o my god, i soooo dont get life. i am having this weird thing happen right now and i dont get it. i mean as i speak, or anyhow as i write tap tap tap go the keys here i am trying really hard to flow with it and experience it and not close my self and my full-bodied, full-feelinged life off from it. IT'S HARD. without boring you dear reader, because indeed it is quite detailed, i can only say that i had an experience on sunday that sort of, no, that resolutely made the past not year (which has been the most hectic and full-of-change-and-challenge year that i have EVER, EVER had) but actually 3 YEARS all come together. and that moment of understanding opened up in me like a chasm i've since been readily trying and trying to ignore.
there are two men sitting behind me, directly behind me, at this very moment, in an otherwise empty coffee shop. they are christian. devotedly so. they continue to reference the son and the almighty christ. ok, no prob there, to each his own. but one is talking about the davinci code and how threatening it was to the word of christ. and the other laughs it easily off, reminding his friend it is fiction.
ok, so my digression: sunday started off as normal a day as any. well, that is if you can make room for the fact that my normal at times does mean waking up on a floor where at least seven or eight other people are still passed out, sleeping. it was morning after at my bro's house, day after he and his fiance brought together their wedding party to get to know one another and celebrate. and celebrate we did, until the wee hours, and every late night dancing laughing wild cell of me was fully satiated as result. i went to bed smiling like a worn out but totally satisfied queen of the ball. i awoke with peace and calm and also full of sunday light. i drove my date home. i called two other pals with whom i'd mentioned perhaps having breakfast with, and neither were down to meet so i, noting the gloriously fabulous glow of blue sky day chose instead to drive straight to the beach.
i found parking on 24th, changed in the street, and made my way down the boards and across the hot sand to the waters edge. i took my jewels and adornments off and dove in. i floated and swam a long, long while, washing out the late night no sleep tabacco lunged worn feet and tired legs funk. then i settled down to do what i've spent most of summer doing: staring at, listening to, and breathing the sea.
after a long while of this, when my soul was settled and my spirit at full peace, i picked up the book i recently bought. by an author i like, it's actually a memoir, and i thought i'd read it at erika's suggestion in order to "research" memoirs written by writer's i admire. you know, since i'm writing my own right now. turns out sue monk kidd's memoir, "the dance of the dissident daughter, a woman's journey from christian tradition to the sacred feminine" was all too near to this past three years for me.
i actually had a moment, sitting there feet in the sand slouched way down in my blue beach chair, that i was shaking from the hot tears rolling down my cheeks. it's like i'd forgotten, and indeed i did, how all this, all this: choptank, my job, leaving brandon, all of my Life, got here to what it currently looks like in the first place. see, i'd gotten caught up in the details, the relationships and struggles, the job, the where i live and what i am going to do stuff. and forgot about that day, not last fall, or even the one before, but three whole years ago, when in a moment of absolute desperation i beseeched whatever higher power was out there to put me on the path where i belonged, because i knew i was living the wrong one. one that was flat, without depth or quality of authenticity. and so these years later, this past sunday, sitting there, reading this woman tell my story, i understood in a seamless way how all that's happened since has simply been a deeper and deeper experience of my own grasping for, giving name to, and ultimately claiming my inner-spirit and my own unique humanity insofar as i am a women.
and it is the most vital and true part of my experience, and the hardest thing for which i've ever had to fight, or give words to. and too, it is where i continue to falter when it comes to writing- through in my own memoir. so here i sit today, in the coffee shop, reading monk kidd's memoir again, taking notes and voraciously scribbling my own random confirmations all over the sides of her pages in much the same way an avid researcher would o yes, aha, aha aha...when finally my own juices start to move and twirl and ticktock across my tongue and what do you know in come these two assholes right next to me with their very opinionated ideals. and NOT to say the davinci code was some kind of well written book or that it was even based in fact. no i am not arguing that at all. the symbology of that book to me is what matters, the uncoding so to speak, in our culture of the oppression of, and thus permission for a relevant female mythology is to me the significance of that story. a mythology not to temper or even balance but to complete the dominant male psychological underpinnings of the religous contexts of our society. the tale of patriarchy that exists and how it is only half the experience of this life but one so wholly validated by judeochristian themes.
so here i am, all stoked to get in to my own journey, in to this deep and complex experience of female spirituality and authenticity, and here come these two guys!!!!! as if to manifest my own very real cultural demons. that the value of a very real, very unconscious but powerful feminine archtypal equivalent within our human spirits is FICTION
LIFE
I
DONT
GET
YOU
needless to say, i've gotten no memoir writing done, but at least now i've blown off some clearly pent up steam........which i suppose is what that chasms been all about, anyway.
thanks, assholes
when i'm talking to the great all and giving thanks to Life tonight, i'll be sure to give jesus a big what's up for you~~
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