Dear You,

dear you

I know you know. I know you feel it too. It’s impossible to deny it, we are all tiny parts that make up an ever changing whole.

Some things should never and can’t ever be written down or typed into words on a screen. Some stories or ideas are meant to be passed on orally. Some things find their power expressed in ways without language. Shhhhhh…hush the chatter. The sublime and ridiculously mysterious experiences are intrinsically ineffable, so maybe don’t even try to explain them.

Sometimes trying to speak about an extraordinary experience diminishes its magic, taking it from the unknown realm of dark matter to the light of normal matter. Unutterable. Keep them close.

What is unutterable to you? Is it something so highly revered, so sacred that to utter a whisper of its majesty and it might cause your universe to (utterly) implode? What do you hold so sacred? Blasphemy! Sacrilege ! My friend Vezzo in Treviso taught me, as you do when you’re young and exchanging vocabulary that the worst words you can use in Italian are an insult to God. They come with a fine, perhaps even a curse. I daren’t write them here, even with an asterisk. Are your deepest darkest thoughts unutterable? Some things are better left unsaid. But bringing it to light can alchemise energy. What feels more powerful…praying in silence or praying out loud?

I wonder how often do you speak your truth? Speak truth to power. How often do you lie to yourself without even realising? If you lie to yourself you’re lying to others. My Mum told me humans have lost their telepathic abilities because they lie too much. I get it, it’s a garbled connection. Maybe most of us have lost the ability because we use a modern communication technology. Apparently lying is part of the developmental process…but do you believe everything you read? Did lying develop when we started to scribe ideas onto clay tablets, pen and ink onto papyrus…stories written, myths and tale, laws and sale of goods, forever imprinted?

Language came before our written words of course. We wanted to share and capture the messages, the stories, the downloads received and experiences we spoke of around the fire. Ideas became set in stone… designed to be permanent, and sometimes binding. There is something static and rigged about putting an idea down into words, it becomes frozen in time. The dead writers voice speaks from the page.

Our drawings, symbols, hieroglyphs and pictographic proto-cuneiform paved the way for the alphabet. As I write this letter to you on my tablet I think about those ancient cuneiform clay tablets, similar in size to my iPad and both used ultimately to share information. Our technology evolves but our human needs don’t.

Maybe you were the one who told me that 4,300 years ago Enheduanna was the first published author who put her name to her literary work. Isn’t it strange that not many people know that? She wrote temple hymns, poems and the first systematic theology, meaning she collated all philosophical, religious doctrines and teachings of the time into a coherent system showing a clear relationship and complete understanding of the concepts. Enheduanna the High Priestess wrote about Inanna (speak both of their names aloud with reverence and respect) the ancient Sumerian Goddess. She wrote about Inanna’s descent into the underworld and ascent to the heavens, her story is woven into the astrological movement of the planet Venus as it becomes the morning and evening star. Part truth and untruth maybe? She wrote of her creative process, comparing it to childbirth.

And so be careful what you wish for, it might come true.

This letter was getting too long so …TBC … it gets weirder

I remain most humbly your loyal friend in service

Erin

X