I Am a Feather

And Many Other Things at Once

I am a feather.

I used to be a part of a bird. A part of a collective, warming up hot flesh. Now I am a feather in my woman’s house, and when she doesn’t stick me into her hair, I lie down on her altar. “Lightly, child, lightly…” I whisper into her soul, reminding her to carry a heart as light as a feather.

My woman holds me between her warm, soft fingers, and sometimes she truly sees me. My every pattern, the glossy surface of my being. She likes how smooth I feel; it perfectly matches her own yearning for smoothness and ease in her own life…

Sometimes, while holding me, she closes her eyes. Then she becomes a little bird. She attaches me to her hair, and her imagination explodes.

She starts dancing in her room, shaking her big, gracious wings, a bunch of eagle feathers bursts out of her own skin.

She told me, if she had a superpower, she would like to be me for a day, me when I was a part of a bird and when I became an object of beauty and remembrance. She would like to live my story. She would like to live many stories.

This is true.

What the feather has told you. If I could choose a superpower, I’d have the ability to transform into different beings for a while. I’d become a robin, an eagle, a swan, a pigeon. I’d sit on roofs and snap walkers out of their own minds with my rhythmic song…

I’d become a slowberry stuck on a bush throughout a winter. I’d feel the round body of mine, a little juicy being trying to contain itself. I’d be eaten by crows, I’d freeze and shiver on a winter’s night, and no one would notice my trembling.

I’d be wind, having no body of my own. I’d lick people’s faces with my cold, invisible tongue, I’d be a force shaping a wave in the ocean, I’d move the ships and carry the clouds to the jungles.

I’d be a meadow. I’d take a lot of space. I’d vibrate with bumblebees. My skin would be relentlessly pierced by wildflowers. I’d be a home for a badger to feed her young. The rain would beat my body, the sun would burn my flesh. I’d be a meadow where people would want to scatter their own ash.

And I can go on and on and on… I’d be everything. Everything at once. Remembering myself in all shapes and forms. In all lives. The smallest, the most fragile, the most invisible speck of dust… precious rhythm of life.

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A bit of context

All of these thoughts, an exercise of being something else, talking from the perspective of a feather, a stone, a speck of dust… come to me from the Gestalt therapy workshop I did recently. I was asked to bring a small object from nature. Then the teacher asked us to look at the object, take it in, and become it. Once we are that, tell the world who you are and what your story is. Be yourself. Be a feather.

I felt like a fish in the water doing this exercise. A warm, soothing feeling coloured my body. I found myself feeling aligned. I felt the lightness of the feather, the smoothness of its being. It liberated me from who I think I am. And for a moment, I gently disappeared and could fully be present. As if fully being here requires leaving yourself behind.

I realise again and again that I can’t think my way into deeper presence. Something radical has to happen. Like me transforming into a feather.

I feel

that I have arrived at a precious place in life where many beautiful teachings unravel in front of me.

I vow to walk with grace, bow before the mystery of situations that realign me.

They are not in textbooks. They are on the path. The path I have to trust... the path that out of nowhere surprises me and never abandons me, even when I feel like I have reached a dead end. The path guides you home.

Lina x