Roar

I had a mala necklace for over ten years.

Recently, it broke.

I was unsurprised. We had been through a lot together. I was actually a bit relieved, you know, the way a person is when something old and unsteady and maybe a bit banged up finally fades.

I received the mala amidst some unusual circumstance some years ago at one of the Kansas City Psychic Fairs. It was after a boyfriend and I had broken up. We were still trying to remain friends at that point, and I tagged along with him and his mother. It was a tradition for his family to go, and when I was part of the family, I became part of that tradition. For what it was worth, I loved being around people like me—witches and shaman and spirits with our tarot cards and sacred stones and talismans—all in the open, all able to talk and be freely. In some sense, it felt more meaningful for me to come out as a spiritual person than it did as a queer person.

Most of the time, I enjoyed walking along and soaking up the energies at the fair. But that year was hard. Questions and confusion over the break-up swarmed my mind. My heart was a roaring hollow, too shattered to sense even the slightest of possibilities. I felt as though I had no place in the world, not even here. And I remembered thinking how strange it is that we often don’t know that the last time we share something with someone—a kiss, a laugh, a fight—will be the last time. And yet, I knew this was a last: This was the last time I would come here with the ex and his family. My heart just couldn’t handle it.

I was suffocating, and I kept slipping off to be on my own so that I could breathe.

Once, I went off in search of some stone or incense that would either let me bewitch the dude to bring him back or at least turn my heart to stone or something, not only so that I could stop hurting but also to keep me from making any more stupid human mistakes. At that moment, a scraggly fellow with a dirty face came jangling through the shuffling crowd. He wore ragged jeans and a pale blue canvas shirt that made him look like the ghost of Woodstocks past. He had a silvery-red, uneven beard and wiry hair that was crimped as though it had been braided at a time, but at the point of our near-collision it had given up on style, society and itself.

Suddenly, he appeared pleased with himself.

He looked me in the eyes with that soul-piercing gaze God reserved for His Only Begotten Son and a handful of people in the throes of deep psychosis. And then he took my hands.

“You need these,” he said. His voice quaked like distant thunder; and for a split-instant, I was sure he was on the edge of nirvana or simple disintegration.

His breath stung my eyes, I remember. It had that strange mix of flourish and languish, of life and death, as the scent of moth balls, sickly-sweet fungus, or old-lady vadge powder.

He thrust a fistful of what felt like pebbles into my hands. But they were too smooth. As I looked down to find the beads, he withdrew and went as abruptly as he had come.

At first, I panicked. I thought these were merely some handful of random beads. I cupped them tightly in both hands to keep from dropping them all over the floor. Then I noticed the tassel with the weird woven wheel hanging from it, the two strings of five beads hanging from that. They dangled like the tail of a baby phoenix from the bottom of my closed fist. I opened my hands and there, resting in the cradle of my quaking palms, was a necklace of wooden beads, each one inscribed with a symbol—kanji or something I couldn’t quite figure out in the moment because—

OH MY FUCKING GOD THIS MOFO STOLE THIS NECKLACE AND NOW MY QUEER BLACK ASS IS GONNA GET ARRESTED IN HOLY HELL, MISSOURI!

I looked around for Woodstock, but all I could hear was the ex telling his mother, “And this is why I had to dump his Black ass.”

This, of course, was my imagination running away with my sanity.

Of course.

Goddafuckinmercy.

My mellow officially chapped, my melancholy seared away by madness, I began to rush from one vendor’s booth to the other, in that same fast-walking manner as a mother who has lost her child in Target but doesn’t want anyone else to know. I was trying my desperate damnedest to find wherever Woodstock had poached these beads and pay for them before karma came for me.

“Fuck around and find out,” as the Scriptures say.

I found a couple of jewelry vendors, some bead vendors, some mala vendors… but none sold anything like this or even knew where one might get such a necklace. A few even wished it was something they had crafted. Having very little in the way of fucks to give about their self-esteem, I offered the necklace to one of them so they could figure out to elevate their craft, only for her to turn around and give me some nonsense about not wanting to interfere with what was clearly a gift from the Universe.

“Honey, I don’t think the Universe wants me to go to jail. It wouldn’t have made me this pretty.”

She laughed. I laughed. I wished beef broth upon her vegan chowder.

But I had wanted something for the heartache, hadn’t I?

“Really, Jesus?” I muttered. “Really?”

I believe the God of Infinite Names speaks and the Words can reach any of our senses at any given time. At that moment, a draft wafted into the place, raking in the mingled scents of patchouli, frankincense, and some manner of formaldehyde or perhaps cheese (I dunno). I believe this was Jesus having a gas at the idea that I would bring him a grievance involving Buddhist beads.

More people than I suspect would admit believe that where there is cheese there is Jesus.

Ten years later, it’s all chuckles, of course. At the time, however, a sister didn’t find it so funny.

But it did distract me from my misery, if only for a few moments. And when I returned to the ex and his mother, I was too busy thinking up how to conceal this potential petty larceny to even give my wounds a glance.

After I escaped the Psychic Fair, I began to read about the beads and to practice using them in meditation and, later, magic. The more I practiced, the more I learned. I learned the meaning of the symbols inscribed on the beads. I learned that the beads could be infused to enhance their use as a tool of concentration and conjuration. I learned that I liked to wear them looped five times around my left wrist, not as a fashion statement but because they helped me feel more grounded on this planet and like maybe I belonged. Each bead symbolized a breath or a mantra to be recited silently when I meditated; and each loop around my wrist was an empowering thought, spoken only in the heart. The mala was bound by silence. And in that silence, I found comfort. And in that comfort, I found solitude. And in that solitude, I found strength.

But, most importantly, I found myself.

My mala broke as I found myself time and again asked by the Universe to bring forth treasures—treasures that I kept locked within me. I kept them locked and hidden away by silence. The breaking of the mala was a call to break that silence.

I am grateful for the mala, for the lessons and the path it helped me to walk. It didn’t take away the pain of that break-up, but it did help me to learn the lessons and uncover the gifts that lived in that wound. It helped me to remain in Kansas City rather than turning tail and running back to the East Coast when the relationship with my ex and all of the relations that hung from that relationship fell away. And had that not happened, I could not have been exactly where I needed to be—working at a hospital, helping the people who need it most—when the pandemic occurred. I would not have, by craft or by art, been able to bring forth the treasures that live within me to help this world—treasures that, until now, I never even viewed as anything more than quirks, hardly remarkable.

When a mala breaks, it means we have grown past its karma, its teaching and its magic. All of those things become part of us, though—they become stories and lessons and power for us to continue to grow and nurture the world as we are designed to do. For this particular mala, it also meant I have taken all I can from silence and can no longer be bound by it. In the past few months, a third Aspect has emerged when I channel art—the Thunderbird. At first, his emergence baffled and even troubled me. If anything, I thought I grew older the need for these other selves would pass. And then, the mala broke. And the thunder spoke. Now, it makes sense. The Thunderbird, the breaking of the mala—these were signs I had found something… It was what my wounds were trying to teach me way back when, when my hollowed heart howled. These were signs I had found a treasure.

It is a sound. It is a voice.

It is my roar.