go d complex

(Read this one while listening to this song by Lael Neale)

Well, I didn’t meet go d. I didn’t even meet a little god, or an archetype, like Tom Weaver (who happens to write my favorite newsletter) did recently. 

But I did fast for three days this last week. And boy, was it a trip.

Ask me why I do anything, and I’ll give you a thousand reasons that will all be true. Reasons for my fast include: physical, emotional, spiritual and medical reasons. 

But really, really? 

I like to throw myself off the edge of things. 

Especially, especially — 

the edge of what I subconsciously assume is myself.

You could consider this running headlong into the mystery. Which no one can ever arrive at, so why bother, right? But damn if I can’t stop myself from constantly trying. It’s there that the edges of all my limits and stories get busted up. No, you are not simply a person who must eat (I had more energy than I’ve had in months). No, your hunger will not kill you (by the end of day three, I wanted to keep going). 

No, you don’t have to hold your eyes open to see. In fact, close them and you may see more. 

You might even be able to make art from what you see inside. Instead of all you see outside of you, the way you’ve been doing for years.

Recently someone told me, in that sorta I’m joking but I’m not really joking kind of way, that I had a god complex. It stung a little, but it wasn’t anything I hadn’t thought about myself about a billion times. Frankly, I wish I could lose some of the acute awareness I have of my own grandiosity as well as other qualities often labeled as narcissistic. It would make being an artist soooo much easier.  

So, in response, I didn’t miss a beat; I wholeheartedly agreed. I’d worked this one out.  

“I think we all should have a god complex,” I said. It feels so obvious to me that if we all really knew what we were + believed the same about everyone else, we wouldn’t do all the messed up crap we do to each other. The hurting, the judging, the othering, the oppressing, the murdering and so on and so forth.

It’s like Thomas Merton said. He called it the secret beauty of their hearts.

“If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed…I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other.”

Yessssss, Thomas. Yes.

The real problem with a god complex isn’t so much the complex itself as it is thinking you or your god is the only and very best one, and everyone had better agree, OR ELSE.

But anyway.

The best part of my fast happened on day two. I’d been spending most of my time outside in the backyard with Tuesday, siting in the grass under an apricot tree. I live in a house normally filled with seven other people, but they were all out of town. I wanted to take my clothes off to feel totally free, but I didn’t think the neighbors would like it. So I went inside.

But once inside, with my clothes off, I felt too cold. So I wrapped a small, extremely soft white blanket around my shoulders. That’s when it happened. Without planning on it, I just…started…dancing. 

There was music playing, but it wasn’t really dance music. Didn’t matter. My body needed to move. Apparently, it needed to move in front of a mirror, because that’s right where I was standing and I couldn’t take my eyes off myself. Starting to feel warm, I let the blanket drop to the floor. I was dancing rather…sexually. Again, I wasn’t meaning to, that’s just sort of how the energy of the music was coming through.

I felt a little surprised at myself. 

There was my 41-year-old, mother of three belly skin. Sagging like an inverted parachute. Undulating rhythmically. Pulsating as magically as a wave from the sea. 

There were my breasts. As used and past their time as fallen fruit left too long under the tree. They reminded me of two bruised (rather small) apples beginning to wrinkle and lose their shape. 

There it all was, shaking, swaying, circling, scooping, breathing, living, expressing – something I could see, plain as day, yet couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried to – understand.

It’s difficult to write this next part. People say they want women to feel this way, but in my experience, whenever I attempt to express this to someone, they have a very difficult time taking it in from someone like me.  Their eyes look away and a shudder of distaste often runs through them like a ghost. Probably many ghosts. But I really want to tell you, so….

There it all was.

There “I” was. 

Within my literal physical limits while also reaching beyond and — 

I was unbelievably beautiful. 

I was so shockingly beautiful and strange, I took my own breath away. 

So maybe I did meet a god after all. 

xx,

Yan

p.s. our one and only rYAN HUMN workshop in the U.S. for 2024 was just announced for October 1-3, 2024 in Joshua Tree, CA. I would love for you to join Ryan and me and other beautiful artists and humans in the desert for an artistic reset — a little oasis to really be you and to give yourself permission to focus on your art, your expression, and to be in community.

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