Digging in the Dirt

Sometimes life throws you a few different strands all at one time and because they come close together they can touch and recombine and form a new piece of thread within the weave.

Thread One
I had an overwhelming urge to listen to a particular song on the way home, Peter Gabriel's Digging in the Dirt. It had been an interesting day, lots of stress flying around and I wanted a high energy song to shout out the lyrics to on the way home. I find dark, emotional, loud music cathartic. They make me happy. All that energy and release. Not sad, not dark, not to me.

and I got to wondering about the lyrics. It has two distinct emotional overtones. One angry, raging and the other softer, melancolic.

Something in me, dark and sticky
All the time it's getting strong
No way of dealing with this feeling
Can't go on like this too long

This time you've gone too far
This time you've gone too far
This time you've gone too far
I told you
I told you
I told you
I told you
This time you've gone too far
This time you've gone too far
This time you've gone too far
I told you
I told you
I told you
I told you

Don't talk back,
Just drive the car
Shut your mouth
I know what you are
Don't say nothing
Keep your hands on the wheel
Don't turn around
This is for real
Digging in the dirt
Stay with me, I need support
I'm digging in the dirt
To find the places i got hurt
To open up the places i got hurt

The more I look, the more I find
As I close on in, I get so blind
I feel it in my head, i feel it in my toes
I feel it in my sex, that's the place it goes

Digging in the dirt
Stay with me, I need support
I'm digging in the dirt
To find the places i got hurt
To open up the places i got hurt

Digging in the dirt
To find the places we got hurt
Digging in the dirt
To find the places we got hurt
Digging in the dirt
To find the places we got hurt
Digging in the dirt
To find the places we got hurt

And I started to get bits of meaning and so I read other people's interpretations online and I have a slightly different view on it.... (not veyr different but just a little). Cycles of abuse. Abused become abuser. The angry bits are him as abuser and abused both at once. The sadder parts are him as himself, dealing with and looking at himself.

Then I watched the video.



and it makes me think further on this. There are sequences with him as an adult, swatting flies around a woman, which looks very like domestic violence. There are sequences of him as a child, a victim of an adult, just like him. The child becomes buried in the dirt. There are also sequences of him as an adult buried in the dirt. At one point, mushrooms grow above him and spell out help. It all speaks so loud to me.

The chains of karma. But the thing about this song is that it is a cry for help, for change, for the breaking of the chain. It is a release. A breaking of the chain. In the video, the man ends up on top of the dirt, wearing a bright white suit. Clean. Free. I know many people find this song dark but I never have, there is a joy in that breaking of the chain, a less than shining joy, but a joy all the same.

Thread 2
And then i read the lovely Suzi's post of today. Ah karma...... breaking those chains. it helped me understand the song, put the pieces together. It made me think about my own life too and some of the things I have read about karma.

Thread 3
The Deverry books by Katherine Kerr are a fantasy series, a long one. They tell the story of a group of souls that reincarnate and slowly work through the karma of a situation that was mishandled in one of their lives together. The thing is, that original situation and it's effects has a ripple effect outwards, so there are a whole host of situations that develop as a result throughout their lives and those ripples impact others and further than that, countries and..... The stories are a celtic knot, the lives flowing through and around, back and forth.

So where does this leave me? What am I thinking about right now? I am wondering if the chain of my own abuse is alive and well or if it has been broken. I wonder at that chain, I think the link had already been weakened by the actions of us both in previous lives or maybe as a result of the ay we chose to live in this life. It could have been worse.

it's effect on me though was pretty catastrophic. I turned to drugs to disguise the fact my world had fallen apart, nothing in it really made sense any more. I eventually had a nervous breakdown and my glandular fever / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome flared up again. I got help and I read and I rebuilt my world, block by painful block. Being a logical sort, I had to reconstruct my understanding of how the world works. That narrow Christian ethic I grew up with had made my world too black and white to cope with grey.

I have reached a point where the memory no longer hurts. Where the changes in my life wrought by the consequences of it have ceased to be negative and i can see they have bought me to be a person I am happy with, living in a way I am happy with, and my life is pretty good. and I would not be here without that one singular event. Is this enough to break the chain? Is this forgiveness?

but the dirt, it clings. It is hard to let go and where does the dirt end and me begin? Am I raggedy tree climbing urchin with dirt on my chins as I climb the tree of life? Or do I need a damn good bath still, to make me clean? the effects linger on, maybe they always will. F and I feel their echoes in our relationship, the difference is love and care. Those ripples are something we face together as best we can.

I am not sure I will ever be able to listen to Digging in the Dirt in the same way again. i won't enjoy it any less. I may even enjoy it any more, as i belt out those words. release. clean. free.