Ouch

Why would anyone in their right mind deliberately put their nose to a grindstone?

All This Beauty

Maybe the definition of home is the place you are never forgiven, so you may always belong there, bound by guilt. And maybe the cost of belonging is worth it.

-Reflections of Alphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, from Gregory McGuire’s Wicked

Perhaps there’s more truth and wisdom in that than I’d prefer to believe. Living this guiltless life as I do, never having felt too tethered to the earth. Strange for me to consider since I have longed to experience what I’ve conjured to be an enormous and cathartic surrendering and letting go called forgiveness, yet know so little, maybe even nothing, of guilt. Perhaps I’ve chased after Forgiveness with such reckless abandon that I’ve never considered her consort and familiar. If I must seek out Guilt to brush elbows with her benefactor I might well reconsider the chase.

I want nothing of guilt, just the unburdened freedom of forgiveness.

So we tie things together in a bow. Tell me gentle reader what all of this means. What symbols emerge that are oh-so-telling to you that escapes my vision for my simple proximity?

Where is my hand? My left hand sits firm on the head of a sober Contemplation and my right hand turns up toward the sky, a cozy night chair for Creativity. And what of everything in between?

Out the port side of the airplane loomed thunderheads in the distance, filled with tremendous electric charge. At the feet of this billowing and rising pillar crashed a wave of blood red as the last vestiges of sun filtered through the hazy wet horizon of cloud. Lightening rose up from the ground and formed balls of spectacular color in the bulbous monstrosity that occasionally arced and sparked golden bolts.

As the sun sank and the moon rose, a star spangled sky canopied rows of sparkling golden lights that danced as the storm raged somewhere on the ground below. I recognized this horizon of lights, snaking across the sky, from dreams I’ve had.

Sometimes it is so defeating to realize that we are responsible for making our own magic and mystery. How when we’re bored it’s our own damned fault and failing for lacking imagination. How when our lives are void of adventure and possibilities we only have ourselves to hold accountable. It really sucks how ultimately responsible we are for all this God damned beauty.

Knowing's Not Enough

Choir boys and angels, so you loosen your halo in your reckless life… -10,000 Maniacs

Where your body is. So accustomed to this environment and we think we know ourselves oh so well. It’s only because the air in familiar, but don’t mistake that for knowing.

Don’t look. Where’s your hand? Right now, without looking. Where’s your hand? You know and you don’t even have to look. You just know, have consciousness about how you move through this environment. But in the water, when you’re swimming or paddling about, the knowing isn’t there. Where’s your hand? I used to ask the people I was teaching to swim. They’d stop and think, often look, and had no consciousness about their flesh in relation to itself when the environment had changed. Just one little thing changed, the air to the water, and suddenly they were strangers to themselves. But only one little thing changed. Suddenly everything was new and the learning had to begin again.

Yes, we’re adaptive.

I put a 9 mm Glock in my mouth with the barrel at the back of my throat pointing up toward the back of my scull and pull the trigger. See. The learning starts all over again. Where’s my hand? Just one little thing changed. See?

Sometimes it comes from the outside, those subtle differences that make us strangers to ourselves. Sometimes it comes from the inside. Like the first time I truly understood what it meant to forgive or to be forgiven. Like the first time I realized what it meant to be part of a community. Like the first time I felt empathy, compassion or courage. Just one little thing changed and suddenly I had to get to know myself all over again. The environment was new. See?

Where your body is. Knowing isn’t enough.

Yes, The Springtime Needed You

I was just thinking about her you know. It’s a tragic loss, an overwhelming sorrow.

If your spirit hasn’t slipped entirely from this world, if some part of you still clings to the things this world is made of, I want you to know how much I admire, respect and hold deep feelings for you. You are an example of the best of what we can be as humans and it humbles me. There is an inimitable and indelible place in my heart and memories for you. I am truly blessed to have known you. My life has been made so much richer because of you. I am glad I was given the opportunity to convey these sentiments to you in your life. It reminds me the value of telling the people I love and care for how much they mean to me, the depth to which they move my world. I wish I could say it all again, time and time again, over and over. I take solace in believing you heard these words and must reconcile that we will communicate differently now – that you will have an ear now to what is in my heart. I pray you have a safe journey. I will miss that part of you that was flesh and bone.

Bzzzz

There are monsters in my closet and bees in the walls. I hear them buzzing at night now, along with the crackling and crunching of the winged devils building the incubator for their mistress’ offspring. During the day they whiz and whirr outside the windows and occasionally a stray meets in doom by winding its way into my deadly parlor. Woman against nature or is it nature committing suicide? It’s hard to tell the difference.

As God is my witness this devilish deliverance is all a matter of self-defense.