Lupercalia 2012

So today is Lupercalia, an ancient festival known to be a rip-roaring good time. On this day when the Wild invades the urban landscape to reawaken it from winter's slumber I was thinking of heading to a local park and just having a good time enjoying the grass and trees and looking for the first signs of the Earth's reawakening. Today I am beyond dead tired, I was at work all night and I got no sleep. Two hour nap after shift didn't help much, but it's better than 0. I'm sitting here at a little coffee shop looking out at the grey sky, people wrapped up in themselves to stave off the cold and the sleepy looking buildings of the college campus in the distance. This city and myself could really use a band of men (and women) running around leaping, howling and laughing drunk on the invigorating power of the Great Golden Wolf.

I feel like amidst all this concrete landscapes and cultivated suburbs we've lost the Wild.  There seems to be this idea that it's some far away and untouched place where lions and tigers and bears rule as supreme heads of the food chain. It's a laughable idea now that we near or have surpassed 7 billion people. It's a lot closer than many seem to realize. It was just last year that I saw a turkey, a big old wild tom strut down the sidewalk near the Cathedral of Learning. A creature that was reintroduced to western PA in my mother's lifetime. I wish I had thought to take a picture, not many believed me, but trust me not much in an urban landscape can be mistaken as this distinctive bird. I've seen deer too hiding in the thickest parts of Panther Hollow, or wandering in Allegheny Cemetery. The Wild isn't far away, it's all around us, invading and adapting to our urban landscapes because there's less space for us all to share. Oh Diana, how are we to learn to live in symbiosis with your wild children before it's too late? How can we learn through you and Lupercus to accept the Wild around us and even inside us before we banish it to the lands of myth? How can we adjust to the changing boundary between the two?

Since I cannot find the energy to go racing around shrieking and howling in rapture of your awakening cry, I will devote my time to thinking on these questions and looking for the Wild all around.

Blessings,

Satiah