Back...Again

No Escape by Sylvie Pickering

The Uses of Sorrow
by Mary Oliver

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

I am never more tired of speaking than when I first get back from a trip home to see my family. Actually, it would be more accurate to switch it, to say "when I first get home from a trip back to my family" but that makes little sense to the average person that is not acquainted with my past, with my personal way-back machine.

Beautiful

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crooked: 

1. : not straight 

Synonyms:  bending, crazy, curled, curling, curved, curving, curvy, devious, serpentine, sinuous, tortuous, twisted, twisting, winding, windy


And I've got
No illusions about you
And guess what?
I never did
And when I said
When I said I'll take it
I meant,
I meant as is
~Ani DiFranco, As Is

I am crooked. Scoliosis is a daily reminder that I am not exactly according to plan.

Let me explain.

I'm Just a Worm

"Allo!" ~ Worm, Labyrinth

"Notice to those making up religions: the most powerful secrets aren’t secrets. They are things we may have known for a while but then suddenly feel the full force of when the time is right." ~Anne Hill, comment on her blog post

Sarah: You dont by any chance know the way through this Labyrinth do you?
Worm: Who me? Naahh I'm just a worm, heh.
Sarah: Oh.
Worm: Come inside and meet the missus.
Sarah: No thank you but I have to solve this Labyrinth but there aren't any turns or any openings or anything, it just goes on and on!
Worm: Well... you ain't lookin' right! It's FULL of opening its just you ain't seen em !
Sarah: Well where are they?
Worm: There's one just across there its right in-front of ya.
Sarah: No there isn't.
Worm: Come inside and have a nice cuppa tea.
Sarah: But... there isn't an opening!
Worm: (laughs) Course there is! You try walking through it, you'll see what I mean!
Sarah: What?
Worm: Go on, go on then!
Sarah: That's just wall! There's no way through.
Worm: Things are not always what they seem in this place. So, you can't take anything for granted.
Sarah: (walks through the 'wall') Hey!
Worm: Hey 'ang on!
Sarah: Thank you! That was incredibly helpful! (starts to turn left)
Worm: Don't go that way!
Sarah: What was that?
Worm: I said...Don't go that way! Never go that way!
Sarah: Oh... thanks! (Sarah goes in opposite direction)
Worm: If she had kept going down that way, she would've gone straight to that castle!
 ~Labyrinth


For the context of this post, it is good for you, dear Reader, to know that I believe the following two things:

1. Information is not dangerous.


2. Things of value have layers.

Chop Wood, Carry Water, Shut Your Trap

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"…All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well." ~Julian of Norwich

Litany Against Fear from the Bene Gesserit Rite

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total   obliteration.

I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
~Frank Herbert, Dune

What can I say about silence?

As a person dealing with codependency issues, silence is a currency I cannot make change in, withdrawal a tactic I am ill equipped to employ. I tumble words out of my mouth just to be reaching toward something...toward you, toward us, toward understanding, toward reconciliation, toward a continuation of connection, even if that connection is painful. Painful connection is, after all, still connection...right?

An Invocation

Holy is your name, holy is your work, holy are the days that return to you. Holy are the years that you uncover. Holy are the hands that are raised to you, and the weeping that is wept to you. Holy is the fire between your will and ours, in which we are refined. Holy is that which is unredeemed, covered with your patience. Holy are the souls lost in your unnaming. Holy, and shining with a great light, is every living thing, established in this world and covered with time, until your name is praised forever.

Leonard Cohen, Book of Mercy

Chomp.

Porkrind the Great

I wrote a new poem this morning, just now.  I think it's quite good.

I got the idea for it as I was walking Porky around the back of my apartment complex.  I wouldn't have been home, walking the dog and getting the idea, if I didn't have some sort of crud/flu/unpleasantness right now.  So there you go.  You never know when your muse is going to bite you on the ass.

I am now going back to my couch and my blankets.

An Ode to my Dwindling Armor

Who is this flower above me?
And what is the work of this god?
I would know myself in all my parts.
~Feri Flower Prayer, traditional, Victor Anderson


God is self and self is God and God is a person like myself.
~Victor Anderson

I'm actively working on being more open to letting people see the person I actually am, instead of just the edited, monitored mock-up I'm used to displaying.

It sucks is kicking my ass.

For Brigid

This Time

She did pass in the trees, tinkling a tickle-whisper,

And was in the flame, yes, when I've

pleaded and wished and prayed and

burned anyways.

But this time, no moaning:

just the urge, to deep and dark and drowning.

This time, my eye is to the well.

This Time by Lora Dziemiela is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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

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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

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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.