Moles

On my morning walk, I noticed the neighbor’s new lawn, painstakingly scraped of crab grass, tilled and planted about a month ago, now has a stubble of pure emerald lawn, as neat and suburban as you could hope for -- and this morning, there are five ugly molehills, like blackheads on smooth skin.

There were no molehills previously, so I can only assume they loved the softer, tilled dirt, and are having fun in their new playground. For me, it was a perfect symbol of the individuation process -- after a loss, after a shock, the ground is churned up, but we try to smooth our outer veneer, try to “start again” with a nicer persona, maybe with a new group… and in the unconscious, the moles are making tunnels, and overnight some ugly, ancient memory or emotion has surfaced, all the more obvious in the polished outer veneer. The unconscious cares not for lovely lawn; perfect surfaces are irrelevant. The rich compost thrown up by the digging is the essential element, and no dismay on the ego’s part will dissuade the digger. Stamping down on the mounds just pushes it up elsewhere.

Some people do go to extreme lengths -- flooding, poisoning or dynamiting one’s unconscious via substances leaves poisons in the soil, even if it succeeds for a while in stopping the mounds. Trapping (dealing with individual issues) works more efficiently, but it may be that what is needed is simply to accept that we have moles. Or rather, we have the kind of soil that moles love. And is that so bad? Does that not say that our unconscious is fertile soil? Perhaps the solution is to plant a flower garden, but then, I hear moles love flower roots… so… how to live with moles?

On this, my 52nd birthday, after a very hellish year that saw most of my creative outlets destroyed or cut off, I am learning to live with my moles. I feel a bit like a mole coming up for air… hopefully not as blind, but certainly tunneling my way towards something unseen, unknown. Today, in a wonderful affirmation and synchronicity, I will be taking a step toward a new future, tunneling however blindly, toward a new garden. Re-starting my blog is a part of this… the rest remains to be seen.