Flying

“Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.” ~Neil Gaiman

Blue Valentine

To send me blue valentines
Like half forgotten dreams
Like a pebble in my shoe
As I walk these streets
And the ghost of your memory
Is the thistle in the kiss
~Tom Waits, Blue Valentines

I went to see Blue Valentine with J and a bunch of friends last night.

I really expected to be more emotionally upset by the movie, I suppose because I've gone through a divorce and have a sense of what to expect of a realistic portrayal of an important ending.  I really expected to walk out of that movie feeling like life shits on love, no matter how great the love, that all good things, over time, are destined to become shitty things.  

Thankfully, the movie wasn't as cliche as my imagination.  I really recommend seeing the movie, as it is incredibly well-made and impeccably acted.  The characters were real and flawed and brilliant in their vulnerability, need and apathy.  Both Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling deserve Oscar nods.

I can't get this song out of my head.

Unobserved and Free

She said in Romance, women's two natures can be reconciled. I asked, which two natures, and she said, men saw women as double beings, enchantresses and demons or innocent angels.


"Are all women double?" I asked her.


"I did not say that," she said. "I said all men see women as double. Who knows what Melusina was in her freedom with no eyes on her?"

~A.S. Byatt, Possession

Yes, that's an apt description.

 I Will Not Die an Unlived Life
by Dawna Markova

I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance,
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.


"I am groping to understand what it might mean to truly love my life, to find out who I am beyond the economic necessities of being a mind-for-hire.  I want to stop running from my own tiredness, from the fear that if I am not accomplishing something, I will disappear." ~Dawna Markova, I Will Not Die an Unlived Life:  Reclaiming Purpose and Passion 

Yup.  I'm right there with you, Dawna.

Self-Inflicted

Some rights reserved by BenSpark

Thorn's post from Wednesday is very timely for me. It has me thinking, not only about how I spend my days and my time, but also about how I talk to myself about it.  She writes,

"Without a sense of compassion, it is much more difficult to risk the mistakes that are necessary to our learning process...We have to come to comprehend that we may cause those around us to experience fear, or even pain. There is a cost to this desiring, but the cost for not pursuing our desires is even greater...Who are you to not step toward your destiny? Who are you to hide from the world?"

I've been noticing that I'm not giving enough time to myself. This noticing is not a calm, "Oh...huh!" kind of noticing; rather, it's a violent, "I hate that I'm always doing things I have to do!!!" and a "How lazy that you don't get up an hour earlier to write!", a noticing that feels like a knife-wielding temper tantrum. I fuss and then berate myself, not only for not taking care of my needs, but for fussing. Dare I say it? I'm violent toward myself. I don't extend compassion toward myself.

I can definitely see how this makes it next to impossible to create, to desire, to manifest authentically. I can see how it is way too risky to just let it flow because, well, later I'm likely to come crashing into my head-space, stomping and wildly thrashing, beating myself up.

Just noticing this, in this moment, is freeing up some of this energy. I can allow it to be real and imperfect and manifested- that is an option. Getting hurt in the process is possible, but it doesn't have to be self-flogging.

Huh.

Cold and Silence in the Early Dark

Some rights reserved by Leah Makin Photography

Today, in church, we talked of transience. After, during silent meditation, a vision: I was sitting, covered in crows, self as a bare-branched tree...until they all flew away, and I was both gone and free.

Gone and free. Just like that, the past is cast off, leaves in a strong wind.

Something is shifting and changing. I can feel a bit of me cracking, allowing room for expansion. The world is returning to the core, and as I follow suit, I find my core to have expanded in unimaginable ways.

More ready than ever to risk with the promise of transience, I can't hold onto...what? What I've loved? What I've despised? What I cherish and recoil from? I can't even hold onto myself, it seems. Best to just acknowledge and let it fall, loving each piece as it flies off to a more suitable environment.

Tonight, walking to work, I stopped to look at the dwindling light. Daylight savings is over, and another sort of savings begins...the saving of words, of heat. The keeping of silence and breath. In the expanding dark, a breath is a sigh of relief.

Some moments are best understood without words, though we do our best to describe them.

The Genius of Little Moments

Talking with Alex about relationships via Google chat:

Me:  you know, it can't be forced

i think it's just what you can stand, on a day to day basis, potentially forever

Alex:  haha probably about the wisest thing you can say about a relationship

Yearly Prayer

Some rights reserved by onkel_wart

 As we head into the season of slowing, I want to remind myself of what I hold dear, and what dearly holds me.

I wrote this poem last year, a response to a particularly moving class I was taking for my MLIS degree.  I think it's an appropriate prayer to repeat for this upcoming year...maybe it will become a yearly missive...and maybe my desires will change, as all changes with the touch of years and seasons.

Desire
or, A Prayer for a Well-Worn Life


Gimme gimme gimme
more tactile experiences,
more open, less closed, fewer back-alley heartaches.


I want what matters-
you know- glitter and shit.


I want to look you in the eye to see what's hiding.


World, please please please smack me in the face with
the breath and
the blood and the
bone of it.


I desire a bumpy ride with good conversation.
I'll take the good ones, but want to know the wicked ones better.
Traitors, start the line at my door.


I want to live sugar cubes and meatloaf and sassafras,
taste more poetry on my tongue,
touch the pupils of open, fearless eyes.


So life? You listening?

Bring it.

© 2009 L.M. Dziemiela

The Wedding

I officiated my second wedding this weekend, and it was just lovely. Though I do get stressed out about having a big part in a couple's big day, I still love doing the work.  There's no better feeling than a

I did shed a few tears during this ceremony; the bride's friend read the following poem in such a heartfelt way, and I couldn't help but get a bit misty-eyed:

Love
by Roy Croft


I love you,
Not only for what you are,
But for what I am
When I am with you.


I love you,
Not only for what
You have made of yourself,
But for what
You are making of me.
I love you
For the part of me
That you bring out;
I love you
For putting your hand
Into my heaped-up heart
And passing over
All the foolish, weak things
That you can’t help
Dimly seeing there,
And for drawing out
Into the light
All the beautiful belongings
That no one else had looked
Quite far enough to find.


I love you because you
Are helping me to make
Of the lumber of my life
Not a tavern
But a temple;
Out of the works
Of my every day
Not a reproach
But a song.


I love you
Because you have done
More than any creed
Could have done
To make me good
And more than any fate
Could have done
To make me happy.
You have done it
Without a touch,
Without a word,
Without a sign.
You have done it
By being yourself.
Perhaps that is what
Being a friend means,
After all.

To all that risk love and choose to see hope...make those temples grand and glorious!

In the best of circumstances...

“Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” ~James Arthur Baldwin

If you want to be open...

It's been said to me, at least once, if you want to be open, be open. I think the same must go for being vulnerable.

It's so hard to just let things...happen. To really feel things, to really be present, to tell the truth even when it isn't pretty, even when it's going to hurt someone...most of all, when it's going to hurt you. It's a struggle to let enough of life in to be opened and changed, because opened and changed doesn't always mean feeling good. It means feeling real, which is not automatically feeling happy.

Math

I need a solution, not an equation- instead,
A breath, a kiss, a lingering twilight
Not concerned with addition, not fooled by subtraction.

Thoughts on Intimacy

An adult view of intimacy:  knowing oneself deeply, and allowing interactions with others to have depth without letting oneself be reworked/refashioned through the lens of another's perceptions.

Maybe this is the only way we can truly be in relationship with another...we first have to be in right relationship with self.

Life Earthquake

Everything has been shifting, and new opportunities are popping up all over the place.

I'm just trying to hold on and enjoy the ride right now.