Crypt Aurilla
In loving memory, on her birthday, of a force called Aurilla.
I learned that Aurilla had died of cancer upon receiving a call from her neighbor. He’d seen a postcard I’d just mailed her, saying I was heading out to CA and that I wanted to come see her…
He said she was very quiet about her sickness, as though suddenly she just wasn’t there anymore.
I’ll always remember my long, stunned stay on my couch after that call had ended.
When struggling intensely with my mind in my early 20s, I came to know Aurilla and Inan, two goddess powerhouses with whom I had the opportunity to dance in the basement of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine every Saturday morning.
It is as though these women were holograms, sent to heal me. To this day, I’m only mildly convinced they were real!
So we’d greet the parking lot peacocks, escape into the musty, haunted bowels of the structure, and dance out our every pain.
Aurilla was like a formidable but sparkling dragon with a peculiar form of psychic vision. She would speak to me of what she saw “happening” in me using an energetic vocabulary I could understand, twisted up beautifully like visual candy in its delivery.
She offered me trust. Trust that I could visualize my way out of hell.
And I did.
🌈
We all have that short list of names, from which we could never pick just the one. Together the names form the pillars of impact around which we will circle the rest of our lives.
For each revolution has us choose the right way to think, to act, to serve.
Aurilla is one of those pillars for me.
I learned how to retrieve and maintain balance in large part because of her.
She breathed her fire selflessly into me from a crypt, way back when. And to this day, though she is not here, I go there.
We are sharing a croissant among the birds before heading down the stairs to, ironically, climb a little higher inside.
So Happy Birthday to the Aurilla who is, unfailingly, still here for me.
I would say Rest In Peace, but I know she’d rather be dancing.
💚
Featured: Still from my “Butterfly & The Beast” box
