Birds In Flight
Each time I go further inward I toss up these self portraits and I can't tell if it's for courage (because everyone can be beautified in photoshop) or if it's because I know that they reveal more than I believe I ever reveal in front of others. I have a recurring dream in which others completely read me and I never have to disclose myself again.
For a writer that's a kind of death. Every time I'm out in public, (around other human beings), I watch them as though I wasn't a part of them and I ask myself if this isn't a huge presumption? To assume that I am not being watched myself? I float through my town quietly whenever I am not in view of someone I know. The animation button is in neutral. I have no particular feelings besides curiosity and a kind of distant assessment that I pile up for future examination. I am a receptacle for cool observation. I am alien, unseen, undetected, and the impact I make is almost unmeasurable. I'm uncomfortable knowing that I am still so compartmentalized that I can still feel this separate from the world when I am simultaneously so clearly OF IT and IN IT.
To feel things too strongly is a weight I can't carry every hour of every day. I must have respite- empty meditation. My meditation is watching the world spin around me while I am lifeless, still, unseen, unheard, and not entirely real. Everything is so extreme and I long for a life more balanced but I don't even know if I could stand it if I had it. I know I'm pretty broken, even now, yet I can't help but wonder if my broken-ness is everything I'm supposed to be? What would I have to share if I didn't have a deep well of compassion and empathy to draw from?
I like to take pictures of myself and play with them because I keep trying to find the face I really wear. The one I wear when no one sees me. And sometimes I want to know what face everyone else sees me wear? It must be here somewhere. I post them here as though it will make me more solid.
I am too stripped. Too pale a version of my original self.
I would like to have a big room to myself. The empty one with the floor to ceiling wood windows open to wind and rain and snow and the penetrating cold with the curtains whipping in and out like flags of surrender. The place I always retreat to when I want to be safe. It is so white and honey gold in there and cold. I want to be in that big room with music playing so loud it shakes the bones far beneath my skin. I want to practice war in that room. I want to arm myself and I want my body to become fleet- trim- capable- and I want to conform it to a greater grace than this corporeal self can ever realize. I want my hands to be birds in flight.
When I close my eyes I can feel it fall into place.
The music of the room finds me only in the most profound quiet.
I would use carrier pigeons to send messages of love to the dead if only I could find them all.
The outsider and the insider are merely careful reflections of each other.
I would use carrier pigeons to send messages of love to all the abused and neglected children of this world if I could only find them. I must believe that by giving my own sweet son all the love I can and all my deepest appreciation it must somehow find its way outward from our small circle. I am no perfect mother and there are times when I desperately wish to be more than I am to my own kid, but all the love a kid could need is here and I share it freely like my blood.
I feel the heat from the walls surrounding me and know how very fortunate I am in my misfortunes. I am thinking of the lady who wore paper bags for shoes in San Francisco and I want to send her messages of love as well. But perhaps she would spit on any offering less than coin and warmth. I could bring shoes and leave sweet little violets in her sleeping fingers reflexively clenched and ready for fight.
Like me.
Like my spirit.
I am as imperfect as we come. Us humans.
Tonight, in the quiet, I even salute my enemies. I will still be standing here in the morning.
Like a song you can't get out of your head.
Like a pigeon that always finds its way home as the honey bee does.
There is more soot here than honey.
But I will give everything I have.
I will be fighting shadows in the empty cold room. You can always find me there. It's where my spirit's housed. Like my own cocoon that never opens. Faulty wings and weak silk keep me still enough. I can't die here because this room is impervious to everything.
It is its own death.
This is the time to think of red poppies and new fruit. This is the penny whistle dream from which spring emerges in the dirge of winter. You must dream it first and then you will wake one morning to the light air of the funereal notes that herald the passing of love buried deep in snow and welcome the thin rays of weak spring light that bring the birds back to the boughs.
I will strop the razor and raise the bow.
For a writer that's a kind of death. Every time I'm out in public, (around other human beings), I watch them as though I wasn't a part of them and I ask myself if this isn't a huge presumption? To assume that I am not being watched myself? I float through my town quietly whenever I am not in view of someone I know. The animation button is in neutral. I have no particular feelings besides curiosity and a kind of distant assessment that I pile up for future examination. I am a receptacle for cool observation. I am alien, unseen, undetected, and the impact I make is almost unmeasurable. I'm uncomfortable knowing that I am still so compartmentalized that I can still feel this separate from the world when I am simultaneously so clearly OF IT and IN IT.
To feel things too strongly is a weight I can't carry every hour of every day. I must have respite- empty meditation. My meditation is watching the world spin around me while I am lifeless, still, unseen, unheard, and not entirely real. Everything is so extreme and I long for a life more balanced but I don't even know if I could stand it if I had it. I know I'm pretty broken, even now, yet I can't help but wonder if my broken-ness is everything I'm supposed to be? What would I have to share if I didn't have a deep well of compassion and empathy to draw from?
I like to take pictures of myself and play with them because I keep trying to find the face I really wear. The one I wear when no one sees me. And sometimes I want to know what face everyone else sees me wear? It must be here somewhere. I post them here as though it will make me more solid.
I am too stripped. Too pale a version of my original self.
I would like to have a big room to myself. The empty one with the floor to ceiling wood windows open to wind and rain and snow and the penetrating cold with the curtains whipping in and out like flags of surrender. The place I always retreat to when I want to be safe. It is so white and honey gold in there and cold. I want to be in that big room with music playing so loud it shakes the bones far beneath my skin. I want to practice war in that room. I want to arm myself and I want my body to become fleet- trim- capable- and I want to conform it to a greater grace than this corporeal self can ever realize. I want my hands to be birds in flight.
When I close my eyes I can feel it fall into place.
The music of the room finds me only in the most profound quiet.
I would use carrier pigeons to send messages of love to the dead if only I could find them all.
The outsider and the insider are merely careful reflections of each other.
I would use carrier pigeons to send messages of love to all the abused and neglected children of this world if I could only find them. I must believe that by giving my own sweet son all the love I can and all my deepest appreciation it must somehow find its way outward from our small circle. I am no perfect mother and there are times when I desperately wish to be more than I am to my own kid, but all the love a kid could need is here and I share it freely like my blood.
I feel the heat from the walls surrounding me and know how very fortunate I am in my misfortunes. I am thinking of the lady who wore paper bags for shoes in San Francisco and I want to send her messages of love as well. But perhaps she would spit on any offering less than coin and warmth. I could bring shoes and leave sweet little violets in her sleeping fingers reflexively clenched and ready for fight.
Like me.
Like my spirit.
I am as imperfect as we come. Us humans.
Tonight, in the quiet, I even salute my enemies. I will still be standing here in the morning.
Like a song you can't get out of your head.
Like a pigeon that always finds its way home as the honey bee does.
There is more soot here than honey.
But I will give everything I have.
I will be fighting shadows in the empty cold room. You can always find me there. It's where my spirit's housed. Like my own cocoon that never opens. Faulty wings and weak silk keep me still enough. I can't die here because this room is impervious to everything.
It is its own death.
This is the time to think of red poppies and new fruit. This is the penny whistle dream from which spring emerges in the dirge of winter. You must dream it first and then you will wake one morning to the light air of the funereal notes that herald the passing of love buried deep in snow and welcome the thin rays of weak spring light that bring the birds back to the boughs.
I will strop the razor and raise the bow.