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.