Jess Stein | Earth Pathways Showcase

Diary 2022

To bloom is to give in to chaos, to let go of the tightly ordered casing that held us back and held us in safety. Release and relief at being open to the sun. Exuberance. Ready to release invisible perfume. Welcoming each new stage of the season is welcoming chaos.

Spring rises like a green wave that engulfs the landscape. Weeds run wild, making new paths over the old land. The air is heavy with scent. Lushness. Wetness. Warmth.

The earth pulls me down towards her like a lover. She pulls me close to her pulsing green skin. Nestles me into the curves of her body. She beckons me to fall in love with her and with myself. She calls me to dance with bare feet on her green furred skin, each footstep a kiss.

Giving Into Chaos © Jess Stein 2020

I sense the witch inside me. I count back the generations, two, three , four and I think I see her. Nameless, she squats low to the earth, at home in firelight and song. Tangle-haired and wild-eyed. She is beautiful in her wildness but not clean. Dirty feet and fingernails unashamedly earth- coloured. She smells deliciously of herself. She is a virgin in the old sense of the word, before chastity came into it. She owes no obedience to anyone.

Her magic is made up of the beat of her blood and the ebb and flow of her breath. She tells secrets that make the air shimmer and shudder. Her silence sings to the moon. There is no shame in her wanting. The space around her is fleshy with her desire. Her wishes meet the air with a hiss of steam and return to her as flickers of intuition that guide her life like a glistening cord. Doubt is an unfamiliar stranger to her. She walks tall and meets all comers with a direct gaze. She knows well the mist of despair and the unsettling rumble of change and yet she laughs easily and lightly. She carries her own warmth, knowing that she can light a fire wherever she goes.

I mourn her although I never knew her. She haunts and blesses my life. In times of need I feel her fierceness and her certainty inhabiting my limbs, nudging me towards courage I could not otherwise know.