Held
We drop into this world like a stone falling into water.
Engulfed in a new element, we struggle to breathe it in. We learn the sensation of sinking, of buoyancy, of sinking again. Somehow, we know we are meant for this, though we still flail. We gasp in great lungfuls of life, then spit them out, bursting ourselves open with the effort.
The water wraps around us, not yet understanding what it means to hold this thrashing being, what new currents and turbulence we will create together. But it wraps all the same.
What we don’t yet know is that the elements are designed to part around us, to make space for us and for our paths, to entangle themselves with us as we rise and sink, creating a wake where before there was nothing, no movement.
That we are designed to respond to water, earth, fire, air: to their desires, and to our own.
We must awaken to see this.
To understand that the air wants to be breathed in, the water penetrated. That fire needs a hearth, a crucible, to couple with air.
We must learn to behold what we have known all along: Everything is here to be held.
A seedpod is held under earth, in its husked enclosure—curled in on itself, planted someplace dark before it’s ready to unfurl into light.
A truth is held in darkness until the moment it is needed, when it falls into revelation.
Two strands of DNA hold space for each other, whispering secret twin codes, a twining embrace that forms a scaffolding for life as it succumbs to its own activation.
A neuroreceptor, its entire life held in waiting—to be transformed by receiving its lover, the transmission—forever longing to touch across the vast synaptic space.
We are conceived inside another person, gestate inside another—to know ourselves, we need to look inside someone else. How can we possibly conceive of ourselves without others? We drop from one womb only to spend the rest of our lives seeking others: To behold, and to be held, in new ways.
The plummeting stone arrives through the web of elements with an invitation:
How do you long to be held?
Let me hold your longing with you, let me hold and behold you in your longing.
Let me know the fullness of you, for I’ve learned, through my falling, that there is only one thing expansive enough to hold all of me:
All of you.
Copyright © 2022 Calee Lucht
My Process:
Series: Sixth in the Portal series. We are the creators of our own portals: through each one, we receive our lives more and more fully.
Inspiration: Quantum entanglement. Germination. How human patterns echo those of the cosmos.
Materials: Vitreous glass and ceramic tesserae, Wissmach stained glass, mirrored tile, amethyst, selenite. Light, shadow, time. Me. You.
Available for purchase. Please contact me for details.