Monday, November 30, 2009

A little fall down...

The bitterness of real cold begins to seep in, and with offended surprise we pile ourselves into sturdier attire. The days a play of peaking gold against steely cover of cloud; the nights all too swift in the coming, with a waxing moon to keep us company. Haul it all in, the work and growing of the year, and festively explode into good cheer and giving, until absorbed in good feelings, we forget the longest night ahead. I’m tenuous as the season; nerves humming in a new pitch, wanting to give yet hunkering down, remembering Light in a stormy dark in my own mind.

I see myself balancing between self destruction and pride; faults keeping tenuous equilibrium through a battered about world. When the one out weighs the other, watch out, for tidal wave of hurt, anger, loathing, fear and false pride hits a shallow shore of being. Self destruction seems to be at the heart of so many matters of my heart. What brought me to the Grail Message, what did I find there? I found the answer, which was, that I have to keep living. I have to keep living. I’m not off the hook despite my raging self-violence, I’m still a worthy piece of humanity somewhere, inside where that little piece refuses to die. Trying my best to wash away myself, I failed, and wondering why I was still alive, why I couldn’t forget that piece of me I still loved, I grabbed for the Grail Message. I’m alive, and I’m meant to be, and I have to carry on, I have to be a better human, and get out what’s inside me, for the good.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Recede

As the life recedes from bough and limb, the forest kindled down to the bare spaces in between, the hills return as dearest friends. Stretching this way and that, our view now clear, they embrace our little life upon their slope, and with delicate, dignified gaze, remind us of those forces unseen yet stronger than ourselves, those which surround and support us always, and of the great Love those forces harbor.

We enter, as Nature exits, the festive season. Throwing the Thanksgiving turkey into my car, I sidle a bottle of Japanese green tea and a bar of Austrian chocolate into one hand. I throw the keys into the ignition and a Celtic blast ignites the ride home. I’m jangling through a traffic of cars like a lightening bolt on my custom suspension, forking to the rhythm of elation and jive, speeding to the joy of my own existence. I’m an American; burdened with the duality of knowing what is means to struggle for the impossible and to be constantly catered to. Proud and lonely country, set against its own vastness, falling down in a beautiful sunset, waving in a stiff, unending breeze. Pride is a sin after all, and we have fallen for it. Against the backdrop of our spacious land, our wild forests and giant skies, our pettiness is in ever greater relief. At a standstill without anything to stand on, remembering a dream that we assumed was accomplished long ago, always trying to go back.

When life turns away from boundlessness, the quiet realization strikes that not every option is open to us, not every summit climbable. I remember now the deepest jewels in my treasury, those a little nicked but burning with an inner fire of their own. Rubies like lingering oak leaves, emeralds steadfast pine, and diamonds like the stars of ever-lengthening night. Look to the aspects that out-last a fading, and find hope.

Photo - Lonely Sky

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Lingers On

Day ends so quickly; before we know it we’re prostrate once more, hitching the covers over our shoulders. In certain tender moments in the afternoon, when chores and bustling are finished and when the sun tilts gently toward the fall, it is what we engage in that can define us. I used to fall asleep for at least an hour; smeared person hidden under what thin comfort sleep could bring. Then I plunged for a while into painting. Now I chase around a depressed donkey, knit a present, watch some strange supernatural anime; just be quiet.

New energy emerges from a dying sadness. Forceful, determined, pumping etherial iron, running laps of new discovery. Claim a little self-assertiveness, wrap fingers around a little steely grip - tighten up. This little upsurge of strength is need to pry open the doors I’ve slammed as I fumbled down the hidden passageway to my secret dungeon down below. Instruments of my own undoing lie there, piled in disarray, heaped in the untidy order they sprang from my psyche. I do so many things backwardly - the effect and the reason are opposites. People mean a great deal to me, so I shun them. I feel more open and at home as the crowd increases; more willing to share myself, my talent.

November brings the quiet for all such things to come to surface, bobbing on the still dark lake of my being like cold Autumn stars. Words a little slow to form themselves, time a little too short to enjoy the day, evenings a little too long to make the working feel fulfilled. So what remains when busyness must take a back seat? Down in the bottom of the box, hope. It’s that we want which makes us human, it’s what we want which decides what kind, and my confidence is growing that at the end of the day, at the end of the Summer, I’ll want what’s good. That I’ll want Light, and stars, as Night descends, as November lingers on.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Together, Alone

Leaves skittering in the trees on a starlit walk home. Woke up feeling all broken promises and raw nerves; pulled sinews and sad reclusiveness. Bandied about like the threatening snow flakes on a November wind: “Is it time, am I meant to be here, what was I supposed to be doing?”

Sometimes, I miss my friends. The old ones I fell in love with at age ten, the ones who worried with me about getting into trouble, the ones that came paired with a mom you couldn’t avoid if you wanted to see them. I love the memory of those friends like the cat on my lap, and curl the soft spots around my fingers as the recollection purrs into life. Still feeling connected to girls from long ago, tied at the belly, while sharing experiences without each other, like turning on the same music miles apart. She’s there like a first love, pocketed away in tenderness, the little pains she may be feeling tingling down the wire to my own fingertips. Little mystery in a person I’ve been without for eight years. Happy to still know her, somewhere.

I don’t seem to want to make something so terribly dramatic anymore. More interested now in humanity’s communal, half-conscious struggle, the connectedness between our vastness - we’re all answering the question, one breath at a time, what is the meaning of life? How regular is existence, yet how fraught with possibilities. Potential, hope. I put hope in the hope of men. Pray we all embrace the help to fulfill those hopes, whenever it may find us. Choice, awareness. I choose the power of choice. Pray we all use this power, in self-fulfilling awareness, to better the life we are given.

Never alone, though skittering and rattling on boughs of our own making. Shaking in the wind that must touch us all, remembering the memory of ourselves, buried down deep in the sap of another. Blessed are the little mysteries we’re meant to learn from each other; happy we can all be, if we can forget to feel alone.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Steadfast

November came with brown and deep black, with resting pine and steadfast oak. She came with veiled stars, a pensive waiting, a mist between the peaks of the valley. I heard a deep story, so low and poignant the language escaped me, though I cried all the same. I meet this month wanting to give more, wanting to understand more, wanting to be more seed than hope, more waking than dreaming. Even the flowers are more fixed in their resolve, and mums turn curly pleasant faces to the hammering frost. Buckle down all, and look to what remains, and there find the strength of bones, tenacity of roots, the nourishment of unfrozen waters far below.

Catch a message from a flying crow: Thinking and talking about the Integral Way are not the same as practicing it. Flow has flowed; a tide returning to the greatest of seas, and leaves bare the ankles of those who played in it. If I am indeed a part of this world, there is no need to mourn a waning creative burst, because it is already who I am. Where can I apply myself? Most likely in the place least expected, in a job I feel ill-suited to, one I am unprepared for. I’ll grow through this task, proving to myself in the deed that I am not quite who I’ve decided I am. Often as blind to my gifts as to my faults, I’m held up on each side by equal unconsciousness; yet courage enough to continue walking, love enough to be true to the better me living in another’s heart, loyal enough to want to remember God first. Wanting to give more, wanting to understand more, wanting to sing louder and dance lighter. Like soft foot falls, like a pulsing heart, remember just to keep moving forward, stride by stride.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Well-remembered notes

Moonrise over November, when day escapes us as soon as it’s matured. From growing morning to dimming night, we are in constant transition, shrouded quickly under the curtain of darkness, giggling underneath the newness of it, as a child in the playfully stolen coat of its father. When you’re little, you feel good as a matter of course, and only disturbances do you encounter. As an adult, it’s so often the good you encounter on your daily disturbing course, so you chase after it and around, under self-pity, back to childhood, past beloved occupations and into spirituality at last. Sometimes I feel like the reanimation of Billie Holiday, singing away with all her might in her single octave range. Irrespective of beat, there’s a song to be sung here, and I know these notes almost as well as I know my life story, maybe better. So I’ll warm up once more, and try again, the little tools at my disposal perhaps sharper than the last time.

Just realizing now that there is a difference between expressing oneself and displacing oneself. Expressing empties the cup, so that it may be refilled again in greater, more poignant vintages. The other buries the brightness in outwardnesses, refusing to acknowledge the reality of its imperfectness, as if it were an illegitimate child. I am my imperfections, and I am changing, as they do; changing partners in a great dance, spinning round the same room until all steps have been conquered, and nothing remains but to head home. There’s a full Moon tonight, and November’s not nearly so cold as the next few months promise to be. A fine night for walking, for chasing happiness, for singing out loud in familiar keys, for simply expressing.