That Secret Water
To venture far beyond the boundary.
The Work is a laughably vague term for processing inner pain. Aside from the excellent 2017 documentary of the same name, it is virtually ungoogleable. When talking with people about my work over the years, I often struggle to give a succinct definition. Somatic emotional processing? Radical integration? A way to feel your shit? Like describing the smell of coffee, the work is experiential. It is described by the feeling of tightness in the chest, the constriction of the throat, the soft swimming of tears held tight behind the eyes. It is defined by the slow grind of systemic life change and fearless self discovery. It often involves a community hell-bent on mutual growth. It is navigating a world of impressions and stories and dreams to find the source of pain, of loss, of isolation, and sitting with that black, putrid thing until it soaks back in and becomes something else.
Years ago before I started the work, I had a dream that I was journeying from my hometown. Everywhere I stopped, I saw a life stretch out before me. After every vision, I kept walking. I visited cities, farms and cottages. I saw myself as a restaurant owner, a journalist, a lover, a father. One day I was walking down the road through a dense forest. A small clearing opened up and the dark woods stretched towards me with a seething, monstrous presence watching me just beyond the line of sight. Deep chills rose up my arms and down my spine. Against all logic I did not run. I stopped then, right there, and built a house with a porch facing those woods and I sat. I sat on my porch and held its gaze in the gloom. In my limited knowledge I thought this was enough.
It wasn’t until I joined in the work that I learned to get off the porch and pass the threshold of my yard, through the dense foliage to that place where that dark thing sat and waited for me all those long years. Patient.
A poem is read out to the inmates gathered for day three of circle in the documentary The Work:
The Well of Grief
“Those who will not slip beneath
The still surface on the well of grief,
Turning down through its black water
To the place we cannot breathe,
Will never know the source from which we drink,
The secret water, cold and clear,
Nor find in the darkness glimmering,
The small round coins,
Thrown by those who wished for something else.”
-David Whyte
On a rainy night in the great rainforest of the Pacific Northwest, surrounded by towering redwoods and five other brave souls, I slipped beneath the surface of my own grief. There, once again, I found myself in the twisting corridors of that house from my dream. I walked off the porch, past the wall of foliage, deep into the dark woods, where in a small clearing I found a black space framed in a mirror. When I passed through the mirror I found fragments of myself crystallized in frozen points of pain. I found myself as a child, confused and hurt. I found my father, silently sad behind his laughter, haunted only in his eyes and the pause after a word. I found my grandfather, a small and angry man made of bone and sinew who was then a boy himself, lost and confused and betrayed. I yelled out in rage until my tongue was dry and my lungs hurt. I clawed and ripped until my voice was bare. Fuck you dad, you never, ever loved me how I needed. Fuck you, Grandpa, you stole my dad’s capacity. Fuck this whole family. Fuck this world. Fuck anyone trying to help.
I can not breathe.
Suddenly then I am a conduit for my grandfather’s pain. My hands shake uncontrollably as massive waves of grief flow out from him, through me and into the aether and I am ragged, I am shredded as it pulls from my eyes and my lungs and my heart. I see my grandfather as a boy betrayed by his family. I see him as a young man killing thousands from a navigator’s seat high above the clouds. I see the church reject him because he was unfit. I see him start a family and I see my father as a boy, looking into that blackness and receiving nothing. I see my dad now as I remember. Eyes sad. Quiet. I see myself as a boy, confused and forgotten. Fucking lonely. How do I live in this world? Who is going to teach me, you fuck? Then I see my dad days before he passes. Shriveled with his head lagging down. Ravaged by ALS. I see myself standing before him one last time. I see his death and I refuse to accept it. We do not talk about it. His sadness mixes with mine and I drown. I drown for years. I see myself dragging him behind me. When I grieve my tears I grieve his as well. His sadness he gave to me to hold. I see it now, this awful multigenerational gift. I have been hugging it close for all these years.
For the first time in my life, I put it down.
I breathe deep. My grandfather, my father and I are standing on the porch amongst the redwoods. I am shirtless and drenched in sweat. A hard rain falls. No words are spoken. We are at peace. I feel a warmth in my chest that I do not recognize. I feel a sense of purpose growing up from my toes. I drink from that secret water, cold and clear.
This work only requires one thing: inner drive. Inner drive to take the first step, to stay committed, to seek help, to stay in community and most importantly to not run away. Be brave. I worked for years to get here and I have a lifetime left to go. As I knit this experience into my soul, I heal. New light continues to pour in. This is the ever-changing landscape. This is metamorphosis. This is the work as I know it.
