hit ground-zero-minus-five bottom via famine, capture, injured instinct, destructive choices, and all the rest, remember at the bottom is the best soil to sow, and grow something new. In that sens, hitting bottom, while extremely painful, is also the sowing ground. 

Though we never wish the poisonous red shoes and the subsequent decrease of life onto ourselves or others, there is in its fiery and destructive center a something that fuses fierceness to wisdom in the woman who has dance the cursed dance, who has lost herself and her creative life, who has driven herself to hell in a cheap, or expensive hand basket

I am not, the culmination of a routine. Or the ability to do an element.

I knew I was, much more than that   !

That’s not all that I am!

 and yet who has somehow held on to a word,  a thought, an idea until she could escape her demon through a crack in time and - live to tell about it. 

So the woman who has danced out of control, who has lost her footing and lost her feet and understands that bereft state at the end of the fairy tale, has a special and valuable wisdom. She is like a saguaro, a fine and beautiful cactus that lives in the desert. Saguaros can be shot full of holes, carved upon, knocked over, and stepped on, and still they live, still they store life-giving water, still they grow wild and repair themselves over time. 

Though fairy tales end after ten pages, our lived do not. We are multi-volume sets. In our lives, even though one episode amounts to a crash and burn, there is always another episode awaiting us and then another. There are always more opportunities to get it right, to fashion our lives in the ways we deserve to have them. 

Don’t waster your time hating failure. Failure is a greater teacher than success. Listen, learn, go on. That is what we are doing with this tale. We are listening to its ancient message. We are learning about deteriorative patterns so we can go on with the strength of one who can sense the traps and cages and baits before we are upon them or caught in them. 

Let us begin to unravel this very important tale by understanding what happens when the vital life we value most, no matter what it might look like to others, the life we love most, is devalued and turned to ashes. 

SCARRRR!!!!! 

Keeping the feet dry and warm keeps a person alive in bitter cold and wet. I can remember my aunt telling me that to steal someone’s only pair of shoes in winter was a crime equal to murder. A woman’s creative and passionate nature is at the same risk if she cannot hold on to her sources of growth and joy. These are her warmth, her protection. 

“It’s as good as death.”

                 -In Sarcasm. How one feels, when has nothing left to funnel.  </c>