“What does your animal soul call for?”
- T. Thorn Coyle (@WeiserBooks)
“What does your animal soul call for?”
- T. Thorn Coyle (@WeiserBooks)
In response to a deep, inner call to cultivate my creativity, I’ve rented a small room not far from our home and designated it my sacred, creative work space. This evening, after an emotionally exhausting funeral ceremony, I headed to my new space with three buckets of paint, Ashana in my headphones (thank you @mysticmama) and a sense of purpose in my heart. I was going to transform this small, simple room, with its white walls and florescent lighting, into something that looks and feels like cinnamon toast tastes; sweet, comforting, earthy.
My animal soul, or as Thorn puts it, “the part most closely connected to [my] body and [my] instincts, the part that runs and rests and plays and even engages in work for the sheer physical satisfaction of it” – this part of me does not long a run down the beach, or a lazy-evening snuggle under the covers. No – my animal soul craves color, rhythm, sound and cross-sensory experiences. My animal soul watches jazz melodies splatter streaks of neon across stretched canvases to the sound of bare feet stomping on rich, dark, life giving earth. My animal soul is a brick oven; a steel drum. My animal soul grunts, and growls, and howls at the dark sky, calling back the moon from her hiding place.
My animal soul is most open to this blessed chaos if I create for it a den, a cave in which it can light its fires and carve its stick figures into the walls.
Lucky for me, I found a cave with a month to month lease.
Thorn writes in the last section of Chapter 4 the following account of how she interacts with a new environment:
“Upon entering a new place, I always strive to introduce myself to the energies there. If there is time, I spend long moments in meditation, sending out tendrils of my life force into the land and sky, getting a better feel for the space and the beings that reside there, and noticing what is different from my home. This introduction also gives me a sort of permission to be there, and my time there is more joyously spent.”
It was in this spirit that I worked tonight, painting walls new shades of color, chanting along in an unknown tongue, introducing my sounds and smells and weight to the space which is fast becoming a sanctuary for my animal soul. Tomorrow morning, I shall head back and finish what I started. And once the paint is dry…
I will unleash the beast.