Coloring

The season has broken, and with it the towering sunflowers, now bent over and stumbling, the ground made too soft to support their gloriousness by a stretch of early fall rain. In thicket, in hedgerow, in humble forgotten orchard places, the leaves have broken, too, and shuddering into their last mourning call, whisper sweet tones of barely golden. We would cry for the end of Summer, if Fall weren’t so beautiful, and every mushroom speaks of happiness to come, as it rises from the moldering underfoot.

The little things about this place, my home, which drive me mad with longing - the dusty collection of toll booth lights against a purple blue cloudless Summer evening. The land is in a sense poisoned against my return through crowding out the safe places of my childhood into ever-increasing patches of humid hurry and angered entitlement. What would I write to you, person of my past, who once wandered these scenes with itching toes, if ever I could reach you? Remember just to forgive yourself the things that were not meant to happen, and that at no point did you succumb, tired though you may have been, in the fighting. Sunsets were your home, and rain a reminder of the falling love you’ve given, which should always be given and never divided. Really, your feelings never changed, only ripened, and became your closest friends.

The scraps of an old life, folded roughly into crinkled piles, still smelling of places departed. I play with them as I play with crayons sometimes, mainly just looking at them; the nostalgia of yellow and green, the comfort of purple and blue, the tender repulsion of oranges and reds. I’m waiting for a chance to use them, waiting for the outburst so remarkable only the hard whack of colored wax can express it, waiting to paint my life with obviousness, with boldness and sincerity.

Gather in, stretch out

And so the cycle carries on, and soon it’s July, now August. Lead on by intervals of treatment, meagerly satiated by painting, waiting, waiting, waiting and waiting. So slow is this treatment, so quiet yet painful my awakening, just as blood aches back into a suffocated limb. How easy it is, really, and how earth-shatteringly hard to battle my demons; sometimes so hard I feel the foundations of what I know of myself quiver, and frightened, I slip away. There is no torment greater to me than an empty life, save except, taking actions that cause harm to good people, and so I am at a standstill. Was I serving my vanity to think I could know where to apply myself, when myself was what was most lacking?

Out of context. A ghost in a shell, with a little beating heart of memory, a silent subtle sigh of reality, and so much space in between the little living part and the glassy facade. Through which is staring, waiting, and dreaming for the mechanical actions to ignite, in what seems like an almost insurmountable context.

I dream of letting the horses of my heart run free again. To where? I pray a safe place, I pray a happy place, I pray an honest one, too, and loyal to the Truth I’ve found. It’s Daddy Long Leg season - time to stretch out. I wasn’t meant to divide my life as it progressed. Better rather to build upon it, grow it, increase it in it’s relevancy to my inner being, develop it, and carry on.

Answering the Season

Lured outside, away from daily chores, by the scent of elder flowers dancing in the precarious breeze of an approaching storm. It's Summer now, though I've nearly forgotten to regard it. That tender lushness, oozing possibility and freedom; the daydreams thick as flowering sweet peas and just as heady in their fragrance. A little lonely outpost, I watch sundowns, feet buried in grass I can't quite feel, mind tearing away at the layers of inequality in my being. Little starving child, huddled down in the rich garden, awoken from some years-long dream, forgetful of the beautiful rashness of her past, voracity spent and flying southwards, dreaming of old times, alone.

Little haiku of myself, written in the season as it nearly passes me by with all its tumult and liberating excitement. Little leggy plant of a woman, wanting to grow away from her broken soil and spill into abundance, tickling her environs with the pleasant intoxication of hope. Bold little Sun, taking her long trek homewards, leaving behind in the mantle of her warmth a trail of promise, and I look after her, trying hard to bend my mind away from what might be, and simply follow the Light.

Portrait

She had a general refusal to wear socks, and as such, shoes generally rattled about her ankles, allowing suggestions of the rainy weather to peak in. It wasn’t all bad, but as she crested the long and fatal hill, her good will and independence buckled solemnly, and she felt more snake than lady as she slid under the carpet of living, and back to her house. Things tended to dead-end there, in the north-west corner, facing the pacing donkeys and her familiar wishing well of internet escapism. What was friendliest, most rewarding, was the anonymity, the mobility, and most importantly, the infinite chance simply to be kind, and loving, to those who would not cling back, not call her a part of their life.

Walking tentatively across the freshly-mopped floor, her nose entangled in the scent of heavily humid air, freshly burned incense, and wholesome floor soap, she stretched out her mind in search of an empty water glass, picturing the satisfaction of another gulp of coolness. The future, a tangle of upset hopes, fueled blindly by the inevitable firmness of a heart’s conviction yet to find simple earthy words to express itself. Excitement, terror, and the faint taste of freedom, like the almost-savoring of sweetness upon entering a candy store. Hers was still a powdered future, a miasma upon the breeze, and she escaped often to the garden in order to chase after the aroma with her thoughts, and spread her limbs, weakened by sadness, through the clover in shade.

Linger

What does it feel like to be real? Like my first garden, fenced in green bamboo and chicken wire, a stone wall on the east side, embedded in Summer grass the mower can’t touch, filled with kale, and cherry tomatoes over-growing their bamboo tepees threaded with the strips of an old and faded purple bed sheet, one daring pole raising a thin streamer above the jungled garden. The smell of that green bamboo, the crumpled brown leaves it once bore which I couldn’t bear to commit to the bonfire, and stuffed as decoration into the near invisible mess of wire that was my handmade fence. Inside the weeds sidle against a foot worn path of purple brown, now clay-like earth that presses cool and reassuring against the toes I spread luxuriously outward, toad-like, as they received my weight. Who can navigate the garden but me? Cool air tickling around my neck and ears, all green eyes and bundled up diaphanous skirt between elegantly bent fingers. Wildness and home, observer, wanderer and tender, child, tattered one, reluctant and cool as evening in Summer when the Sun has released the earth from her stare and leaves purple grey dusk hanging gently round our shoulders. Safety, quietness, impermanence, solitude, security, hope. Life.

Picture to yourself, a tomorrow worth living for. Remember for yourself, a yesterday in simple reflections of who you are. Imagine it, paint contentment, sketch out peace in musty cabin smells, laughing hyperbole, deep green under-foliage light illuminated by happy cat smiles. These are the pieces I have, and like some dogged anthropologist, I make a life out fragments, tell some story by the little evidence of really living, put a person back together. Put my soul back together, as light lingers ever longer, resting against the fortress of hills around me, as ever closer I come to decide.

Embrace

What is the balance between wanting to be what you could, and wanting to be who you are?

I tire quickly of being out of context, as if once having found my place I am increasingly reluctant to release myself into it. Tired finally of being out of place, the exception, the other, the alternative.

Embrace the fate unlooked for, and the simplest answer, the favorable, the honest, the color that needn’t throw out hues of old, who cling persistently only because they are the base coat I can’t ignore.

I am at the crossroads. I’ll be alright somewhere, someday, as long as I slowly unravel the fears, regrets, and hopelessness that come from lives unlivable, from pains I put myself through just trying to find home, just trying to love myself for any old reason, but maybe the one that matters.

Light on a Still Heart

Miraculousness still set against death, but the battle is already in the winning; irrevocable, seamless and still feeling perilous to those of us weakened in the long dark of Winter. Tasting the first sorrel, and still shivering in the pale air, greeted by another member of the ladybug invasion battalion, I sit in the lushness of a Spring evening, which invariably drives us all into the garden, the Sun raking our pale eyes. We all know it’s happened, we’ve exited the cold and left it behind us, but we wait to see what heat and life and warmth really mean, what soft evenings, tender shoots, and lingering April light bring to achy Winter emotions.

Feeling as scattered as the barking of territorial robins, my little conceptions of living all broken down and out-growing themselves. But Spring is when I feel the most myself, in that eager space between silent Winter and the over-whelming profusion of new life, when my existence, quietly insignificant, is so small it’s seems silly to throw it away, like crumpling a winged dandelion seed for spite. I celebrate the death of Death, as on every Easter, coming to the recognition that life moves beyond that which we think is the end; in physicality, in spiritual maturity, in hope. Recovering with the bravery that lives tenderly in humility, like greening grass, like the soft faces of regal violets.

It is these rare moments that remind me that there is a home for me somewhere, that I am, in fact, no wandering orphan, no misplaced chorus singing loudly against the harmony. Strong as the Sun passing through budding boughs, Light reach me, Light guide me back.

Little Buds, the End of March

There’s a ladybug in my lap, and I can’t argue with her loveliness; driven there by her awkward landing in my hair, with a buzzing collide not unlike that of a sudden good mood, so tender and ephemeral after it has dived headlong into recognition. The sun setting slowly, and Spring playing with my mind, untwining my hair and my Winter as I walk outside.

I’m voracity spent, wandering on a Spring night, the trees still bare enough to see the glimmering stars. I’m the child whose games are deadly serious, altering her mother to this reality by her solemn, forlorn looks. I’m crying inky tears, waking up slowly on mornings when the mist gathers on the soft shoulders of the mountains.

It’s the fates we can’t escape from that make us who we are. No use deciding what part we’ll play, for far too many roles will reach empty hands across the stage, each eager and urgent in its own way to be fulfilled, dramatized, needing just our voice to make them live. And I refuse to be limited by my own self-expectations. What I should be, the road to which paved by what I am, ever remains to be seen, and I will strive to no longer discard the tender everyday. The battered concrete, the unkempt bit of earth between street and landscape, the awkward brightness of man-made against a dull awakening Spring; they are not as they should be, as I, yet worth regarding, worth incorporating into my image of existence. The perception inside makes them alive, one moment at a time, just as my barely sprouting self, regarding the world from under a patchwork coat of identity-trying, really lives by what it hopes, not by what it’s been.

Peaceably Melting

The snow just about melted, and what remains so dirtied by the passing life as to recede peaceably into anonymity. Brightness above, through cloudless skies in swift procession to blinking Winter eyes, and the geese fly through it, plying their ancient melodies as they shift from peak to peak. Make by bed in the melting snow; piles of soggy crunchiness, disappearing in rivulets of shimmering possibility. Now is when we all change, from frozen expectation to trickling mobility which for a while muddies all boots who dare tread forward in hopes of Spring. I release myself, embrace slowly the season of working, learn my eyes not to flood with protective tears at the new brightness of days.

What becomes of my dear Winter? He slips away as a protective father gently releasing his strong grip on the seat of Spring’s first bicycle. We forget his majesty in the moment of first joy at glimpsing her emerging independence; delicate, still under his care, but developing openly away from him, showing her colors like moments of knowing laughter, unassuming, and terribly beautiful in her promise. She’ll one day meet her suitor in Summer, a gallantly robed youth, dashing, imperious, graced with the first wisdom of adulthood, hard work and enjoyment tempered evenly in his steady eyes. Still, now she dances standing on Winter’s hard shoes and we wait for her, wait for her freedom as we wait for ours. Could it be time now? Time to begin the thousand things brewing in the many starry nights we’ve passed. Melt away expectation with the drifting snow, for promises go far beyond the season they are sowed, and stay with us for many turns about our lonely Sun. Forgive me where I have failed to fulfill; I dream of a better tomorrow, holding good thought in the palm of my hand like sprouting seed, and wait for the rushing waters of a thaw to cleanse the dross of seasons past before I give my gift into the Earth.

Oil Painting by myself

Little Solider

What have I sacrificed, to put emotion into writing, meaning into form, my state into image and tangible moment? Would it have been better to leave well enough alone, or to have buried such outpourings in the folds of living, not to be seen? Most likely not, as the latter could be the end of me; pent up and wondering, brimming with passing feelings, unable to breathe or move for my constriction. So then, I face an almost interminable problem: that of being ashamed to be so needing in expression, while treading the tenuous balance between longing for acceptance of personal treasures and recognizing their seemingly insurmountable limitations.

Bravery, be with me; courage in a female heart, walking upright, clad in shining silver and paper white gauze. Humility, find safe refuge in my heart, for I am nothing without you, only a mass of unspeakable torments, fumbling without reason, hurting without growth, spending my talent as water spilled on concrete slabs.

Little solider, who ran away from the protection of her regiment, ill-equipped for the danger she encountered, her own cries of fear drowning out what helpful orders could have reached her. Now limps back to position, the armor provided her dinged and broken, blackened and missing the little touches of metallurgic beauty. It’ll be alright now, as you learn to relinquish the weapons you fashioned in frightened haste, learn to once again steer your horse into formation, straighten your back in assurance, and ride on in gallant company. Speak what words you discovered in stranger countries, and weave the ribbons of your experiencing into the cracks and fragments of your armor. Life will be painted in awkward colors, after all, until we learn, until we out grow our own ideas, and live simply. Leave fear in tattered phrases by the wayside, leave anger desperation and torment in muddied colors on a passing milestone. It was all meant for your development, it was yours; see yourself there finally, and move on.

Painting by myself

Prayer for Healing

Deep in my heart there lives a little hollow. The shape no larger than what can easily be hidden in circumstance. Like a little drift away, like a non-belonging, which I shepherd tenderly about from day to day. A seed of sadness, the brand of some forgotten sin, and in its hidden lumpiness the guilty suspicion that I have no right to exist. Though all about is peace and stillness, like this little farm with its fresh covering of snow, I bleed from this secret hollow, in drops down a murky drain.

But with each new cycle the dross is cleared away, and like tender skin revealed, I once again stand shivering and pink, raw, sore and unfamiliar to my surroundings. Remembering art this time, catching the end of lengthy sun-downs, and slowly igniting love and expression.

Wondering at how poignantly the little hollow wants for real femininity. Always chasing it or denying the fabled specter in turn, feeling more Valkyrie than missus; tempestuous, recklessly valiant, sacrificing. A fighter, indelicate. A wanderer, reclusive. Ablaze with my own passions, though longing to serve in utter surrender, to burn away ego in the fire of the front lines. Gladly I’d give my being for my cause, if only life could be as simple. But the more difficult battle is the one which preserves the fighter, heals her as she laughingly removes that which hinders her salvation, and sends her onwards whole. Preserved, rejuvenated, bettered, filled, complete, alive, free.

Would that I will freely join this fight, and in walking away from the pain I pin myself down to, find joy.

Mid-Winter

The Sun and Moon at equal sight across the valley deep in Winter. Leveling off, the balance about to be shifted; tentative. Bubbling through cloud cover, purpled by its descent, a Sun diminished by the day and visible now for it’s brightness. Galantly singing in tones too soft for day lit hours, a face beneath the veil of sinking afternoon rises as the Moon, defiant, cool and unrelenting.

Back home, nurturing a penchant for empty journals, clean notebooks, sketchbooks with hard stylized covers, packages of legal pads yellow with blue lines. As if with each new purchase, a new novel of being would erupt upon the blank pages, writing itself in clear, scattery italics, telling me in plain English the inner workings of a favorite heroine, myself. She’s like a willow-warrior, reckless and ephemeral. She’s tired, sad, beautiful, and alive, like rain on Spring mornings, like a break in Winter weather. Dodging all boulders, save those she sights with tightened eyes and swallows with the frail fluidity of her being. Like water through a rocky stream, which in it’s passing beautifies the obsticles, like a stargazer upon the lip of darkening clouds, she occupies the last impossible middle between hope and despair. Her speeches come in lengthy phrases; tumbling with long words over hills of changing seasons, circumventing lips only parted enough to let a whisper through, she’ll let a reverie pass for insight before turning to her God in all the awe she can muster, and be humbled once more to silence.

Mid-way; Winter about to turn, and a weakened heroine about to choose a new beginning. Under growing Light, myself, the season awaits the change.

Painting by myself

Unrelinquished

Tidied up the pile of empty wrappers, found a note I regretted forgetting and fished a wriggling ladybug from the paint-water. Wait a few minutes for the tea, relax an aching wrist and forearm. One of those lonely, dangerous days, when life is a shadow of what it could be, when eyes and teeth are extensions of a tattered state; biting and looking about, rimmed in dull red, impatient.

When ill, all life is a poignant exercise in experiencing - each littered moment a metaphor. As I struggle to allow myself to exist, life blares forth around me, clamoring into the foreground, numbing my effect upon it.

Felt different now for about a year. A year long voyage across the sea, the rough weather breaking only in intervals, while the bulk of the voyage progresses in one long tightening swell of remorse and despair. By shaking waves, but ebb and flow, I’ve undergone a sea change. Dinged and polished at once, in the refining yet wearing dance the ocean currents preform, tossed, uplifted and pulled down under the great weight of watery being. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to open all this up, reveal it and look plainly upon it, but I’m here now, and I feel like I have to regard it.

Taken aback by how much I still search for acceptance and recognition from others. This gnawing for recognition, for attention on my own terms, for praise I can understand, for qualities I myself choose to cultivate, for the person I have decided I am. Friendship I am just waking up to, compassion for myself a peaceful shrine to a pilgrim just beyond her door, and the blessing of help available at my fingertips if only frightened lips would dare part to ask for it. Usually, I feel all alone, and this along with many other limited perspectives that have become reality, must begin to fade. Everyday I choose again to allow myself to exist; let Love guide me, let me ever again decide to turn my face to It’s endless Justice, for I am allowed to remain here by It, and I must not give up on that which Love had not relinquished either.

Decide, and begin anew

Part of me assumes that one day, I’ll walk into the woods and lay my body, exhausted finally from the hurt and struggle, down into the leaves, and release myself from mortality. In ending, singing at last the song I’ve murmured through my life, releasing with life the best of myself. Able to escape at last, able to express itself in a final gasp, a secret melody liberated. And I, free from the need to work it out with my own two hands, free from the pressure of something burning inside. Something whose intricacy my fingers flail against and in myriad media, scratch out echos of what it could be, what it longs to be. Tired of all these, she lays her head upon the fallen leaves, each a whisper, each a piece of what could have been. Then she begins to dream. Wandering away from the noises of the past, and she finds the dying day beautiful beyond imagination, filling her eyes still she closes them, and a great Love travels straight to her heart. A few more paintings to go, a better dance step, an artful pile of unwashed dishes: life beckons once more with the softest of touches, lingering in the sensitive hollows of my body, holding me here, for as long as here lasts, like the fading sundown. Each cloud calling out in harmony to the beauty of living; a chorus of birthing yells, a giving of every effort in order to realize something new, something inexpressibly beautiful. Tired of all these, she sent her body to the forest to die, and instead, sent her heart back to the Creator, and chose to walk a while, while the light lasts, while the Sun lingers, while beauty and Grace still far outnumber her troubles.

Digital art "Surrender" by myself