Fearing the ordinary: a seemingly low-grade infection and subtle gnawing. Really it’s a fear of losing the ability to sense the extraordinary even in mundane moments. I grow older and more desperate for it, yet also more refined in the search. Rituals and reading stave it off by the hour. Sometimes scavenging for new experiences sets the stage.
A girl on-stage–not the performance itself but the moment before performance. She’s posed waiting for the intro of breathy strings to pass and the wind is blowing through her red hair. There’s a tiny hush in the bustle of the crowd and I feel the hair stand up on my arms. It’s fleeting yet defining. Does feeling this way lie in my own ability to perceive and thereby create it, or do moments like these occasionally cross over from some other plane? I am thrown to exasperation and irritation in times of lack.
I am raised to the heavens in moments of intimate, unbridled connection and in the ethereal essence of devoted action. Without it I’m trapped in transitory and futile. I feel it as a call for a new God-form, and with it a life of regimented service to the sublime. I feel it in the dedication and sacrifice of the body to a higher calling.
I step into uncharted territory and begin to fear myself. I feel I’m present yet attached to the stars, the tail of the Scorpion. Once I’m standing on the shore between myself and the unknown, I’m overtaken by the enormity of the waves and feel the ground slipping away. This is the line I aspire to live on– the depth of the waters versus the dried out shell of who I pretend to be. It is on this line between the two worlds where inspiration and creation arises. There must be some lifeline between them that serves to protect those whose nature demand they take the voyage.
I hear otherworldly, celestial voices in the planetary hum of our existence. I feel an awakening consciousness in my body. I open my new, luminous hands like a seashell and innocently outstretch them to others who find it “too hard to handle.” A refusal of food, a prayer, a painting, a dance, the sound of a violin; dare to look at the true source! Who are we when heaven descends to earth? How do we achieve a sense of grounded ecstasy? Can we overcome the fear of our own intensity and channel it into a language of revelatory magnificence? Can we learn to share ourselves with one another in starry territory? I am living to know.
