Plangent

_{Plangent: striking, resonant. adjective; latin plangere – to strike. Striking the breast in grief, how women grieved. A plânge – romanian – cry, wail. Plan-gent. The throbbing of the human heart, a lover’s knocking at the door.}

Our bodies respond to the soil. Their life and chemistry changing shape according to the earth below. As if our soles send a message of our arriving.

Like a wild animal, ruptured from its habitat, I left my home at fourteen. My body was not accustomed to this new land, air so different. Heavier. Now I finally understand when they talk about connecting to your homeland. Resonance. Our cells resonate when we return to our grandmother’s village. When we are nourished with food grown by her, seeds sprinkled with awareness by her beautiful palms – maps to our own belonging. When I am near her, my body settles.

It took eleven years for this new land to accept me, a stranger. To soften her roots and open her paths to me, to allow her waters to fill this hollow cave-body.

In the exile I understood how adaptable we are, chameleons of fate. I understood there is a greater belonging than to land and to blood, one transcending the confines of what’s definable.

We are gardens – bearing fruit or composting, according to season. And when dried off of any miracles, our roots still hold below, connected.

Nature doesn’t hold on to her perfection. She’s all mud, decomposing matter, moss and decay, the trees are never aligned in a military construct. The paths are never straight. You’ll find no sparkles on the forest floor. We seek perfection in our bones and hide any crookedness, sculpted marble body lacking in feeling, numbed of sensations.

Did you know that weeds are healers? Small yet so resilient, they grow to heal the earth in places of wounding. No thing is random, no encounter accidental. No wounding an obstacle. No darkness lacks its purpose. No loneliness greater than the love that will follow it.