Month: September 2018

I went for a walk through the vineyards this morning for grounding. I woke up feeling I was floating above the floor carrying my head cradled in my hands. I push for the kind of achievement and validity that sends you soaring to unknown heights. It’s never high enough and the terrain during takeoff is always rougher. I feel I’m borrowing myself for some unknown task that is sure to crack the code and make it all worthwhile. I feel my feet on the ground and it’s a kind of gentle humbling–the skin a miraculous blanket between me and the elements. Scenes begin receding from my mind and I can feel a fullness in my stomach, the heavy, physical companion that settles in and reminds me that I am simply so sad. I am sad.

There are hints of something more in the wind, the plants, the birds, confetti-like crispy leaves. I feel September like a firm tap on the shoulder, reminding me I haven’t figured it out yet. Who would I be without the search? Maybe the fear is simply a paralyzing suspicion that there is really nothing at all. What are the planets, the music, the flowers? Scraps of projects left unfinished by a divine creator in the throws manic depression. Have we been abandoned? I tap away at my creations trying to emulate our long-lost celestial parent, playing hide and seek in the ruins.

Sadness is the dramatic, wispy follower of spinning frenzy. There is always fervor and chaos sloshing around in my core, ready to stop and dump me at the side of the road. It’s so hard to keep a lid on….me? I am an unwelcome guest in this incarnation. Nothing is authentic or mine. What am I supposed to do with all of this time and why does it pass so quickly? The paradox of boredom and growing old. I scramble in the dark trying to convince myself that striving for anything serves any purpose at all. Hard work and perfectionism are most likely illusions, yet I cling to them in fear of going mad. I deny myself happy moments like a kind of existential diet. I watch them pass by and keep a safe distance while proclaiming how lovely they all are– a spectator at a parade, smiling and laughing on the sidelines.

Sadness keeps me quiet, bobbing up and down and circling like a dead fish in the water. Frenzy reconnects me to the soaring belief in something heavenly tangible. I am foreign in sea and sky. I walk through the vineyards trying to adopt a character suspended between the two. Who am I? Each thud of a foot, the wind in my hair, flying about but still attached- signs there must be something imposing caught between sadness and madness. I imagine myself a piece of transcendental twine, twirling and yanking at the shores of humanity. I am something or someone. Now back to work.

There is a box of books in a corner I avoid. I’ve told myself it’s not worth the trouble. My young mind couldn’t handle who was hiding in there and I’m not yet proud enough to assume I’m able to today. She was ravenous and loud, ready to swallow and define anyone who crossed her path. She was unbridled and inappropriate and went off the rails. Out of necessity there followed a string of humble, contemplative years. She’s still there, packed away like a sloppy ending. She sometimes creeps out, bleached by the sun and is gently shelved as pathology. She is so proud yet hurt by stunned faces who shield their eyes from her. She is a princess, demanding and regal, yet vulnerable and easily swayed.

Not even all the courage, collected like trophies at every trial, can openly acknowledge her birthright. We live a life that flippantly restrains brilliance. Nothing may exude its own light, like the moon, condemned as the eternal reflective companion. We live in the dark and blend in during the day. We hardly dare to write our own mythology, in fear of glossy packaging and frizzy, matronly hair, corporate tattoos.

I am deathly bored. I am suffocated in chameleon costumes. I am dying a slow death of fear and refusal to swallow. I sit at a table of cardboard cutouts and throw paint hoping to compromise their flimsy form. Rebellion is a bore. Refusing to fit in is a form of cowardice. Truth comes in the creation of a new palace and a courtyard full of dancing life. There are  gardens of mirrors and banquet tables filled with blank pages and raw materials. Her book is wide open and read aloud; we are free to faint in overwhelming, endless altitude. Here she is reconciled, in the palace of the heart, unbound. Confusion and ecstasy are embraced and refined. Love and transcendence circulate freely as stimulants.

This is the woman in hiding who longs to dance as close to the edge as the material plane allows. If she falls, may she be a brilliant planet falling from the sky, disoriented and flung to new heights.