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.