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Following the Map
by Deena Metzger
The archetypal situation and the mythic realm hover around the perimeters of story. Even at the edges of the most prosaic situations, myth shines, like a corona of light emerging from an eclipse.
Living in terms of myth not only redeems our lives at the end but helps us along the way as we encounter the difficult and unexpected. The mythic story helps us particularly when we are suffering, though living the myth may also shatter us before we are made whole. There is no journey without myth, but also there is no journey without some measure of suffering.
Once when I was in great despair, my friend Corey Fischer, of the Traveling Jewish Theatre, turned to me and said, “Oh, yes, I know how you feel. You’re in the desert.” This statement led me to discovering how to work with myth. As soon as he spoke, I knew that I was, indeed, in the desert. I was in dryness. My spirit was parched. I was surrounded by barrenness. I was besieged by the very particular phantoms, devils, and invisible torturers who reside in the arid wastelands.
When Corey located me in the desert, I felt what Edmund Wilson called “the shock of recognition.” From then on, I was able to gain perspective; I was no longer in despair because I knew the myth behind it. I knew that one stayed in the desert a long time, the symbolic equivalent of forty years or forty days depending on whether one was remembering the story of Moses or of Christ. And though I didn’t aggrandize myself by identifying with either of these mythic figures, I was able to examine each of their paths to see how I might learn from their ordeals. Their stories became blueprints that could be followed as necessary. I investigated desert stories, desert myths for clues as to how to proceed.
I knew, for example, that some of the Israelites made it over to the “Promised Land”—every word of the story began to resonate for me with symbolic content— but many did not. The Israelites were kept waiting in the desert until a new generation was born that was uncontaminated by the past life. I knew by this that I had to give up much from my former life before I could begin a new one. I remembered the anger that had prevented Moses from entering “the land of milk and honey,” the land of fulfillment and peace. From this, I learned that I had to be careful, to watch out for anger, impatience, and despotism. I knew that I must not “strike the rock” or its equivalent unless I was willing to stay in the desert—in my emptiness and despair—forever. I had to endure thirst. I had to remember that I had been given “manna” before and that I had to divest myself of the influence and impact of Mitzra-yim (Egypt), which means the narrow place.
According to the Christ story, I understood the desert as the place where one’s faith is tested, where one is tempted, is led astray spiritually. These signposts were very helpful. Suddenly, there was a road through the desert where there had been no road before. If I was careful, I might come to the end of the dry time.
I began to write. I imagined myself in the desert, then developed a story of a woman who was lost there. Questions came to me, and I was respectful of them even though—or especially because—I had no idea where they were leading. I wrote them down, mused over them, imagined scenarios that might answer them. I tried to answer the questions by writing little stories or vignettes. I kept what desert myths I knew in my mind, musing on them as if they were koans. I allowed myself to fantasize archetypal characters. I asked what might be considered archetypal questions:
How is a woman confined in the desert different from a man confined in the desert? Who are the gods of the desert, what are the forces and energies I must deal with? Who and what needs to be honored here? Does a woman come to the desert as Moses did because she has been given a task to do? Or is she, like Moses’s sister Miriam, exiled there like a leper? Or does she, like Christ, come there to confront her demons and deepest self?
Why was I in the desert? Had I been taken prisoner there like Joseph? Or had I come there deliberately? Was I on retreat or an outcast? Was I alone or was I with others?
These questions and others persisted for a long time. Then circumstances intervened—or so it seemed. A friend asked me the meaning and origin of my name. I began to think of the story of Dinah, my namesake, Jacob’s daughter—a myth I hadn’t thought about before. I imagined her in the desert. This fascinated me.
Eventually, I began pursuing Dinah’s story exclusively. She filled my imagination until I was no longer content just to think about her. Then, I took myself to the actual desert. In that moment, I began enacting in life what I already perceived was being enacted in my imagination—the voluntary immersion in the desert of body and spirit. What is the story and meaning of your name? How has the story of your name affected you? Are you living out its story?
I traveled to Israel, to Sinai where Moses had spent forty years, to the Mount of Temptation where Christ had wrestled with Satan, and to Shechem (or Nablus) where Dinah had been born. I thought, “This is where my psyche was formed; this is the geography of my ancestors.”
Perhaps you already know your inner landscape, the piece of land that speaks to you as if you belong to it. Or perhaps you locate your story in a particular geography because of an unexplainable affinity with it. Identify the geography of your imagination. What story or stories might you be living out because of this affinity?
If you had to locate yourself on a landscape at this moment, what would be the geographic equivalent of your state of mind? What story emerges from this location?
Standing among the stones in the hot sand, I felt a hidden part of my psyche unfold. I began to understand why I, who had been born by the sea in Brooklyn, was living so happily in the dry hills of California and why I presumed I could call this landscape my own.
Then I heard a voice speaking inside of me. I recorded what it said: My name is Dinah. It is a desert name…. Do you know about names?…A name is alive, has a life far longer than a life. It persists in its own form, drags itself through the centuries…. Once I did not exist, but afterwards Dinah exists for all time.
Now I was determined to find out what the desert meant to me, to me as a woman, a contemporary woman, a contemporary American Jewish woman. I struggled with this question for nine years. In the course of questioning, I was able to leave the inner desert, or perhaps it is more accurate to say I learned to see the desert. I found the life force there, its nuances, varieties of vegetation, its animal life, its night sky.
To find my story, I had begun with myth because there is a time when one is grateful for the map and follows it rigorously. But afterward, having acquired more confidence, one goes off the road, explores, wants to find one’s own way. As much as I might have been following the route of the Israelites to reassure myself during a dark time, I was also trying to find my own story and where it differentiated itself from the collective tale.
– Deena Metzger, Writing for Your Life
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