Purification By Deluge

My evening is halted by a violent storm. Best thing for me, really.

And now for something totally different! I mean, not really. It’s still me doing my drowned rat impression in the middle of a storm. At least this one is literal thunder and lightning. But yeah, after all that?! Let’s go back to a few months before my car wreck and take a peek at some of the awesome stuff that would help weather it.

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A mighty show

Summer 2000
27 years old

It’s raining tonight. No, it’s not just raining. It’s streaming in sheets. The deluge is flooding everything in sight, and growing worse by the hour. The wind tears through the trees, downing pavilions and forcing people to duck their heads against the driving gales. As we all made for cover, we huddled into the hoods of our cloaks and turned our faces aside just to keep breathing.

There was supposed to be a party tonight with drums and a bonfire and dancing beneath the stars. I need that party. But the stars are all hidden, blanketed by a growling cover of clouds. Lightning rips open the dark; thunder shakes awning and tree. I can feel the closest strikes in my teeth.

Everyone in my camp has ventured out to find a big, cozy tent in which to pass the evening together, but I am not in the mood.

I don’t want to puppy pile.

I don’t want to be touched and petted and cooed over by people I don’t know.

I don’t have any patience to plaster on the polite smile and be nice, weathering Cuddle Culture expectations that pressure me to get all snuggly-wuggly with strangers or people I know way too well to ever want to snuggle-wuggle with them.

Even those I do know and adore, I can’t stand the thought of being cramped up against each other as our bodies turn the atmosphere…fragrant.

I really don’t want to see another fucking cloven fruit tonight.¹

Ever since we arrived at this campsite, what I’ve wanted—no, what I’ve needed was a cathartic night at the bonfire, exorcising my frustrations, my grievances, my uncertainties into the flames. To drown myself in the driving rhythms of the drums. To absorb the fire’s energy and blast these torments out of my heart once and for all.

I need purification by fire.

Why would the weather cooperate?

I guess all it heard was “drown myself.”

So now I’m hunched on the bed, scribbling out my frustrations into my new journal. Even this isn’t cathartic enough. It’s actually just pissing me off more, so I slam the notebook closed, throw down the pen, and stare up at the ceiling of Thyrra’s pavilion.

The canvas is downright rippling. The lantern flutters—almost gutters in the draft from the door, making the shadows on the walls dance.

I want to dance.

I need to bound and pant and twist and throw my arms to the sky. I need to work myself into a frothing frenzy of skirts, sweat, and whipping hair, but no! I’m freaking cooped up inside, all dressed up and nowhere to go. I’ve got my favorite coat on—the brandy-new earth-toned one with the belt-of-many-tassels. The longest tassel in back resembles a big fluffy tail.

The tail of a great cat.

I love the way it swishes when I sway. I’d wanted to swish it in front of him. Flick it at him as I flick him out of my heart once and for all.

How long can I go on like this? Attached to him with an unbreakable cord, yet receiving nothing but a constant trail of bread crumbs in return. A little tug here. A little jig-jig there. That casual email exchange. That agonizingly sweet connection during a four-hour layover on the way back to visit my parents. That fucking phone call. You’ll never believe what I dreamed about you last night! Uh-huh. Sure.

Scraps.

Interactions that all culminate in a great big pile of nothing.

Nothing but heartache.

He’s always so cold, so distant.

Except when we’re alone, of course. He can never admit to anyone how he feels for me—unless he’s tanked. This morning, Valentino told me that The Great Wall had actually moped in his beer last night when he learned that I was right here in this campsite. Totally mooned on Val’s shoulder. “The one that got away.” That’s what he called me.

Yeah, I’ve heard that before.

And even if I am, what does it matter? He’ll never do anything about it. He’s still here in Minnesota and I have a whole life in Colorado Springs and there is no way I am ever moving back here.

Of course, he just looooooves Colorado…loves to have the excuse to visit there…

Jig-jig, tug-tug…

Fuck’s sake.

Thunder booms, rattling the dishes on the table and making me jump.

At least it startles me out of my moonless mooning. My stupid swooning.

What is that even about?

Habit? Self-sabotage? Or is it just an easier pain to deal with than the other one? The closer one. The confounding one in my backyard that could actually become something If Only. He keeps trying to convince me to give it all another try. The SCA. This thing that’s between us. Whatever it is that neither of us can seem to let go. Plus, he’s an Outlander so…

If Only.

I huff out a sigh, cross my arms over my chest, cross my feet. Scowl. I cross them the other way but that doesn’t feel right either. What a waste of a perfectly good night and a perfectly good dance coat and perfectly good swish-tassels to be drowned out by rain, godsdammit friggin’ bullshit storm!

I’m a bullshit storm.

As a gust of wind pummels the tent, the doorway blows open, strains the ties, then flops closed with a rustle. Yet in that second, the cool, wet blast strikes me across the cheek like Hey! Thunder wasn’t enough for ya? Wake up!

I blink hard and shake my head. Stare at the door. Blink again. Why in twelve hells am I in here sulking? Why are human beings so daunted by one of nature’s most frequently occurring, innate phenomena?

Um…maybe because lightning can kill you?

It’s not even thundering overhead anymore. I could totally—

What if another round rolls through?

As if being in here under a tall pavilion with a peaked roof held up by a pokey metal spike under some of the tallest trees on this hillside with only some paltry canvas between me and the storm is all that much safer…

Mostly it’s just keeping me dry.

A scene from a movie flashes through my mind. A man who went out and lived in the jungle with gorillas. As he was being absorbed into the gorilla clan, he sat in the rain, miserable and wet. Sheltering his head with a huge leaf, he blinked every few seconds as the rain water gathered atop his covering, then dripped off and splashed him in the face.

But then he glanced around at the gorillas, sitting so comfortably and undisturbed in the downpour. He eyed his leaf. Suddenly, he threw it away and sat there, smiling in delight as the natural rainfall enveloped him, no longer harried by the large droplets from his makeshift shelter.

With my heart on fire and feeling way too cramped, I roll off the bed and splash down. The rain that has seeped in to drown the carpets pierces an aching chill through my bare feet. One more reason not to stay in here.

I throw off my dance garb, put on my lightest harem pants—the silver ones—along with my bikini top, my fighting boots (I don’t bother with socks), and my woolen coat. Such an Outlander garment. It’s nothing but a huge, trimmed rectangle, split down the center-front and sewn at the sides except for holes through which to stick my hands. The dancer who showed me how to make it called it an “abaya.”²

In an exhilarated snarl, I blow out the lantern and stride into the torrent.

The wind hits me like another slap in the face—the good kind. The kind that wakes you up to life when you’ve been sleepwalking.

I think I’ve been sleepwalking for years.

Wrapping my fists into the wool, I pull the coat closed around me and stride into the night. There’s no one about, no torches or fires to guide me through the gloom, but after a few moments, my eyes adjust to the darkness.

I make my way past several camps, and finally find a huge, long tent that’s lit up. The rising and falling hum of voices and boisterous laughter sounds from within. The entry flaps aren’t tied shut, so I call, “Huzzah?” At the return, “Huzzah!” I poke my head inside. I recognize all the faces, but none that I know well.

One of the men near the doorway bolts up and bows low. I’m not going to tell you who he mistakes me for, in spite of the fact that I wear no coronet on my drenched head, and I look nothing like her. That would derail the tale too much to explain. Rest assured, it’s a moment of ridiculata and just serves to hammer home how much I need to shed, even from my friggin’ aura at a glance.

Upon realizing who I am not, and who I actually am, he bows again, saying, “Be welcome, good Lady,” as he ushers me inside and offers me a seat.

As everybody shifts to make room for me, I swipe a hand across my face to wipe the sheen of rain out of my eyes, and sit down with them. I share a bit of mead, enjoy a few stories. Several of the men are bards, several are fighters, and they’re all spinning the yarn.

I can tell within a moment. This is not where I want to be.

After awhile, I politely take my leave and venture back into the storm. The lightning is farther off now, and the rain is merely steady instead of pummeling.

Continuing down the muddy road, dodging the biggest puddles, I glance at other tents, listen to other voices coming from within. Laughter, guffaws, general hubbubs.

Do I want to go in? What am I looking for out here? Squashing my lips together, I realize that I’m probably looking for him.

Ugh. Why?

What would I possibly want to find him for?

And anyway, he’ll be surrounded by his entourage of my former friends. More like my frenemies, a few genuine enemies, and some perfectly nice people who like me well enough, but think I’m off my rocker for ever dating him because they’ve known him way too well, for way too long.

Not where I wanna be either.

So I snap my head forward and stomp on, ignoring the beckoning light, the dry warmth of the revelers, and the cheery laughter.

I finally find myself approaching the end of the encampments where the road makes a T. The left branch will take me down the hill and around the bend to Brine & Bread, the resident tavern. The right will lead me toward the broad, empty stretch of the battlefield. Behind me lays a fruitless trek through camps, searching for a friendly face in a world that is no longer my home.

Why did I come to this event? I don’t even have a membership anymore. I should have just spent this trip visiting my family and my friends at their homes, not at an SCA event.

But no, I’d thought I could kill many birds with one stone—see numerous people at one site that I haven’t seen in ages. (And what? Have a chance at interacting in person with him? Oh, yes, because we all know that my luscious lips and curvaceous hips will snag him any day now and I might be able to win him back, ooh-la-la!)

Gag me.

If I were to analyze things honestly and objectively, I would never want him back. I have no idea what kind of man I would want to be with now, but it’s not him. All this soul-searching I’ve been doing…³

I’m beginning to think it’s not anybody I’ve ever met. That it’s someone vastly different from anyone I’ve ever been with.

Lightning illuminates the meadow before me for a brief second, flashing the vision of the covered stage and the forest behind it.

There.

That’s the place.

Striding across the slick grass, I climb onto the stage and find a chair beneath the arched awning. I slump down upon it, wrapping my abaya closer as I stare out into the night, chewing over thirty-three varieties of WhatTheFuckAmIDoing.

I have other memories of this covered stage in the woods. Beautiful memories. Dancing, learning finger cymbals, showing younger girls new moves to the grainy music of bards-in-a-box (an old tape player that ran on batteries because there aren’t nearly the number of drummers in Northshield as we have in the Outlands). That night, numerous people in festive colors swirled around this stage in a court dance to the gay music of actual bards.

I was one of them, and I laughed and frolicked all night.

Then there’s the last time I sat here.

He and I went for a midnight walk. We ended up sitting on this stage in strained silence, not knowing what to say to each other. I tried to talk to him. Couldn’t reach him. I wrapped my arms around him. It was like embracing a statue.

Smooth, classic beauty. Hard and immovable.

Tonight, my testy gaze slides onto the spot where we sat. The stage floor glistens with rain now. Everything glistens, except for this narrow, dry strip beneath which I hunker under the band shell.

I need to reclaim that spot—to reclaim myself. My heart, my soul, my precious cup, that part of me I bound to him and that should have been shed so long ago. The part of me I poured into my first dance scarf when I turned it into my favour. The parts of me I’ve bound to every guy I’ve ever told, “I love you.”

I need to take it all back.

Bounding up from the chair, I stride to the edge of the stage where a beautiful man turned to stone in my arms. I face into the lightning and thunder. The clouds roil above, gray and black and blackish-gray. Out yonder over the treeline, another jagged flash rips the sky apart. It slams back together with a deafening boom.

I throw my arms into the air, fingers spread wide. I bellow back, straight into the gale. The wind tears at my hair and whips my coat back from my body. Rain pelts the bare flesh of my abdomen, chest, and face with a thousand tiny needles.

My mouth cranks open for another scream—this one from depths of my guts! But before I can inhale, the water pours down my throat. I almost cough, but it drenches my lips, quenches my thirst. I hadn’t realized how parched I am.

Take that as you will.

A laugh burbles up out of me, and I drink and drink and drink it all down. My gulps are ecstasy. The facial scrub is bliss. Shaking my head like a big dog, I relish in the sensation of my hair flying out in all directions. It splatters against my face, peels back off, splatters somewhere else. It makes little stinging sensations with every flick of the drenched locks.

Chest thrown open wide, I heave in a breath and let the rain course over my heart as if the water could soak through my skin, through my ribcage, through my body to cleanse me soul-deep.

Another bolt flashes. Another rumble rolls across the land.

“AAAAAGH!” I thunder back at the sky, my voice torn from the depths of my rage.

“AAAAAGH!” I scream into the night, echoes of all my frustrations and self-doubt.

“AAAAAGH!” I belt out, hands clawed and torso wracked with all the grief inside me.

Then there is only the sound of the rain and the wind.

Hushed. Muted.

Calming.

I stand there panting in the downpour for a long time, my arms dangling from their sockets, my hands limp. My face remains tilted upward toward the sky. I am a sponge, absorbing the cleansing drops into every needful pore. In the black behind my closed eyelids, I see the brilliant flash, hear the rumble without giving reply.

I take in one more deep breath. Slowly open my eyes. Blink against the rain. Letting out a long sigh, I smile and gave thanks to this storm.

Then a ravenous leer overtakes me.

I jump down from the stage and make for the road. Turning right and heading down the hill, I walk as a woman renewed with my chin high. I can feel it in my eyes. They’re alight in a way they haven’t been in ages. A smile tweaks at the corners of my lips as—

Crap.

I skid to a halt.

At the bottom of the hill where it curves around, the way is blocked by an immense puddle. More like a miniature lake that spans the entire breadth of the road and into the thicket flanking the right side. The left side is flooded well into the campsite.

I balk at the edge of the water. I’m flooded, too—all over again with disappointment. I want to traverse this road, dammit! I don’t want to go back up the hill. I’ve already been there. I’ve already done what I needed to do up there, and now I need to go forward.

Fuck this.

Gritting my teeth in a thrilled grin, I wind the hem of my abaya around my forearms, pin it to my sides, and tromp into the middle of this impromptu lake. The water is up to my knees, nearly to the tops of my thigh-high boots. I do not care.

Plunging and stomping, I wade across, relishing in the heavy pull at my footsteps, the volume of the splashing sounds, and the sheer audacity of my decision.

In one section, there is a bit of current beneath the surface where the water races downhill into the foliage. I have to plant my legs far apart to keep my balance. Bracing myself, I forge on, clenching my teeth and growling in energized determination. This deluge could drown me.

I know in my guts that it won’t.

At last, I step out onto the soggy dirt once more and let my coat tumble free—Moses emerging from the Red Sea. And lo, there was freedom in the Land of Milk, Honey, Brine & Bread!

With the amount of glee and triumph coursing through me, my face has to be lit up as I make my way around the corner to where the tavern stands.

I can only imagine what the few gathered people there must be witnessing as I materialize out of the darkness with my coat swirling around my half-naked body, the water and wind transforming my hair into a mane of little whips.

I bet I look more like Medusa than Moses.

Good.

Everyone halts their conversations to gawk. Eyes bug out, shift to the mini-lake behind me, then warily return to me.

Somebody voices everyone’s thoughts. “Where the heck did you come from?”

I plop down at a table, saying ever-so-casually, “Up the hill.”

“But—but how did you get here?” More swiveling heads. More screwed-up faces. “The whole road is washed out.”

“Yeah.” I fire off a narrow-eyed, reckless grin filled with all the feral instincts still surging through my veins. “I crossed it.”

More gawking. Even huger eyes. “You walked through that huge puddle?”

“You mean the miniature lake?” My grin grows wider to show off my teeth. “Hell yeah.”

They shake their heads and cast me looks that assure me how out of my mind I must be.

I know better.

I am fully in my mind and in my body for the first time in a really, really long, dark night.

Although I’m soaked through from the soles of my feet to my bare, dripping head, I am warm and invigorated.

I don’t stay and chat for long. I am insatiable for more tromping. I thirst for more Red Seas to cross. I yearn to be out in the Elements—to be as one of them, so I march from one end of that campsite to the other, laughing into the wind, drinking from the rain, hurling my yelps, growls, and bellows into the sky, and bandying philosophical discourse with the thunder.

UGH!
🔥🤘HELLS YEAH🤘🔥

Seriously. DUDE. How could I ever confine the tales of my life into paper or even an e-book now? That would mean I would no longer be able to introduce you to my greatest MUSE-icians and movement inspirations in all their glorious vibrancy, resonance, and kinesthesia.

My life is music, color, and movement. It is my breath. It pumps my blood. So I can’t truly share who I am without sharing what keeps me alive.

Wanna know more?

© 2009 Hartebeast

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RELATED POSTS:

I have a lot of history with storms, especially at SCA events. This is the one that almost killed me:

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If you haven’t seen, it’s Water Season over on Tinkerings. Water is the fourth Element in my System. This elemental exploration is all about the Mind, Flow Zone, Story, Meditation, and Navigation. Oh, yeah. And of course, Purification.

Elemental Water - Entry Portal

1. Some of you know what those are. Some of you even know about my history with the gorgeous little clove-stabbed oranges and how they’ve been used to steal sensual, physical contact with me, even after I’ve said NO. I love oranges. I love clove. I love play. But by the end of my days doing medieval reenactment in the SCA, I had come to dread the sight of a cloven fruit unless it was in the hands of my closest friends or somebody I was actually dating.

In the summer of 2000, I wasn’t dating anybody. In fact, I was blessedly single amidst a vow of celibacy. A year-and-a-day to get my head screwed on straight about what I wanted from that aspect of life.

2. Outlands: That’s SCA-speak for Colorado, New Mexico, and their borderlands. My new home out west had a lot of Middle Eastern personas and influence in its regional cultures. In contrast to where I came from: Minnesota, which is part of Northshield. A lot of Viking, Celtic, and Germanic influence there, naturally. In those days, there were many places up north that touted, “Belly dance?! We’ll have none of that here!” so becoming an Outlander allowed me to heave a sigh of relief.

Until politics happened. But that’s a completely different story. I’ll tell it to you someday.

3. All the soul-searching I was doing that summer: