Friends,
Today’s word is really special, and evokes so much even when you first read it: underland.
I first heard this word from Robert Macfarlane’s book of the same name, and it’s a gorgeous dive into the caverns, caves, soils, spaces that lay below the surface. It’s physical, scientific, mystical, metaphorical.
We can go so many directions with it.
Here’s his sort of definition:
Underland is an actual, breathable place below Earth’s surface, ranging in depth from the life-giving humus of our soils to the death-dealing radioactive waste being stored in Earth’s deepest recesses.
But it’s also about the imagery of deep time and space, of going down into the dirt, the soil of our own being. What is our own underland? What waits there, what kind of incubation are we engaged in, what kind of rest at the roots of ourselves?
There’s a reason Stranger Things did so well, imagining an entire Underworld beneath us, one of floating particles and twisted synapses, monsters lurking and moving across the liminal boundaries we thought were so much more solidified than they actually are. We fear what's beneath us, a darker reality that mirrors our light, where we think the evil waits against our well-laid plans for goodness. But maybe villainizing the dark never works, because a mirror image is still a mirror image, a thin place between who we are and who we think we are, between how we are seen and how we happen to see ourselves right now. Maybe the whole point is that monsters and angels float like particles in the air no matter what world we are inhabiting, those synapses constantly telling our brains what to believe and how. And of this is the case, then it’s up to us, holding the pendulum gently as it swings, keeping ourselves tethered to a depth of goodness that cannot be understood without acknowledging all the ways we move from light to dark in a sacred dance. The Underland teaches us who we are, and as we surrender, every monster becomes our own brother, sister, self, every air particle a prayer, every dark corner a space to find ourselves where we thought we’d been buried deep all those years ago.
I have an exciting announcement! This summer I’m hosting a Resistance Journal Club! This is not a book club, although it’s based off my book, Living Resistance. This is a series of workshops that will help us hold space for our personal and communal resistance in an exhausting time through journaling and getting to know one another.
You can attend them all or pick and choose a few! Hope to see you there!
The first workshop is May 28th, 7-8:30pm ET, and focuses on Indigenous Wisdom in practicing resistance:
The second workshop is June 10th, 7-8:30pm ET with a focus on our personal commitment to resistance and care:
And the third workshop is June 25th, 7-8:30pm ET and is all about communal resistance
Deep in the woods
where fairy mounds
and fairy circles reside;
there lies an underland
of deep and mystical,
magical wonders.
~
Are the fairies good
or are the evil?
Every child must
discover for themselves.
~
One child found dancing—
twirling and swirling
to a tune only they hear.
Another child found cowering—
slinking through the woods
until they bolt for a grassy field.
~
What do they see?
What do they hear?
Only they and the underland
know for sure.
As a child
I feared the deep end
Of the pool
Staring down from the high dive
Into the cavernous blue
That I was certain would pull me
Too far down
The way I was certain that
Quicksand in a dark forest
Would drag me
Into the Underland
Of places unknown and into depths
From which I would not reemerge
Yet I suspect that
What I feared instead
Were the deepest parts of me
Questions with no answers
Pain without relief
Resentments of unknown sources
Anger towards myself
That kept me from myself
Until slowly I let go and
Began exploring the darker depths
Swimming farther into the gulf
Discovering that I could embrace
Without drowning
Do not resist the undertow,
We are taught,
Do not swim against the tide
No matter how far out and deep
We find ourselves
Our souls know the way back
The ocean will return us home.