Wild Women
Sitting at my desk in my childhood room, all I could see was scattered flour, a cup of water spilt on scraps of paper, magazines torn into shreds and green paint gushing from the tube. My hands, coated in a muddy haphazard concoction, seemed to be conducting a messy alchemy free from my control. It was two o’clock in the morning, and anything that may have been happening beyond my trance eluded me completely.
A few days earlier, my longtime friend Keon and I were looking out to the rising sun, our bikes collapsed on the sand as we confided in each other a mutual lack of motivation for anything we undertook. Our drowsy, early-morning bike ride over the Lions Gate Bridge was an attempt to breathe some life into our mundane routines—or what felt like a long, uneventful blur stretching into eternity and then repeating again.
We could both feel the flames of our spirits dancing in gusts of wind, threatening to extinguish our already dwindling inspiration. Yet, we felt our friendship as a breath of fresh air, particularly in times like this. It was at its very beginning, many years ago now, that we had lifted each other from the grasp of self-doubt, high enough to overlook the barricade of depleting, prescribed expectations. But on this morning, we were face to face with it once more.
Keon is the type of friend who will never leave you without a book to borrow, a few personalized podcast recommendations, and a promise that it will profoundly impact you in some way. And it always does. She ceaselessly wears her heart on the sleeve of her tastefully thrifted cardigans, never having a filter for any enthusiastic declarations of gratitude that crosses her mind.She had just returned home from her second semester in another province while I was job hunting for the summer, gearing up to devote 40 hours a week to the service industry in preparation for my first in-person semester since the pandemic.After almost two years in front of my laptop; it was the first spring I'd dreaded the thought of summer. As if it were a reminder of my seemingly static youth rushing past me like the currents of a sweeping river. I hadn't journaled in weeks, severing the once-intimate connection I had with myself. I felt like a mere observer, watching life unfold before my eyes, detached from the narrative of my own life.
Attempting to blow at any remaining embers, I started reading Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes which had
inspired the spontaneity of our sunrise bike. Along for the day was a quote from the book that I could not shake off. It spoke of a personified ‘wild’ feminine spirit, unbound by societal conventions: a free, passionate, instinctual essence. I read the passage aloud to Keon, the new sun beaming on our faces as I attempted to translate each sentence of my French rendition.
Silence fell after I finished the page. We sat, green with envy, jealous of the ‘Wild Woman’. She was everything that we couldn’t find in ourselves. We had seen her before, but on this day she existed merely in the stories recounted of a simpler time.
* * *
It was May 14th, and weeks had passed since our early-morning attempt at reignition. Keon and I lay in our swimsuits on a giant boulder at the edge of a lake. The trees enveloping us performed dances for anyone still enough to watch, swinging to the rhythm of the bird's song and the hymn of the warm breeze brushing my face after an excruciatingly long winter. But even the still beauty of nature didn’t quiet my perturbed mind.
I wondered if the places I applied to had written back.
I wondered why I hadn't applied for internships like everyone else.
I wondered if it was because I couldn’t muster up any interest to pursue what I was actually studying.
I possessed an adoration for learning but was continuously plagued by anxieties that the path I treaded might stifle any creative spirit within me, one I had not yet unearthed. I’d always yearned for a life led by creativity. Yet, I was burnt out before having even tried. My thoughts were confined by the relentless scrutiny of how my every creative utterance would be perceived; with all attempts diminished to a snapshot of premeditated judgment in my mind.
My unease suddenly erupted into a belly laugh as I saw Keon spontaneously run towards the still water, leaping with a roar of laughter.
“How cold is it?” I yelled from a few feet above in between my cackles and amazement.
“It's not that bad!”
“Are you sure?”
“Okay, it's pretty bad,” she heartily admitted, gasping from the shock of the frigid lake. I let out my own cry, ran towards the edge, and everything went quiet. The water washed over me, exiling all the external noise from my mind as I emerged in a fit of laboured laughter.
“I wonder how long it would take to swim to the other side.”
I took a guess: “I don't think it's that far, maybe five-ten minutes.”
I've always had a problem calculating distances. I guess so did Keon.
“You think so?” She paused. “Yeah, that’s probably true.”
We looked at each other with a buoyant, childlike exuberance as we panted and treaded water, giggling under our breaths.
“Do you want to swim over to that boulder?” She proposed with a giddy smile. I looked across the water to spot a distant facade emerging from the water and into the forest and accept. We embarked on our expedition, pausing along the way to float on our backs in the tranquil water, nearly alone.
“Look at how green the trees are from here.” We both looked up. “It's just so nice…and so crazy we can just drive up here.”
“Do you want to swim over to that boulder?” She proposed with a giddy smile. I looked across the water to spot a distant facade emerging from the water and into the forest and accept. We embarked on our expedition, pausing along the way to float on our backs in the tranquil water, nearly alone.
“Look at how green the trees are from here.” We both looked up. “It's just so nice…and so crazy we can just drive up here.”
We were paddling slowly, considering our initial calculations and our interval moments of gratitude, but within twenty minutes, we arrived on the other side of the narrow lake. Out of breath. Panting worsened by our constant chuckles. Within seconds we were scheming to conquer this colossal rock like seasoned climbers. Keon had quickly found her route and was up in a matter of minutes, while I grappled with the challenge of locating a suitable foothold to lift myself out of the water's grasp.
“Okay, grab this ledge with your right hand and then bring your foot up right up here,” she pointed.
Keon was perched at the top of this grand facade, guiding me up her route with relentless encouragement as I ascended. Our bodies bore the marks of adventure, with scraped limbs and dirt beneath our fingernails, darting around barefoot at the forest's edge. We stood high atop the boulder, overlooking the lake and seeing the vast forest and mountains behind it.
We were buzzing with life. Our physical appearances held no sway over us; the streaks of mascara streaming down our faces while we laughed were of no consequence. The weight of the past and the expectations of the future were but distant echoes. I looked over at Keon, our legs covered in cuts and scrapes. In between our laughs and my concern for the small trail of blood running down her shin, I was struck by a realization:
We had found her.
***
I sat on my bed in the room I grew up in, replaying the events of the day. I had only been home for an hour when I received a message from Keon. It was a PDF document titled: The Day of Discovery: Fanny And Keon: May 14th, 2021. Upon opening the file, I discovered a poem—a reflection on our experience of that day. As I read each line, I felt as if it may as well have been extracted from my own mind.
I read it and re-read it again and again. As if a spirit had taken hold of me and possessed my body, I instantly printed it out and went rummaging around my desk, not knowing what I was really looking for. Laid out in front of me, I found myself with scissors, paint, a canvas, magazines, and brushes, but no glue. I suddenly thought back to the quote I read to Keon that morning weeks ago:
“Page twenty-one,” I spoke, “‘Sometimes a word, a sentence or a poem or a story, is so resonant, so right, it causes us to remember, at least for an instant, what substance we are really made from. These transient ‘tastes of the wild’ come during the mystique of inspiration. Then we leap into the forest or into the desert or into the snow and run hard, our eyes scanning the ground, our hearing sharply tuned, searching under, searching over, searching for a clue, a remnant, a sign that she still lives, that we have not lost our chance.’”
I breathed a sigh of relief. She still lived.
I recalled having made paper mâché with water and flour in elementary school and within minutes, I was tip-toeing to my dad's bread-making drawer in the kitchen and sneaking back as if I had pulled off a successful heist. Back at my desk, my hands moved uninhibited and my mind was erupting with ideas. I had constantly carried the spokesperson for judgment on my shoulder, the one who guides the strokes of my brush and manipulates the words on my page. But in this moment, I was alone.
After hours of ripping, pasting, painting and brewing my glue-like blend, I picked up the scissors and started to cut out a few lines from the printed poem.
These past months have milked us of every wild thought or entity we contained
I let it fall onto the desk and cut out the next line.
But today it emerged again, It emerged with a vengeance
I scattered them all over the canvas.
We arose out of the water with our eyes open
focused on one theme and one theme alone
It arose to my head only when fanny spoke those two words
It was now three in the morning and not a sound could be heard. Scraps of paper were everywhere, and the ‘glue’ was all over my desk, my hands, my face and my clothes. Flour was scattered on stacks of paper and my green paint had dried at the tube's opening.
I observed my dishevelled surroundings and stood up, stepping back to look at the entire canvas. I looked at the trees I had painted a vibrant green, the magazine cutouts of women dancing and my mind was back atop the boulder.
“Keon!” I had shouted. “Wild women! Wild women!" She had looked at me and let out an astonished, ecstatic cheer.
Looking at the canvas, I felt the first time I'd created something without inhibition—as if I had no prior knowledge—knowledge of good art, bad art, the rules I was breaking or conforming to.
I wondered why I ever thought that there were any.
I wondered how I could hold on to this innocence.
I realized the rules were as real as the judge on my shoulder and our barricade of expectations.
I sat in my eagerness and excitement at the thought of giving the canvas to Keon, as if I were anticipating a field trip in elementary school. It made sense. After all, my wild woman was just a young girl who had been waiting to be rediscovered.