Thoughts From Golden Gate Park
Hannah Green
Image Amethyst Remembrance by Jeanie Tomanek
You must give birth to your images.
They are the future waiting to be born.
Fear not the strangeness you feel.
The future must enter you long before it happens.
Just wait for the birth,
for the hour of new clarity.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
It is Monday morning at 8 AM and I am writing this from the gardens outside the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park. The Dahlias have been cut back, all except for one pink solitary stalk which both promises and remembers spring. The sprinklers are dousing the misty air and the grass is gloriously wet.
This morning I awoke early and had to see flowers. I’ve been reading Mary Oliver poems and essays. My body wants grass, seashores, barking seals, flowers wet with morning dew and the conversation of birds.
My body knows what heals. My imagination know what heals.
Last night in bed I put down my book. I wanted to close my eyes and see how evocatively I could imagine an English garden or the California coast. Years of Jungian active imagination has asked me: how receptive can I be to images, body memories and the connection with nature I have inside? I slept well.
This morning I awoke with a sense of purpose. I visited my local coffee shop for only the second time in nearly a year, tipped heavily and drove to Golden Gate Park. Only 20 paces from Fell Street the park enclosed me in her green arms. This is another world from the bustling corner in the Mission we call home. It feels prehistoric. Birds fill the morning air with sound.
I drive so little nowadays that I have a nearly overwhelming sense of freedom when I get behind the wheel. Inevitably the song I am listening to makes me cry. I feel giddy and drunk with possibility. I feel as if have set off across the country just a few blocks from home. These days I don’t need to go very far to feel I've traveled a great distance.
It’s been nearly a year since the pandemic hit and I’ve been seeing clients at home, my husband and I more cocooned in our couple bubble than ever. It’s been glorious in many ways. As a sensitive person having more of an energetic buffer has been soul nourishing. I feel deeply connected to those in my life while at the same time submerged and steeped in my own energy and creativity. It’s a strange paradox and one I’m learning to live with.
I’ve learned to do depth work remotely. Clients tell me where to place the sand tray objects and we dive into the unconscious through text sent images and poems.
Sometimes the need to get in the car and traverse every inch of this earth arises from such a deep place inside me. My eyes fill with water and my body instinctively and hungrily makes it way to the park, to the beach or to the hill.
My body knows what to do: breathe the air, gaze at the flower, walk on the earth.
I am still in the cocoon. Transformation happens incrementally. Like drops of water change gathers and the washes us anew. I have time to answer this call to the wild and to explore the world with new eyes.
In the meantime I will listen and act locally. I will revel in these pockets of wildness in the city. I will sit in the park and feel the grass. I will close my eyes at night and enter the waking dream of nature inside my body.
I will breathe into the astonishment and wonder of change.