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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.