Brave enough to taste it

There's a breath of newness on the air today, one can almost be brave enough to taste it, cold as it is. The birds feel valiant, too, and are singing about it, merrily bouncing on tree tops at the most delicate hour of the day. I feel like a veil has been ripped away, yet still lingers long enough for me to feel its texture against the flood of what's new. How different, and frightening, like leaning over the rail of a ship, and keeping your silly brain from rebelling against unfamiliar circumstances.

I think this is good for me, but I'm willing to wait and see. All my feelings are drawn taut, vibrating, stumbling as they try to make their way forward. As I try to get a handle on them, as I try to reason with them. But I've never been very reasonable; patient, maybe, and loyal at my best, and mostly, willing to change. Under the clear, singing sky I'm hopeful again, and grateful.

Orpheus and Denethor

To be able to let go of grief - my wish. On contemplating my attachments to the earthly, I suddenly took notice of the elephant in the room, so to say. Large, gray, ominous, I'm almost surprised there's any room left for other parts of me to carry out oblivious existences. The thing is, I have to choose it, everyday - I have to choose to be attached to sadness, like horses who choose the burning barn over a frightening walk outside. I feel frustrated and sick, lethargic, listless, and apathetic, all in some effort to turn away from the responsibility before me - just leave it alone, just allow yourself to walk away from old states of being, don't look back to give it new strength.

Ugh. I don't like being mad, but letting it out usually helps. I feel ashamed by the presence of such emotions, and therefore tend to want to conceal them far away, to be dealt with later. Maybe there's some dread fascination in that, some delight in harboring secrets. In the end, who am I hiding them from, really? The puffs of freedom felt at releasing and relinquishing stubborn emotions feel too clearly like little steps in the right direction for me to ignore the importance of not making myself into a secret stash of rotten feelings.

Inhale, exhale. I'm silly often, but I didn't come here to flaunt my innate completeness. I came here to grow.

Little Fish

Tomorrow the season changes a bit, and contrary Pisces will send snow simply because she can, then open up sunshine with an embarrassed shrug. Just when Winter reaches its deadest, and all thoughts of life seem impossibly beyond recognition, a quiet, green upheaval occurs. And the tender moment beforehand, the uncertain, gentle play between the will to live and the resignation to slumber, is about to break upon us. It's been a rough day, and the exhaustion I experienced was momentarily lifted into giggles of mirth when I looked up to take notice of the date. Hold on there little Pisces, we'll both get through it.

The road goes ever on and on...

Now that energy has returned, something is beginning to bubble up. An unresolved, an almost unspeakable, hidden under a pile of mushy potato feelings for quite some time. I nearly remember where I left off, and the clear, cascading memories pull me out of present situations to shake my head, and swallow hard against a shift in the starchy, soggy tuber mound. I'm a bit afraid, really. But here's my chance, and I have to be loyal to it, else I'm forgetting why I've managed to stick around this long; things nearly always have the potential to get better.

On my 21st birthday, my father wrote to me about the my birth. He told me that I lay peacefully in his arms, quietly declaring my arrival in the midst of chaos and panic. "You are a survivor", he told me, and I knew then how closely he had observed my path to maturity, how often he must have had to rely on that single perception when all other avenues for fathering seemed closed to him. In the face of such a powerfully beautiful sentiment, my current trouble seems paltry, even a waste of time. But the stone lays squarely in my path, and, trifling or no, each pebble needs to be cleared, each barrier to living outright my better self gently left behind.

The stars are watching and the valley is rolling out engagingly under my feet. There's nothing left to do but try, nothing left but to forget the wanting to hang on to what's old and familiar and downright deadening. May my loyalty never waver; not to the self I think I've discovered, but to the Light that sustains all existence, great, small, and evolving.

Westering sun

I spent the larger portion of the day asleep. As the bed lay disassembled upstairs, my sanctuary became our too-short couch. I hid myself under a coarse wool blanket, a loyal black cat fit himself in between the bends of my body, and I enjoyed a restful Sunday. Emerging again after sundown I was stiff and bleary eyed, feeling that strange sort of unhunger that allows for unnecessarily large dinners. Now I'm turning my week over and over again around in my mouth like an indigestable cherry-pit. The sun is setting on a certain phase, and glimmers of something new peep through like weak twilight stars. The depression seems to have scurried off as soon as I firmly, yet softly decided that I no longer wanted to be that person. A bit shaken by the simplicity of this happening, the weaker part of me almost misses the obligation to be sad, and now the challenge will be to keep those little Gollumy fingers out of the new activities on the horizon. When sad I was consumed, in a sense, by a vague shade of loneliness which remains as a wisp; the subtle sense that I'm missing something. I'm happy, I think, and feeling stronger without feeling harder. I'll wait for sunshine tomorrow, and see what the East will bring forth from the gifts West sent it tonight.

Orion

Walking up along the path tonight, I met Orion singing softly over the horizon. The Evening Star was setting; quietly she beamed her gifts of love and beauty down to those who watch for them. An Evening became Night, and now Night turns ever slowly, ever surely into Day. The cold came back into the air, and I was alone again, walking amongst the lingering snow.

I wonder tonight if what I once thought was strength is actually stubbornness. True strength, real strength comes only from above, while stubbornness seems to build up from somewhere under the feet. Then from a location near the liver, roots find soil to take hold on and send forth leafy branches to cover the eyes. Is it strength or stubbornness that so resiliently blocks out those experiences that threaten a fragile sense of self-worth? Wind and mud brought release and hopeful feelings. Now gazing up at a starry warrior in the clear, cold sky brings a feeling of gentle warning not to run away with momentary freedom, but to carry on all the clearer, all the while asking the Lord above for true strength.

Change in the wind

After the warmth of two days, bugs began to re-emerge. They're a bit confused, as if retracing the steps of their softer-climate dance while harboring questions as to the foul turn of the weather. I have the afternoon off, I am pleased to say, and have thus-far spent it reading, sleeping, mopping, and giving my two cents on the progress of my husband's painting. Now I have tea, and the wind is still singing in ever more infrequent bellows, and outside it is wet and muddy and lovely.

My husband painted this three years ago, during this watery time of year. I feel almost the same now as I did during my posing sessions, although an undefinable feeling of numbness has crept into place where once the hopefulness used to reside. I can't yet perceive what the remedy will be, and I'm waiting again. Forgiveness went a long way with my Mother, and the thorn of bitterness in this experience has been dislodged. But numbness, but stagnation, these linger. So I'm waiting again. We all are, for Spring, for March, for Saturday. I think the scariest thing about this is the not knowing what sort of person I'll be at the end of it. For so long I've kept an iron grip on what direction I steered myself, for good or otherwise. Will I still remember the part of me I actually like at the end of this sadness, or will I have become something unrecognizable to me now, something that is far away from the horizon I had hoped for? Strong winds mean new directions, and in the end, all that remains is the hope that I can one day become something pleasing to God.

A warm spell

Angelica, parsley, borage and thyme,
Betony, caraway, bluebell and comfrey,
Red clover, Queen Ann, marigold and thistles,
To all my dear friends, who have yet to be sprouted.

The binds we ask for

Family. It seems to have troubled me since not long after I entered it. I find it again to be my nature to dash headlong into one extreme from the other. So here I am again, readying myself at the starting block, and taking a moment to furrow my eyebrows. Motherhood seems to confuse me now as much as ever.

It was a great revelation to me when I first read in the Message that parents are meant to provide protection for their children. Although it sounds so obvious and completely natural, in that one sentence I traced my development back to a pivotal moment, when something in me decided that my parents were incapable of protecting me. I withdrew not from physical dependence on them, but rather I no longer trusted them with myself. Loved them, of course. Loved them even for those things they have yet to become conscious of, but I became, and still am, closed to them in a certain respect. And so many times I've felt the warmth of someone's protecting love stretched out toward me, and shuddered.

So back to Motherhood and Mothers. Such anger and bitterness wells up in me when she shows this weakness of remembering that which some hidden part of me wishes desperately to forget. She's remembered it secretly and openly for over 20 years now, and I've struggled and wriggled around it for just as long. There was swift anger, deep resentment, and written explosions to precede the peace between my father and I. My Mother is perhaps too much like myself to be engaged on that bloody but effective level. Too much like digging around in my own heart with my bare hands. The sun is setting on another beautifully clear February day, and I think I'm beginning to face it now. At least I want to, and that's the first step.

Mid-Winter

I think I’m starting to wake up now. Slowly I feel the sense of emptiness give way to one of almost surprise - surprise that I hadn’t noticed things like the sunset over the snow these past few weeks. How easily it all unravels when something of the spirit falls asleep. I can remember frightful dreams, and a vague sense of resignation. And in the middle of it an old longing: I wish that I didn’t have to resort to sadness to evolve, that happiness could be something equally sensitive and therefore refrain from blocking out experiences with contentment. And now it’s mid-W inter, and Imbolc has passed. The days are longer and the air is icy, bright and pure. The sometimes startling emptiness of the landscape is so beautiful to me, I want to drink it in.

When it’s over, I wonder how it happens. This time I saw visions of the sea, thrashing about within myself. The answer always sits directly in front of me, and really sadness often feels more like cowardice, the fear of living, the fear of picking up what lays before me. I still can’t say why, and I’m starting to have the inkling that I don’t need to. Forgiving myself, for ills I’m not even fully aware of, is something I keep returning to, something that continues to draw my attention.