Foul-Weather Friends
Most of my closest friends are foul-weather friends; they're only there for me when I need them.
Understandably, as most of them are super-hero/ine-s of some sort or another, so their time is limited. They're often off saving other good folk, fighting the metaphorical and literal battles, growing the food to feed the people, nurturing the wounded, protecting the vulnerable and dispossessed, loving the world.
I'm fortunate to have such unavailable friends who insist on making meaning out of madness. Friends who live in a place called Miracle. Post code Fierce Love.
It is for all those friends of life that I dedicate this missive.
And perhaps I can be counted there amongst them, figuratively speaking of course since they are my EarthWideTribe and might only all come together at the same time in one geographic location should I dare to marry, or die, one day.
Not to make excuses, but instead to shine a brighter light on my erratic personal communications, if you wrote to me ages ago and are still awaiting a response, know that my absence in your in-box is not a slight but rather a compliment and a charge. Erroneously or not, I have deemed you as also super-powered and therefore not in need of my immediate communion.
Well, that’s the myth anyway. That those of us with extra are not in need. Could be extra anything—time, money, energy, health, love, land, friends... Still it’s a fallacy. Even though abundance to me is having enough to give it away, the renewed and renewable Source is essential. And a large part of what renews that Source is communion.
All else might be scarce, but at least we can put our noggins together and celebrate what is available while we conspire to co-grow the rest. Of course I mean plural - communitieS. The League of Environmental Avengers sometimes crosses over with the Nanas Who Nullify Negativity, the Mothers Against Genocide, and the Artists of the New Age, but rarely all together all at once. If ever.
The bat light was used to call one caped crusader into action, as needed. Broadcasting into the light-polluted night sky that injustice wrought upon the innocent was imminent and his super-powers were the only hope. The symbol of a bat framed in the circular light beam signalled that help was on the way.
Bats hang upside down, like babies ready to be born, yet with black leathery 6-pack abs and pointy ears. They locate their food by sound - airborne sonar bouncing off surfaces. A symbol of rebirth in some cultures, we can all be reborn in bat’s image.
We can all respond to the calls of distress.
Though, of course, not even super-folk are impervious to harm and distress themselves, so we must all retreat to the bat cave to recover. Hang upside down a while and let all the poisons drain out. Staunch the wounds. Feed the 6 pack abs.
And, in so-called reality, bats (or flying-foxes as one type is called here in Australia) live in communities called colonies or camps or clouds or flocks, depending on who’s speaking. Though this is my favorite by far - a cauldron of bats.
Who’s in? Who wants to be in the same cauldron of bats with me? We’ll hang upside down side by side, squeak and squawk a bit before settling into a daytime snore, then sound again as we alight into the night to settle the insect score. And pollinate the trees.
For more on these amazing creatures check out this site on the flying foxes of Oz.
To all my foul-weather friends gathering in the cauldron of bats, I love your agency and spirit, your dedication to life and goodness, your perfect power applied against the lies and low-ness. AND I miss you at the roost.
When shall we meet again wyrd sisters and brothers?
