Wobbly Growth

Art by Michael Whelan

This week's square dancing has certainly kept us on our toes. With every change in the music we have had to pivot or scramble by degrees, pushed towards the constraints. The tune momentarily discordant, the steps unfamiliar.

The final opposition with us now is the blazing sun squaring off with Uncle Pluto, lord of the dark. And of the dance, if truth be told. Hades plays in the shadows because it is where power lives. The chaos he cultivates challenges us, waking up dormant currents. He sets the many gates we have to pass through, each leading us to the next and our newest outer limits.

This place is our growing tip. Here we always find ourselves edgewalking. A curious balancing act that renders our focus and shifts us from this to that. These outer reaches are enlivening and their precarious nature incites us.

Growth is this often wobbly process of expansion. At the cellular level, our chromatids split and travel unbidden to the far ends of the cell so it can split and differentiate. At the most macro level, black holes demonstrate these same outer reaches. Their galactic centre an abyss that constantly absorbs and expands exponentially. Ours too, darkling.

Growth is uneven and often clunky. It is at once destructive and beautifully creative. Its simultaneous nature asks a great deal of us. For it demands that we continually head for the edges, the place where our dance along the perimeters transforms us.

The thing about chaos, is that while it disturbs us, it too, forces our hearts to roar in a way we secretly find magnificent.
~ Christopher Poindexter


Words c. Kerrie Basha 2019