Unrushable, unbefuddled

Tears almost came today, like little crocuses almost in bloom, their gaily colored heads a sound premonition to what follows. I felt again that knot of confusion, that club foot that prevents dancing and singing in all earnestness. I saw the line over which I have not yet leaped, the line I draw around myself like a self-constricting spell circle. Silly and confused, not too sure as to where to put my energies, worried, and therefore sad. The line stretches out directly from little moments of unsureness, little questions as to how long happiness will last, as to when elation will burst and recklessly spent emotion implode. I'm remembering Moses, wandering with a mass of worried people behind him.

I'm longing for life in which we laugh will our entire belly, cry easily for joy and awe, eat delicious food with relish until just hunger is satisfied, sleep with abandon and yet without relinquishing consciousness, sing frequently, and most of all, not worry about what's to come, how we'll fare and what we're doing with our lives. Nature does all these things, and the songbirds and peeping frog attest to it all day and night as Spring unfolds itself. And it does so ever so slowly, without the tremendous bang we expect of it after Winter. It takes time to utilize every moment for what part it plays, like my cats who can never understand the haste I employ in walking from point to point. They would rather experience their time on earth as one great existing, and not draw funny lines around what seems necessary or not. Life without confusion, without self-censure, just dignity. I pray for it, and I'll gladly work toward it, waiting for the time and place for my unripened crocus tears.

Freshly tilled

Yesterday came the first real Spring rain, and with it the first intoxicating scent of growing and living. The sun rose today in delightful mysteriousness, invoking the wonder of a Creation we cannot fully comprehend. Walking home tonight, dirt still rattling inside my shoes, I heard the first sounding of peeping frogs, away down in the distant wooded valley.

We moved earth today; in fertile carpets it peeled away from root and stone, in churning, foaming waves it piled softly as cream into new fields. I took pauses to visit animals, accepted affection, and played feet-first in cool, clearing dirt. Hard work makes me happy. This sort of work, outside, real, where progress can be witnessed and the solitude is accompanied by a gentle hum of growing. Many pitfalls and trappings fall away delightfully, as if they were waiting to be forgotten, and the self is lost against the great rumbling roar of a patient Mother Earth, teaming with gifts. Sun and Moon make things easier for me, Earth rejuvenates, green remembers to me with unfailing constancy the natural strength I possess.

I'm happiest when I feel like I belong, when I feel quiet and solitary yet not alone, when I have good and helpful things to do. It seems simple enough, a recipe even for nearly any human being. It's the living that's the hard part. Living it day in and day out, living it in spite of hardship, bruised emotions, unexpected circumstances and perceptions gone wrong. Living and allowing myself to be flawed, for others to be imperfect, too. Allowing myself to imagine a better future, a better world, without building Towers of Babel from thickly mortared emotive fantasy. The energy of life is nearly breath-taking. Strong enough to spin me out of control, quiet and patient enough to leave me languishing in helpless sadness if I choose not to look up in time to see it disappear. I feel sometimes like a little ship at Sea, tossed here and there, now sailing briskly with the wind, now becalmed and breathless. Except I'm only at the mercy of my own volition, thoughts and deeds, not a pitiless Ocean. Though I be sad, I'm willing to see it through, willing to play my part in moulding a better person out of this raw material, this empty tousled garden bed.

Passage through

On days like this depression seems to be an incurable sickness, as pestilential and agonizing as viruses come. The only cure to this one is to walk away yourself, to decide to recover, a factor which shames me into battling on against feelings I sense I can rid myself of unlike those who must suffer under pains they know will overwhelm them. I'm coughing and sneezing, thirsty, with a knotted stomach, clenched teeth, and a deep down fatigue, ponderously and questioningly asking for love in every glance, unable to cry, crumpled in my joints and sluggish in my movements. But I'm turning the tourniquet myself, and most days I can drop this instrument while others find me submerged in sickening feelings. The aspect of my nature that opens itself to sensitivity and absorption breaks down the restraints and a flood of cruel feeling swallows normal living. This happens, and I'm willing to accept that factor along my path for now, even more so if my peskering brain could understand to what purpose. But somehow my spirit knows why, or has an inkling to the lawfulness of it, and really is not afraid at all, is not sad, really, just waiting. Then the best remedy is so often sleep. To shut down the central computer buzzing away between my ears and wait for that tender moment of waking when the spirit can whisper audibly the reality it knows. Trust can re-enter the equation then, along with it connectedness and peace. And it is strange how quickly the torment goes away, once my grasp on it is loosened. I must frequently forget what it's like to be so sad because the experience isn't real enough to lend a lasting impression on my core, the real part of me. Perhaps that part sees the experience like passengers who alight from a plane into a noisy terminal - a goal is so steadily in front of them, it just takes walking to it, and the noise is something they've heard many times before, and can't be bothered with. I'm grateful for what's really me, and grateful for the chance to develop it, trust it, love it.

Goodnight

On a night as beautiful as this, who could feel alone? A circle of friends are the stars, shining down with earnest remembrance of my better qualities. The howling wind is only playing; Winter is gone now with his encompassing dark and can't be summoned again from the long dream he has embarked on. Spring clings gallantly to the self-assured figure of an Ares ram, and the earth peers wistfully at Libra, sighing in beautiful flowers. Work has set things in motion again; I feel a rush almost at the openness and release activity will bring.

I'll feel sadness again, there are things left undone, litter that needs collecting and composting. The newness of it all is frightening and exciting, and this moment of respite is well worth the struggle to embrace it all.

Vulnerable Spring

The dull taste of fatigue is in my mouth today, and life feels as ungraspable as sand through my fingers. The sun courses deceptively warm tracks across the bedroom floor, while outside a Wintry air is biting down on the pleasant scenes of work. I'm tumbling and rolling things around inside me, like an ill-balanced washer digesting pairs of sneakers, and I'm frustrated with myself, which adds unnecessary virulence to the process. I started out on a path to come to terms with an ill-fitted brick in an otherwise happy existence, and I find myself diverted down an all-too-familiar by-way: imaginative fantasy laced strongly with emotion. So in barrels frustration, bouncing along in tandem wiggles the facade of the completely natural, and the original issue becomes submerged under questions, regrets, and the sudden gush of an end-of-Winter emotional sap run.

Nature is never sarcastic, and I wonder how humanity developed the taste for it, myself included. Maybe we know that something deep is not right, but we can't conceive of how to adapt to the harmonious path the world around us flows in unceasingly. Maybe we almost want to stop trying, but can't. Can't for love of a life we don't fully understand.

Piece by piece it all gets worked out, and I'll learn to allow myself to take what I need. And slowly, the coarse of my existence will right the wrongs I have taken into myself; this one, and the next, and the next...

Collecting the Mist

A misty morning awoke today, with drifting clouds clinging to the east side of the valley, passing gently over trees still bare from Winter. Rain droplets clung to the darkened branches of birch trees, like old tears that remembered themselves after the spell of dry weather. Plenty of things are happening today, plenty of busyness, worry, organization and fear. The birds don't seem to mind, though; they greeted the Sun under her blanket of gray coolness with an eruption of song and giddy celebration. I feel like the birch trees today, brought into high contrast under invisible wetness, forgotten tears clinging to my outer reaches of perception. I find it amazing how much I can forget, and how silly a receptive device the brain can be. It seems to thrive on detailed memory, yet eagerly relinquishes its prize for the sake of crisis or happiness. I begin to feel as though I've just raised myself to standing from a hospital wheelchair, still dressed in ridiculous soft blue. I can believe in the procedure I've undergone, as a cancer patient can believe in the removal of a tumor, and can imbibe the future ahead with thoughts of wary recovery and deep gratitude. Yet I must begin to walk once more, remember the reality that was abandoned by most serious necessity. Continue to live, changed. The birches relinquish their hold on life as soon as the forest no longer needs them, as soon as stronger, more durable trees break the canopy into light. I've struggled with an all-too-willingness to do this myself, an eager readiness to die for what I believe, rather than to live for what I believe. I feel like the birch trees today, brought into vivid colors, gathering and letting go the mist in tearful droplets, allowing themselves to live another cycle further.

Middle March

When moments of peace find me, I come back, again and again to the simple reality that life is unspeakably beautiful. Now that lusty March has turned its median, Nature seems to return to the same reality. All is so clear, strong, and bright; a first clear call from light and air to begin the upbuilding, to shake off the thin veil of inactivity and sleepy deadness. Buds are full to near bursting, like anxious children waiting for the appearance of their dear friend the grass to join them in an eruption of play. The human part of my landscape suddenly looks pale and a little dizzy - skin unaccustomed to the Sun, and bodies charged waveringly with new energy, we wake up from our Winter dreaming, feel once more the pressure of Time against our actions, and gather ourselves for work. I'm shaky still from the experinces around my birthday, and I'm still only just tasting the flavor of what's to come - like the maple trees, whose sap only suggests the sweetness that will take time and effort to condense. I hold on to what sensation I have, turn to Sun, open myself to growth, and thank the Creator for all such possibility.

Break cover

A veiled moonrise sent me home, and I left the scene a bit breathless and shaky. After a few years of practicing self-denial, I'm beginning to toy with self-control, and in the process pieces of flagrant energy are skipping about unexpectedly. What is a part of me I want to be an honest part, not simply a suppressed tremor, and the experience of sorting it out can be rather startling after such strict internal cloister. Looking back, though, I value the journey through either, or and could wish that many more could experience it, then move on. As Spring weaves back and forth toward realization, I'm sorting through the seeds I wish to sow, and new life is pulsing through my fingertips.

Seeing the full face

Last night, just before falling asleep, I scrambled out of comfort to write down "Be careful what you wish for, because you might get exactly what you want, and forget exactly who you are, which revealed itself in the struggle against that which wasn’t quite right." Then sleep took me, and I embarked on a restless journey, ending a genuine full-moon dream.

It was multi-layered, like most dreams, with diverging story lines, unfinished sub-plots, and a distracted observer. At one point I entered the new home of my father: a dilapidated Victorian mansion imursed in urban decay. There was a grand foyer with sweeping staircase, and underground rooms hidden under their clutter of dusty, sickly color furniture. After ascending the stair, there somehow was revealed a vastly tall room, which my father had landscaped a spiral terrace of elderberries, which bloomed and bore fruit simultaneously. He told me that he had prepared a special slide-show presentation for me of paintings I had never done in real life, and had invited my dear friends from high school. They began to arrive, embarrassingly dressed in suits, ties and dresses, smiling sheepishly and apparently caught off guard by the meaning they found in the occasion. We proceeded up the gently-sloping stair, and into a great, medieval-looking hall. I don't remember the slide-show, just returning down the stair with my old friends. They were smiling and loosing ties and walking with the relaxed air of having revealed themselves of the stuffiness formal clothing brings at first. I embraced them, and let gush forth sentiments that I wasn't able to find words for back then, feelings that I was subconsciously aware they didn't reciprocate. Except now they did. Now my deep feelings were reflected back to me, returned and changed by my friends own unique natures. I remembered the moment in real life when I discovered that they didn't really understand me, and in the dream I chose to forget it. The alarm clock ripped me away from basking in the feelings, and now that I'm reflecting on them, I'm beginning to doubt the wisdom of my assumptive moment over seven years ago. Did I shut down because I became scared by the trust I invested in them? Was I simply arrogant enough to assume that my mode of being, of understanding, and of expression was all that was real? Most likely, yes. We all get what we ask for, and the trick seems to be to learn to ask for that which is good, and that time, I don't think I did. I think I was wrong.

Written in the Air

Like most English trips, this one finds me nervous, excitable, and generally rattled from my collide with the rest of the world. I feel packaged off and sold as a commodity, here where all is salable and for sale. Money may not be exchanged, but life force is, and I feel emptied of it having relinquished this resource for passage home and our material living. All one big nightmare, really, this world unjust commerce has built up. Virtue and value don't exist because they are not profitable. Even their mention in writing amid the clash and clang of it all feels like a blossoming wildflower in a thundering underground nightclub.

Yet, again England amazes me. The closeness I feel to its Nature and growing things almost makes me swoon, and I stumble about its meadows and hedgerows, my feet clumsy on soil that does not radiate stability like wild home. The great, wriggly, solemn oaks, sparkling hawthorns, resolved beeches, laughing daffodils, and smiling nettles feel like a taste of home, like the flavor of something lost, something that's dying here on earth.

Early Blackbird song

I'm a bit of a mess today; a bumpy sort of last two days have left me vulnerable to tearing up in frustration and anguish. What for, I cannot be certain. I'm happier to now be 26 than 25, and the weekend was filled with uplifting and validating experiences. The vulnerability stirs up anxiety over our next trip, anxiety that what may have to spill out in emotional self-expression will need to be kept simmering haphazardly as we carry out painting business. The unnaturalness of those situations drives me mad with premonitions about what it will be like to be so far from privacy and home. It's self-distrust, really; silly, unnerving, self-distrust.

In England it will be Spring, which will be wonderful. Like a little whisper to say that everything is alright, the green and growing things will be so comforting to me. Balancing on the edge of Winter, will bitter days and sweet days, snow, sunshine, and changing winds all collide together to finally agree on life and renewal? They always do. Day always follows night, for who could be more loving than the Lord, Whose Laws are reflected in the Laws of Nature, and Who grants us all the help and strength we need to ascend, so long as we ask for it. Such perfect Love I'll never be able to wrap my mind, my feeble emotions around. Here it will be Spring, too, but not before a few more steps, not before its time. It feels like the most vulnerable time of the year, so perhaps I'd better just allow myself to feel it, too, and not be afraid.