Seven Silent Crows and Embracing the Shadows

I got word yesterday afternoon, on the way to deliver my homemade and annoyingly-healthy cookies and two Georgia-grown mandarins to a friend working too hard and going through a rough patch in life, that preliminary pathology had come back on my sternal bone biopsy. Metastatic breast cancer, confirmed. Ugh. This was not what I had hoped for, but flipped towards the positive (which becomes a survival skill one must employ immediately and adroitly), it seems to be the tengu the physicians and I already knew, and assumed. It could have been much, much worse and much more ... metastatic.

My friend Murielle, who guides me in all things zestful cancer treatment and survivorship, spiritual and otherwise, says give yourself 24 hours-ish to cry, be angry, anxious, stressed and feel deeply sorry for yourself. Then rise like the powerful Kweens we are, harnessesing the many gratitudes and gifts we have; and face this temporary conditional state with both wings fully spread, leaving no room for negativity and doubt. I'm about 18 hours in ...

Cue the crows. My family, friends and I have lassoed a New Year tradition: Bird of the Year! We all look out after the first of the year to see which feathered friends will be our talismans, guides and totems.

On January 1, I set out to do my sunrise run (running keeps me upbeat, sane and spirited, and I hope to do it as long as I can through treatment). My 2024 Bird of the Year was the Great White Heron and she guided me out with much fanfare at the end of December, as rare groupings would roost, follow and soar around me near the ponds and creeks that nestle the paths I run and walk on. When we are in sync with the universe, these unlikely nature events become daily miracles. I thanked the heron for her service because shewie, it was a tough year there at the end; and I hoped she became some other person's lucky guide. She got me this far. Way to go, Great White Heron!

It has been cold here on island and all bundled in my layers, hat, gloves, I rounded the curve out of the tiny lane I live on and there sitting silently under a stately live oak in front of someone's big house, were seven crows, watching me. My first thought was oooohhh nooooo! Harbingers of all things death, creepy Poe-esque mental explorations and certainly NOT what one wants through cancer diagnoses and treatment. But then I just stopped. And listened. I could feel the gentle pulse of my heart, my breathing; and the many years of work I've done on my feet allowed me to feel the asphalt steady beneath my minimal shoes. Beneath the asphalt, firm ground, roots and a rich biome of cells, fungus ... life. I stood with those crows for about five minutes, until my cooling sweat prompted me to get moving or start shivering. All the while, they were silent. What will they teach me this year? How will they guide me? I don't know, but it is up to me to listen. Truly listen. This was their first lesson: be silent, be still, open your heart, quiet the chatter. For there is no more vociferous and opinionated bird than the American Crow. Yet all seven showed me that there is also a time for silence.

In thanks, I gave them 8.00/lbs. big fat cashews that afternoon and those buddies ripped through a half pound of those nuts like nobody's business, lining up to five in their able beaks. We are getting a rhythm, the crows and me. As yet, their return gifts are very soggy and highly toxic sago palm fruits. But I do give them credit for trying. Perhaps it is a metaphor for accepting the toxity of cancer medication in the general scheme of treatment. If so, crows exceed human intelligence and imagination twenty fold.

Birds have always been a big part of my life. I draw them most days in random sketchbooks. One of my dearest loves in life was a Spectacled Parrotlet named Will, who I lost in 2015 after 16 years of blissful chirping, zestful vocalizations that were somewhere between human and digital; and his wondrous scolding of all the foster cats and dogs that came through my life on their journeys to adoption.

I was going to do some big prophetic artwork featuring the crow, but instead realized she was there all along, when I applied to SCAD for my MFA, here in the backyard on the island and again back when I lived in Illinois. I just have to listen.

The drawing is a composite of a whole bunch of avian drawings and sketches I have done over the years, from the domestics to the wild, I am so very grateful for their lessons and love.

Okay, off I go, into the dark of the morning, to run with the crows, embrace unknown, for as Danny Gregory ( https://sketchbookskool.com/ ) reminded me today in our class Creative License: "Shadows invite imagination ... reveal the hidden structure of things ..and are as much a part of the world as the objects themselves." As someone who loves all things yokai, myth and mystery and am currently reading the new translation of Haruki Murakami's The End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland” (with my friends at Book Oblivion https://bookoblivion.com/ ), this is GREAT news.

Shadows await!