On Howling and Dread

Grief is not bad, nor is the mourning wail something that should be proscribed. The very fact that we are encouraged to grieve, but only to a “socially acceptable” level, lest we overspill, lest we “make a mess”? This is an issue. We have not engaged in the requisite howling to even approach a relationality with what is. Only then can joy and laughter be founded in the deep roots, in the darkest storms. I genuinely believe the ancient goês knew this. It is right there in the word.

Alas. some, particularly with the “love and light” folks, don’t seem to realise how commodified even so-called “emotions” have become – how “think positive, healing thoughts” ideas are becoming ever closer (and in some ways always were) to the capitalists who would assure you that the pandemic is over, and the price of doing business is to now quietly let millions die as fuel for the status quo, be that COVID, Gaza, Sudan, climate change, etc.

There is something reaching to us in the Dark Places of Wisdom, and if we cannot meet the dread properly, then we deny the strange solidarity of the pandaemonic All. We deny that for many across the world, unevenly distributed, the apocalypse has already come. For some it, is months, days, years. For others? Generations or centuries.

Some say we are *already* in the afterlife. In the underworld. Infused and suffused with the dead and the monstrous, an oceanic chthonic cauldron. If that’s so, then it is the crossroads, the meeting point and origin for all Life that unites us all and upwells ceaselessly.

So next time the dread grips you, consider how all Life is united. Consider howling. And watch what flows.