The Things We Fear

My head is still filled with a dream I had last night in which I encountered a pair of lions in Sacate Canyon. Mountain lions do live around here, though I have yet to glimpse one. I used to worry about the possibility of encountering one while riding my bike or walking alone in the backcountry, but after more than twenty years it’s never happened, and I don’t give it as much thought anymore.

In my dream, however, the lions I saw were not locals but African lions, including one large and sinewy animal with a full mane who looked like Aslan but without the kindly vibe. He was accompanied by an equally powerful looking lioness, and what these two were doing loitering near the creek was a mystery to me, but I froze in fear and tried not to disturb them.

You know how dreams include all these bizarre and disparate elements that don’tmake any sense?Well, somehow these two lions morphed into humans, but that did not even slightly mitigate my sense of vulnerability. I crouched in the brush, close to the ground, and as the two lion-humans foraged around, one of them, now a burly bearded fellow in a red jacket, unknowingly placed his paw-foot on my back, and I felt its claws digging into me but I tried to remain still despite my pain and terror.

And the funny thing was that I was both brave and afraid all in the same moment, both panicky and clear-headed. And when the lion people noticed me, I rose and stood as tall as I could and backed away slowly, then claimed the familiar path through the canyon leading back to my house. The dream proceeded in its crazy-quilt way and by morning I could not remember the specific developments that followed, only a sense of having survived.

So if the dream is a metaphor, I suppose it is about the things I fear, the inevitability of confronting them, and the way fear and bravery must, and do, coexist in each of us. I don’t know if it is because of the personal season of life I am in or the history that we are living -- and it’s probably both -- but everything seems intense lately, scary and challenging, fast-paced and unsettling. The economic and political landscapes are undergoing cataclysmic change. It seems our very culture is transforming itself, and frankly, some of this is good and over-due. (But it is easy to see how fear can manifest itself in hate; any Sarah Palin rally will do the trick). All in all, we are living in astonishing times, but we get to decide how we will face them.

And I am grateful to be among those bearing witness, to be present and a part of it somehow.

Which reminds me of a lyric from Joanna Newsom’s song about Bridges and Balloons: “O my love, it was a funny little thing, to be the ones to’ve seen.” Nothing too grandiose there, just funny and little, such human and personal terms. As one who has seen and is seeing, funny and little is how I often feel.

The other day my dear friend Vickie said, “I’ve been concerned about you. How are you doing?”

It surprised me how much I bridled against being a source of concern, and I tried to find the right words for how I felt, words that would be both honest and reassuring.

“No need to be concerned about me,” I said, “I’m just a little bit…baffled.”

But funny and little is better yet.

Then again, funny and little doesn’t begin to get at the fact that I can also stand up to lions. And that the world still dazzles me every time I step outside. And that I am inspired by greatness even in its tiniest incarnations, and I've learned to live with loss and ambiguity, and people send me poems.

And yes, I know very well the tremors of anxiety, but lately there’s been an old familiar flutter in my heart. I've been calling it hope.

What you fear, said my hero William Stafford, will not go away: It will take you into yourself and bless you and keep you. That’s the world, and we all live there.