The Hallway's Hell?

I was late yesterday morning for a meeting in my own office but certainly not from lac of trying to get there on time. That was one of my intentions for the new calendar year at the end of December/early Jan: respect people that you are in union with by showing up to meet them on time. I am historically a dawdler. Anyhow I was up with plenty of time to spare but I was just so sluggish there was no going any faster than the mud under my skin. It was rainy out, sooo rainy that there are coastal flood advisories all over the shore. And mostly, I was tired, like blinky blinky mostly sleeping tired all day.

I was quiet for the first half-hour of the meeting even though it was very informal. Quiet in general is not usually my way. Then it came out--Kim was finishing up a recap on the latest details of her own personal transitions when I just said it, the truth of the matter. "I've been over the bridge every weekend since I quit my job. I leave Fridays and dont get back til Monday morning, sleeping on friend's sofa and hanging out late every night. I love it I'm having so much fun at home I barely am even connected to the life I still have over here! It's all I can do to keep a single foot in the game..." I was whining, had thrown myself across the conference table but in a silly, self-indulgent way, and smiling, too. Brenda laughed, said "Well if all you've done is work for the past two years all you're going to do now is party! Who can blame you? You're an overacheiver!"

And that is it. Last night I was so exhausted, just tired tired tired. And it's true, I haven't slowed down. I was sinking fast in to a drained, hopeless place when I got home from work and I willingly let myself go there. I laid on the couch and watched Seinfeld and let the hopeless feeling take me. I took a little nap. Then I asked myself what I needed, and no answer came. But I know now that that bad feeling is actually remedy-asking, a specific language of my own personal soul. I looked around my house: unpacked suitcase still in place in the corner, where it's been for three weeks in order for me to just switch outfits in and out. Dishes piled in the sink, literal stacks of papers and bills in three different places. Dust bunnies everywhere in clumps on the stained wood panels. The old me, pre-Choptank, would have been so self-scrutinizing. But last night I just sighed, smiled and realized what I needed was to clean up, to set a little order around here in order to daily enjoy the little time I have left in this fabulous place of my own. I left the tv on and took intermittent time doing dishes, watching sitcoms, sorting bills, folding clothes. I ate dinner of potato chips and cheetos bc I have no other dinner food. I even eventually vacuumed, too.

God it feels good to go easy on myself. To take care of myself, and to listen. When I first got sober this lady Debbie told me that the first year is just about learning to name your emotions, and that the only ones we can usually identify in the beginning are good and mad. And then she told me that we are like pendulums, we get plucked and off we go in the direction of happiness, and it's so good to be there that when we move then wooaaaaah now we flail over to the other side, mad. And so we go, until we learn to honor all the little subtleties of in-between. The process. Really, I believe this: if I dont care for and cherish and nurture my self, if we dont take the time to listen and be quiet, and also to run and be crazy and vital and party and embrace, then who will? Who will be gentle with me if I'm not? No one lives this life for us you know? It's up to us to be open to our selves, our incongruencies and our own funny swings. I woke this morning, quiet, peaceful, aware. Aware of how blessed I am and in acknowledgment that the transitions, the in-between places, the time when waiting in the hall for the next door to open, how that can be hell but really it isn't meant to be, or to be seen as a problem to have. How come that's how we approach life, how come that's so commonly the attitude we take to change? Despair. It's so exciting to have the infinite horizon on the distance. Exciting, yes, and terrifying too. But to get the chance to be out there--doing it. I mean, that's just it, isn't it? That's just where I am and just where I am amped to be.

Poem. O Powerful Windhorse-Goddess

LUNGTA
The Tibetan word for Windhorse

Sounds like true love to me you say, and I roll over in bed
my eyes at the far wall where the two dollar junky furniture
I bought at the Crumpton auction junk sale props against the wall
a shelf for my jewelry, of which there is a lot
my couple movies and my few remaining CDs.
The shelves have cobwebs in the square corners that glisten dew-like
in the sun. There is no sun out it is late now. The shelves are painted barn red.
I like the junk piece and won’t throw it out because it reminds me of earthen clay.

Is that what it’s like? I ask and cover deep up under the softest sheets I own.
The ones that never get washed because I always need them on my bed as home.
I sigh and close my eyes, I am caught in the parallel between
the floating obvious of the everyday and the permanent parts
settled in me the wired lines at night, there when I go to sleep.
Fleeting thoughts I label as whimsy. I guess I stopped believing
those because often there is not enough energy to try.
I drink water out of a hand thrown mug given to me by Brook
made by Mare. That was when I had nothing but whimsy the birthday
I spent long days lying in the dirt on my farm talking to the sun.
Brook is in bed, probably, with Brandon right now.
You are a good friend I think, but do not say this out loud.
I marvel instead at how the phone cut out, your cell battery dead
3000 miles away from here, Newport, in your own bed. The last thing
I said before I lost you: I deserve that. I deserve to be treated like gold.

The Tibetan word for self-existing energy of basic goodness translates
in English to Windhorse. Think of that. When I first moved to Oregon
several of my poems featured a horse and when I met you it was clear
by your hair that you were made of the breeze. In your essence there
could be little pink forgetmenots braided in, and sunlight that actually
looks like linked ribbons and keeps certain curls warm and in place.
The way the sea pitches between the light of the trees on the Coast is
a miracle, cities are built and torn and ravaged for the lac or the
want of it. You are from Kansas, but came there because the land
Gnostic as it is, had secret currents run in its cave. You are archeological.
You piece clues together, sit Ashram in your bedroom, divine the code
you now call Anusara. This is goodness Beth, same like you said to me
on my back on the purple mat Whale Cove over my Northwest shoulder
where Crow always met me for coffee in the trees: Breath. Just Breathe.

O, powerful Windhorse-Goddess of muscles secret land-work and breath.
It is so good to have friends, it is so good to have a friend as you.
You are, we, the Princess Path. We take steps and the Anasazi dance
around fires that today smolder only as lichen or what is left in the
red clay. We celebrate, we yearn more, we beckon ever-forward.
The sea and the trees and the cavernous glee is our yarn and we sew
it all back together in this dance. These steps are yours, are me,
are unraveling a secret code that is and will always be gold. And I get it
when you say, That is beautiful, that is beautiful. You are saying Friend,
my friend, you are beautiful. Just breathe, just be. My friend, o Windhorse
you sweet sanction of grace and air through trees, you who works hardest
with hands and wrists and hips and muscled sinewy legs, you who carries
all on her back, who is never and ever loaded all the way down, who runs
and gallops and whinies with ribbons flying and sometimes screams:
You are beautiful, sacred. You are beautiful, as said to me
You deserve gold. Just breathe Just breathe…Just be

Personal Agnostic Creed

by Brooks Long

I believe in the twin justices of peace and murder
I believe in the benevolence of my father and mother
As much as I refuse the truth of their failings
I believe in the one story, its depth and wonder and tragedy too heavy to escape the throat of one voice yet slips from every lip every day
I believe in the child whom can not be defined even after a lifetime
I believe that God looks after fools and drunks
(and there is no God)
I believe in the love of Jesus and the grand tyranny of a joke and its jester
I believe in the indignation following a tree and a rope and
No hate, only
the denial of love
I believe in myself twice daily
I believe myself always
I believe fiercly in the ballet of a junkie
I believe in the grandeur of harsh vernacular
I believe in pussy
I believe in the hush of a kiss
I believe in one American color: brown, yellow, black, red, white and blues
I believe in Rock and Roll, which most certainly exists
I believe in my grandfathers own church and pulpit
I believe in Fayette Street
I believe in a promised land
I believe passionately in calm rationality
I believe in the fist
I believe in the knife and the rifle
I believe in the atomic bomb, which most certainly exists
I believe in the survival of me and mine
I still believe in the twin justices of peace and murder
I believe that after life is death
And know nothing
Amen.

~~~

I dont know much, but I believe in love and santification through imperfection. And the holy light coming in through the least expected cracks in the cement and holes in the wall when you're too fucking tired and broken and dust-filled to even think or strain to look. This man has saved my life, again again again and once more again and again this year. So many times I could never quantify or possibly relate them back for you all to even try to make sense or comprehend. But where once there was none, there is love and light again--trust. Thank you friend travel well I so, so believe in you xoxo

Poem. Smallest Pebble.

There is nothing rosy about this
some beautiful Blanchard spoof
with dusky oils and pastels and far-off
faces with far-off eyes appropriate the way
far-off looks are supposed to paint it: longing

C’mon. That’s my eyes rolling.
Take a puff knock it down don’t forget
muthfkr to pass. I will garden the soils
great with rain, the wetness will spill out
my legs. Alloy. It will smell like metal
cuz all things do, unwashed. Purity
that doesn’t look it always is labeled
pain. Elemental
where it all goes
& where it all starts
& ends again. So what baby
I aint got time for this Now what?
I aint tryin to hear that shit
Closer to this is the cure. Where the ground
smells like metal it takes like fangs, there is
bone there, calcium, which is part mortar.
Mix it up a little with your own bag of salt.
It smells rotten it always should, it always
will. In the sex light the afternoon burns
orange shades of palsy that even the lungs
cant destroy. Even the uterus and wilted sac
can’t maim it instead hang holy like ornaments
decorative after emaciated calling. Little bells with
sanctified Christmas songs inside the machine.
Yell it out, hear? Stop, don’t stop! Start the
radio going again play that good old shit,
move your ass to the music you got down once
don’t forget you can, again

Nature and Will

Last night in the middle of the night at like 4 I turned the light on I was awake and the only thing I can say is that I was anxious, but in an excited way with an alive mind that I think was anticipating the weekend. I blog-rolled and looked over my own blog reading recent posts, which is something I am neurotic and narcissistic about every so often, and thought to myself I dont know I think I am going through one of those times when I dont have much to say. I realized that what has been on here on my blog the last couple posts is about tidying up the remnant hurts that still are left "at home." And I think I've about wrung that free of all there is left to say.

And now it is now, and I am here, and that is the untruth: because as often as it is about my voice and the capturing, it too is about just downloading and processing and getting it out. Which is when I most feel sorry for you Dear Reader for reading when the truth for me is sometimes like today I just need to blabble spontaneous download and it is an exercise in futility but then, isn't that what all art in some slants of thought is? I am writing literally to bring myself in to the day or really, just to clean and charge my mind.

I fell back to sleep around 6:30 and was bumming when I felt the blanket of rest flit finally over my consciousness: it's going to be late when I get up now...and it was, it was after 9, I wanted to be in the office already. I am meeting with my writing partner tonight, and spending the night at Mandy's after so we can late night catch-up. It is golden sunny out, the little blue speedwells are popped out everywhere and the air smells so stank of wet earth and high-nostrilled sweet salt cooking from the creeks and muddy riverbeds that all I want to do is wander in to the woods and hug armfulls of pineneedles and wet lacy leaves to my face and chest.

I have data to review and submit.

Ah, poor me, no? I am so silly with my Will. I've been thinking a lot about nature, about one's nature and the larger, macro Nature of things. How in that fabulous magic double helix way of manifestation One's Nature, and the larger Nature, are convergent in the nebulous with actual Nature as well, with the elemental base of all things. Through which we get to act out project on to and portray this walking dream. I have a couple women who are hella close to me, who I've grown up with over the last decade or so and we coach and mentor each other through life. Three of the four of us are Aries, and I was thinking about this because it's come up a lot in our recent discussions--our impulsiveness, our fire, our Will. Aries is just about upon us--the Equinox is Saturday!! and after all this mutable rain--all this watery washing away of things--now will come the harnessing of change. The worst thing one can do is fight their nature, I believe that in the dance of Wills, inside the limited human understanding of morality and religiosity and ethics and Free Will and submission, there is the beautiful meeting place where the seeds of what we want birth the potentiality for the highest possible example of how and who we could be. Where Free Will and High Will transmute and are one and the same. Ahhhh, Magic! Doubt, and fighting these impulses, are the truest sin? In meditation under the last full moon I was long and quiet and then the trance slipped on, and my medicine Owl came to me and I had a brief but clear reminder of the importance of Intention, and aligning our truths and not fighting what we want. And, too, owning clearly what we dont want "because when we ignore what we dont want this becomes guilt."

Woah, well it is St. Patricks Day I guess in the fashion of this tradition (O mama Brigid my first and true rune) what was meant to come out today was some good olfashion Celtic esoteria--Nature Wisdom for all of you.

Yea so. I was all amped about this weekend in the middle of the night, for my little fancy dress and dancing and celebrating Saturday night. I didn't sleep well in excitement and allure and wakefullness aligned with the Nature of things. The sun is shining and so I will go now, get dressed, and walk to work. Be well be well be true to you...!