My Muse Has Left the Building

Meditation in the North Woods From the ebook Encounters In Nature © 2011 B.T. Newberg

Last week I sat down to write and was struck by a horrible feeling. I didn’t like where my writing was going. Nothing seemed to work. My wife and best friend Saumya suggested I go back and re-read some of my earlier pieces (for completely different reasons) – I did. I began to feel that was the cause of my funk. I like to blame things on her, but really the blockage was all me. After writing The River is In Me, I longed to write more like it reaching for my departed muse; all my attempts failed.

There are some old pieces that moved me. I revisited: Crisis of Faith, There Is No Hell and My Other Family. Nothing seemed to work. I listened to Encounters In Nature, mainly because my friend Mauricio shared his feelings on it. Did it hold some kind of mojo I could tap into?

Replay complete: I’ve decided it’s time to take stock of how my life has changed over the past year.

When I encountered my Spirituality in the North Woods, I was an Oungan Sur Pwenn, still finding my feet (or perhaps my head) in Vodou. How different I was then.

The following month I initiated to Asogwe. My life begins to change; the spirits move me in new ways. They show me new aspects of the world beyond this one. The point where the water caresses me: they speak to me at campfires, at my altar.

Veves of a different nature Photo © 2012 Urban & Saumya Haas

With my trip to India I begin to see a new commonality between religions and practices. What is a veve? What does it symbolize? What do they invoke in me? How does meaning change?

In spring another initiation – this time I facilitate; my family grows.

In going back and listening to our words from the north woods, in reading the old posts, in the writing from the months that follow, I hear words and see meanings I swear were not there before. They take on new meanings and revelations. Those same words tell different stories. I’m not the same person I was then. If a look back a year from now, this post will look different.

This past year has brought me god parents, a birth mother I never knew, new children and now another father – my mother is engaged to be married in January. My family grows in unforeseen ways. I am fascinated on how life can change so much in so little a time. I have new stories to tell.

I’m still not happy with the words I’m putting down, but it needs to come out to make way for the new stuff that will follow.

Where am I going? Forward, into the unknown, but not alone.