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Spitting in the Face of Reality

April 3, 2013 in Personal Essay, Words with Comments Off

I do not write lately because I feel trapped. Many things I just can’t bring myself to say out loud. That is a death sentence to a writer.

I am a zombie walking.

I feel numb, like my life is happening outside of my body.

I have applied for jobs. The comical way that none of them have panned out yet, especially that one, doesn’t feel comical today.

I feel like my body is a lottery, and I’m offering pieces of me to the best bidder and everyone is saying, “Nah, that’s okay, I’m good. But, gee thanks!”

The most maddening part is that there is actually one animated bidder. It’s me. The shadow side of me that is sitting out in an audience of abandoned fold-up auction chairs, and she’s waving a number in the air enthusiastically and saying, “Me, I’ll hire you. We’ll have so much fun. I have so many plans for you. Can you start today?”

And I have to ignore her. They’ll tell me I don’t. They’ll tell me I can throw her a bone every now and then, but she’s smarter than that. We both are. She wants all of me.

I stand on the auction block, a spotlight burning into my scalp where my dreads part. I don’t even look at her anymore, that shadow self. She’s a constant noise. Background noise. She hums. She is blurry and distant and her voice is garbled, like I’m underwater and she’s standing above it trying to pull me out.

I don’t want out. I just want to stay here and float and stare off into space until someone richer and more powerful says, “You there. Come, do my work for me.” And I’ll go. Head down, feet forward, I’ll go.

My shadow side will flip me off as I walk away. But she’ll do it in jest because she knows I’ll be back.

I’m tired of planning and scheming and supposing. I’m tired of that little shadow waving her number and saying things I can’t quite make out anymore. Everyone tells me you can do both. You can live in both worlds, straddle lines. “Especially you can Mandy. If anyone can, it’s you.” But I don’t want to. And hindsight tells me, this “not wanting to” leaves me with two choices: I am either a quitter or I am a whiner. Fine then. Slap them both on me. Give me every godforsaken label in your sack. I’m a deadwoman walking. What’s one more weight for these leaden boots.

I’ve been holding this in for a month because I knew it would sound just like it’s sounding. Heavy. Dark. Dramatic. That’s what they’ll be calling it. It’s no wonder I’ve locked it inside. We hold things in to save some dignity. We hold things in so we don’t have to hear everyone say “I told you so” because even if they don’t say it, the way they carry their shoulders through this life sentence tells you they are glad one more person has hit their nose hard on the cold glass of reality. “Come on down and do it our way now, you silly sky walker, you silly cloud dancer, you silly day dreamer.”

I refuse reality. I refuse it. I spit in its face. I claw and tear and kick it, and there will always be that shadow side of me that says “This may look like me giving in, but I’m not. I’m not joining your side. I’m not. Not ever. I still believe.”

Today, I want to sleep. I want to go through motions. I want to climb into the skin of a robot and peer out of those cold metallic eyeholes and be mechanical and circuited and formulaic and hidden safe, cocooned in the dark with four surrounding walls.

I’m losing this fight, so winning is going to have to look like something else entirely because my dad always said I was a winner.

Tomorrow I will reinvent winning. Today I will nap and stare metallic and dream of spitting in reality’s face so many times my mouth runs out of saliva and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.

If you want pretty, well, I’m all out.

I Want to Sip Life

March 22, 2013 in Personal Essay, Words with Comments Off

I want to sip life through a brand new straw with the protective paper yet unbroken. I want to be the one to break it. To tear into it like that time I opened the record The Monkeys all those Christmases ago. I want to sip as one would sip before they were given the caked and clogged confines of a straw we pass from mouth to mouth like we’re doing critical CPR on souls that are dying if they don’t hear the latest about how the church is falling apart because the peoples’ morals are slipping.

I want to slip through a straw that acts as a slip and slide to the next fantastic revelation, unable to snag elbows or heels on the fat that is choking the vein and keeping a reservoir of love only for itself and its saints.

I want to suck down deeper and wider than the bottom of the milkshake, slurping right on past the point of politeness, knowing there is nothing really there to stop me but raised eyebrows and heads shaking to the rhythms of hymns of disapproval. I want to get sloppy. Slurp too hard just once and feel the burn in my nose. Laugh too hard just once and feel the tingle in my eyes. Blow too hard just once and see the milk bubbles pop and overflow because maybe if our milk source is gone we can finally grow up and see what it means to test out our own tottering feet.

I want to sip life through a brand new unadulterated straw and bark at anyone who tries to snatch it, because what they call sustenance doesn’t work for me anymore and I’m tired of using the straw upside down like a child’s swimming toy that assures I only skim the surface and never visit what lurks in depths below. I won’t hear of heresy or betraying honor or letting God down because I’m just foolish enough to believe my slurpishness is all Divinely directed and it’s just loud enough to drown out all the other noise.

You tell me God is going to put a thumb over the bottom of my breathing hole? Until God what?

Has my attention? I’m obsessively attentive.

Kills me? I’ve died a thousand deaths to get here.

Disowns me? Then explain the reverberation in my chest that says “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

I want to sip life through a brand new straw and feel deliriously intoxicated with the Unexplainable that leaves me feverishly moving my pen in order to explain it. And after I’ve written, I want to take my straw and blow the still wet ink around until it makes fantastic intuitive splashes and splatters and symbols that lead me on my next adventure.

Extending a hand because I see that and I want to see more.

March 9, 2013 in Personal Essay, Words with Comments Off

“I wonder as I write this…if there will be one person to read it and see a thing that is mingled with every word. It is something that you must feel, that must fascinate you, the like of which you have never before met with.

It is the unparalleled individuality of me.”

- The Story of Mary MacLane

Dash: But Dad always said our powers were nothing to be ashamed of. Our powers made us special.

Helen: Everyone’s special, Dash.

Dash: Which is another way of saying no one is.

- The Incredibles

“And at some point I believe one has to stop holding back for fear of alienating some imaginary reader or real relative or friend, and come out with personal truth.

- May Sarton

“I’m not afraid
To take a stand
Everybody
Come take my hand
We’ll walk this road together, through the storm
Whatever weather, cold or warm
Just letting you know that, you’re not alone
Holla if you feel like you’ve been down the same road”

- Eminem, Not Afraid

“Lend me your hand and we’ll conquer them all
But lend me your heart and I’ll just let you fall
Lend me your eyes I can change what you see
But your soul you must keep, totally free”

- Mumford and Sons, Awake My Soul

“He did not smile at his employees, he did not take them out for drinks, he never inquired about their families, their love lives or their church attendance. He responded only to the essence of a man: to his creative capacity…It bred an immense feeling of self-respect within every man in that office…They knew only, in a dim way, that it was not loyalty to him, but to the best within themselves.”

* * *

“‘How did you know what’s been killing me? Slowly, for years, driving me to hate people when I don’t want to hate…Have you felt it, too? Have you seen how your best friends love everything about you – except the things that count? And your most important is nothing to them, nothing, not even a sound they can recognize. You mean you want to hear?’…Then he sat for hours, listening, while Mallory spoke of…the thoughts that shaped his life, spoke gluttonously, like a drowning man flung out to shore, getting drunk on huge, clean snatches of air.”

- Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

A couple days ago I was listening to music. Two songs played, one right after the other. The two I have quoted from above. One from Mumford and Sons and one from Eminem. If you notice, both of these lyrics include hand holding.

Now typically when I think of hand holding I think of it in a needy, co-dependent sort of way. “Hold my hand because you’re going to need help. Hold my hand because you can’t do this alone. Give me your hand so you can hand over whatever it is you’ve been secretly clutching in your mitts.”

From time-to-time I see my four-year-old attempting to make a break from this hand-holding necessity: “You do not need to hold my hand. I am big now.” We resist holding hands because it is so often translated as an admission that we don’t have what it takes to do what needs to be done. It often translates as shame.

What I found in these two songs though was something entirely different in the touching of hands. Rather than a clingy, “I’m going to need you to lead so I can follow, and please tell me where I should put my foot down next, because I’ll probably get it all wrong,” there is a sort of resolute detachment in the message. We are holding hands because we’ve found we’re speaking the same language and heading the same direction and drawing from the same internal and eternal strength that bubbles somewhere within us like a Fountain of Youth.

I was talking to my friend Teresa this week, and I asked her, “Do you suppose a healthy relationship could often say, ‘I’m doing this for me, not for you?’ It sounds so selfish, but in a certain context it’s really not selfish at all. It’s detached.” I went on to explain how I am her friend not because I feel sorry for her, or I know she needs me, or because I’m supposed to be nice. I’m her friend because I saw something in her, a glimmer of something that looked an awful lot like me (the me I had hidden away) and if I could call that out in her, then maybe, just maybe, I’d be allowed to call that out in me too.

I remember when I first started meeting with Teresa, I was worried about the amount of time she was giving me, both through texts and in person. I would preface my asks with, but “I understand if you don’t want to” or “I know it might be too much but…” or “I’m sorry I’m asking again, but…” She quickly ended that by saying, “I’m not here because you want me here. I’m here because I want to be here.” At first I was a little taken aback by that, but quickly I came to see great value in this. It took so much pressure off, and it saved us a lot of time to cut out all the niceties. She was not looking to collect payment or to pay off a debt. She was simply close because she chose to be. And so was I. To this day, when Eminem’s “storms” hit, Teresa and I both reach out to each other (and other kindreds) in order to feel a hand in the dark. That is enough.

I believe this is the sort of hand holding Eminem and Mumford and Sons are speaking of. This is why Eminem says, “Are you on the same road, because if you are, we might as well travel together rather than alone.” And why Mumford says, “Look, you can’t give me your heart, because I’ll probably screw that up. I’m not going to be able to keep you safe and protected and away from hurt and coddle you. I’m not going to know what your heart needs and be able to keep it fed and watered. You’re going to have to be the one to vouch for your heart and speak up for what you need. And your soul, my god, you’ve got to keep your soul because it’s what makes you you. It’s that spark of the Divine within you. And we’ve already established the fact that I need you to be you because that gives me hope that I could actually get to be me. But if you give me your hand, why we can travel together. Side-by-side. I can show you what I see, and you can show me what you see and this way we’ll be equals moving forward with twice the momentum.”

So often in relationships I have felt a tug to change myself to accommodate the other person. Even as a writer and artist, there are times where I feel drawn to edit my voice to accommodate readers or followers. I have literally felt the pull to limit myself, so I can help someone else along. That sense that, “I owe it to them to not leave them behind. To not confuse them or to properly explain my intentions and my actions, or to be polite and cordial so that no one gets their feelings hurt. I’m doing them a disservice if I don’t feel I need them.” Trouble is, it feels a lot like giving away my soul and my heart.

I think as Christians we put a lot of emphasis on giving and sacrificing and helping others. But I’m not sure all giving and sacrificing and helping is equal. What I love about The Fountainhead is this idea that what people really need is not another Savior to rush in and sweep them to safety, but rather what they desire is to be treated like an equal. For a person to say, “I see something in you that makes me come alive,” and to extend a hand as if to say, “Could you show me more of that?” To acknowledge another person on this level is to call forth their own dignity. To witness them developing their own inner core and standing alone.

I see many leaders that are asking for followers. They want to do the sort of hand holding that my four-year-old son is wanting to break free from. (That maybe, if we’re honest with ourselves, we’re all wanting to break free from.) “Let me make you like me. Let me do this for you because you’re going to screw it up. Let me show you how to do it ‘right.’” I think it’s easy to think this sort of leadership is working because it does conjure up a feel-good emotion. The leader thinks, I am helping someone. I am rescuing someone. That’s what friends are for. Lives are being changed. I have saved someone. And I am important. They’ll keep coming back to me for more.” And the follower may have equally feel-good emotions. “I’ve been rescued. I’m indebted to you. I couldn’t live without you. How can I ever repay you? I’ll return again for my next installment.”

Just for the record, I don’t think you need that sort of leader or that sort of friend. I think there is a part of you saying, “I really do believe I could lead myself. Why is it so wrong to think I know my heart better than anyone else? Why is it selfish for me to take the lead of my own life?”

I love that first quote I share above by Mary MacLane and that Incredibles quote and that last quote from The Fountainhead so much because I think it’s what any of us would say if we had a way to turn off all the self-editing switches we have flipped on. We would say, “There is something to me that cannot be compared to anyone else, because it is uniquely and utterly me, and if I could just get someone to see THAT part. Why, then I could be myself, for once. Wouldn’t that be a relief?”

So the tricky part, I’m finding, in living this sort of detachment is that you do have to put yourself out there all alone. Which means you do have to have a sense of who you are detached from who everyone has requested you to be. It feels a lot like the spiritual or emotional version of working your physical core. To not be afraid to take a stand requires core muscles to hold your wobbling legs. But the hope is in doing so, someone else on the same road will catch a glimmer of themselves in your mirror, and they’ll be brave enough to put their hand in yours, not to be led, but to walk as equals. Then hand-in-hand you’ll gain some strength to press even more into those heart and soul parts that only the individual can choose to set free. It’s the hand in yours that tells you, “You’re not crazy.”

(And as a side-note, that hand in yours isn’t always a person that is alive. It could be a kindred spirit from the past, like Mary MacLane, May Sarton, or Ayn Rand.)

I personally can do very little for you. But I can say, as I hope I have done in this post, that little glimmer of rebellious hope you feel, that notion that you have something to offer the world? I see that, and I want to see more. I see your tender, vulnerable, shaky hand extended with a little bit of magic inside, and I know the resolve and courage it takes to hold it out. I see it and I want more, not because I know you need me or because I feel sorry for you or because I’m supposed to be nice, but because if you press into being unapologetically uniquely you and owning it and creating a wild life with a style all your own, then my soul and heart can whisper, “Maybe I can do that too.”

Maybe this magic I feel inside of me doesn’t have to be stifled or handed over ashamedly to someone better equipped to manage it or explained away as common because “Silly Mandy, everyone has magic. Everyone is the same kind of special as you.”

“No,” I whisper. “No they aren’t.” And that whisper echoes in the valley of your very own chest.

* * *

Teresa and I started a little community for this sort of hand-in-hand living. It’s called The Art Journaler Community. It just so happens we’re talking about whispers and wishes this month. The theme for March is #beartracking, and we’re tapping into that bear strength to help us whisper and wish out loud. We’d love to have you join us, even if you’ve never art journaled before.

You can read more about The Art Journaler Community and sign up HERE.

We Can Give Up

February 22, 2013 in Personal Essay, Words with Comments Off

I’m wondering about all the scary things we could give up for Lent. Course according to the holy calendar we’re late in starting it, so it won’t count for a hill of beans, but I think I’ll give up that clicking in my knee everytime my pedals on my bike make another rotation, give up this lump in my throat, give up these cold feet and the rock in my gut.

I think I’ll give up the question marks requesting an upgrade to periods and the perpetual state of not enough margin to get around this next curve. And while I’m at it, I think I’ll give up the way my skirt feels too tight right now and causes my belly to roll over on itself, not a lot, but just enough to make me think I should sit up straighter or suck in harder or pull my yellow tights up over my belly button.

I’d edit that last bit out, but I’m giving up “editing out” for Lent too.

Maybe this forty some days isn’t to give up on anything in particular, but to simply give up. That sounds easy enough doesn’t it?

Throw in the towel, kick the bucket, let the chaos and the calamity and the fate and the irony have its way with me. Take me. I’ll not fight you. I’m giving up fighting for Lent as well.

And I’m giving up stopping myself every time I want to reach for a hand. A hand that experience tells me will just let go of me in the end. I’m going to hold that hand anyway, at least when I want to. Because even though I’m giving up attachment for Lent too, the point isn’t to detach from holding hands, the point is to detach from caring whether that person ever squeezes back. It’s preposterous I tell you, but it is true that reaching for another wants to comes from a desire within, a choice that permeates from the three out of the four chambers of my heart that are still healthy. Reaching for another doesn’t want to come from an expectation that they will perform to a certain standard. It can’t anymore. It just can’t.

I’m giving up on my hair for Lent. Giving up on the dandruff every being managed or the ends ever locking or the lumpy places in the middle ever squeezing themselves down into a proper uniform solution. “You wouldn’t want your dreadlocks to be perfect though, would you?” they say. And I say, “You know I think I’m giving up wanting for Lent too. I’m tired of wanting when wanting is always wanting to snatch me off quick like a sticky bandaid, pulling me out of now and crumbling me up into the trashcan of someday maybe, which is also known as one day never.

I’m a optimist cleverly disguised as a pessimist, but I’m giving up labels for Lent too, so I won’t be needing to designate that, or my religion or my food preferences or my political affiliation. I also won’t be known as wife or daughter or mom. I’ll be wind, the frisky wind that blows off toupees and blows up Marilyn Monroe skirts and Ms. Dorothea’s black silky head scarf at absurdly early hours.

Art available at the Messy Canvas Etsy Store (Click Image).

I’m giving up caring for Lent. Caring and grabbing and demanding.

I’m giving up hiccups, sneezes and eye twitches, unless this means I can no longer be human, in which case, I’ll keep the sneezes.

I’m giving up yelling because my throat is being whiney and standing with its arms crossed and I can’t stand to see it embarrassing itself like that. And I’m giving up starting projects and not finishing them because if I don’t finish something the boat is threatening to sink, and I spent a lot of money on this boat, even hung some curtains in the windows and painted the framework red.

I’m giving up fixing. Don’t tell anyone that I’ve given this up again and again, like a tub of ice cream that’s marked off limits in the freezer, but I keep returning to it after midnight to sneak just one more spoonful. Calories after midnight do not count, and ruminating on fixing, but never saying it out loud isn’t really like fixing at all. Right?

Do not answer.

Do not stop me.

I’m rolling now, fast, like that car I drive in my dreams that is always out of control and yet despite my ability to make it come to a safe stop, I know I won’t.

I’m giving up reacting. You’re laughing, aren’t you? It’s okay because remember, I’m giving up on caring.

I’m giving up the reality I’ve been promised and taking my chances on the wild, the intuition, the creativity.

I’m flipping everything on its head so that reason goes into hibernation while the pysche and the subconcious and the dreamworld and the imagination push out of hard pressed earth that once upon a time I packed tightly with a shovel because I felt threatened.

My oh my, I will never remember everything I’m forgetting. But I have half a mind to set keys to fingers every time I’m missing home and write in ink and give up pencils so I have to claim something before I disappear. I’m giving up disappearing, and silence, and wishing I knew what that means I’m to do with that sick feeling that I should have kept my mouth shut.

Lent may just be the best thing that’s happened to me so far this year, except for getting a heart box of chocolates and eating them in bed.

Why, maybe I’ll just keep conducting these Lenten experiments. I’ll start carrying slips of paper in my purse and I’ll write down little memos every time I think of something else to quit. It’ll be like those 1000 Gifts lists, only I’m giving my list away because like a stuffy closet of unworn clothes, I’m taking garments off of hangers and passing hand-me-downs off to Goodwill trucks without even washing them first.

I’ll pass you a slip of paper too. Permission to give up. To be done with swollen eyes and that ache in your heart or permission to give up that garage door that keeps falling off its hinges or the emergency room visits or the boss that doesn’t care that you have a dream. We can give up on the whole lot of it and if someone raises an eyebrow, why we can hand them a slip that says, “I’ve given up on vouching for my decisions” or “I’ve given up on caring” or “I’ve given up on beating myself up if I choose to take back tomorrow what I’ve given up today.”

Propulsion of All Things Quirky

February 15, 2013 in Personal Essay, Words with Comments Off

“An acute awareness that more is going on around us than we realized, but that we are actively involved in it all, and that our desire is a crucial factor.”

“Restoration of our sense of connectedness, lost since childhood, fosters a consciousness…and allows us to feel the stirrings of newly awakened powers within us, not unlike those of a magician.”

- Penelope Rosemont, Surrealist Experiences: 1001 Dawns, 221 Midnights

“Sometimes I pretended I had a magic carpet, and without bothering about tickets and money and farewells, I’d skyrocket away…across deserts and oceans and mountains…then suddenly come back home when the school bell rang for recess.”

- Richard Halliburton’s Complete Book of Marvels

Conversation with Tony over breakfast:

“Remember that guy last night at the coffee shop that was wearing a pink polo and stretchy pants and doing the splits?”

“I wish I could forget.”

“I’m so glad it happened, so I have something to make me laugh this morning. The world needs more people being outrageously themselves.”

“Something like that.”

I witness strange and unusual events quite often.

Take for instance yesterday when a white Great Dane named Samson, the size of a small pony, ran clumsily through the dog park, my four kids trailing after him, trying, but failing to catch him.

Take for instance the two neighborhood kids who ride with us to school, and to whom I playfully gave new middle names only to find out the one boy has forgotten his real middle name and the other boy used to have three middle names and then had a name change and now only has one, which is of Nigerian descent.

Take for instance the bees buzzing around an overflowing trashcan at a bike race, and the man that politely offered to take my trash and stuff his own vulnerable fist into the humming threat of stingers on my behalf.

Take for instance the priest who explained to me what it means to genuflect.

Take for instance these self-portraits I came across of Deb, that delight me down to my toes.

Take for instance the man at the post office whose phone was “hidden” in the drawer under the counter and who was texting on it every time he threw my envelopes on the scale.

And that was all just in the last week!

Now perhaps it is just coincidence that these strange, unusual and spontaneous events find me. These events that make me laugh or bring some new layer of freshness to my day, as if applying a photo filter to reality that results in some gritty saturated lines of poetry.

And I will say it’s often true that my newly uprooted “wow” is lost in translation if I attempt to hand off the temporarily glowing orb to another.

But I like to think I really am a magnet for these sorts of things.

Some people are chaos magnets. Some people are tragedy magnets. Some people are trouble magnets. Some people are good luck magnets.

I am a magnet for the strange and unusual. The odd and obscure. The messy and mundanely miraculous. It’s a sort of tunnel vision that sucks me through a portal like that time I climbed through the two-sided fireplace in my in-laws home, not thinking about the soot I might accumulate or the foolish appearance I might display.

My initial reaction to these sort of oddities is laughter, but there is something deeper and richer going on here that makes me stop mid-laugh and welcome in a big juicy inhale of hope. If things can be different than the norm, then I want to be the Wonder Aficionado. I want to be the rider in that chariot of wind, my mermaid trident in one hand, my magic wand in the other, begging the world to crack and break open for one more moment of flirtatious exposure to the core of possibility, wildness and marvels. I want to believe I play a part in the Propulsion of All Things Quirky. Maybe it is my newest form of religion, a way of dumping my spiritualness into all this earthliness like Janae speaks of. I only know I want it to continue and because of that, I know it will.

Oh Christian Writer, Where Is Your Robot Motherboard?

January 30, 2013 in Art Journal, Personal Essay, Visual Art, Words with 10 Comments

Sometimes I just want to scream to some Christian writers, “You’re saying the same thing and it’s the same thing that’s been said for generations in the exact same language, and maybe the reason it’s been said this long (ad nauseum) is because you have to keep humming it like a lullaby so it convinces everyone to stay asleep so you don’t have to be the one to change.”

And then I would add, breathlessly, because when I’m angry I get breathless, “You’re allowed to use your imagination. You’re allowed to create a new language. You’re allowed to realize you’ve followed the rules so beautifully for so long now that you qualify as someone who could stun the world with a creative way to break them. And most importantly, you’re allowed to throw your body into a cold shower to short circuit this embarrassing commitment to holiness (not {w}holiness) that leaves the rest of us humans wondering where your robot motherboard is.”

Oh yeah, and then, in a whisper under my breath, because sometimes I’m a complete coward, I would add ”Quit coddling God.”

We Believe. We Unbelieve.

January 24, 2013 in Art Journal, Personal Essay, Visual Art, Words with 5 Comments

The words that person said don’t matter much. They could have been any number of expressions of a worldview. What’s important is that I sat up and took notice of my heart. Because my heart had something to say on the matter. My heart was saying, “You know what, I don’t think I believe in that anymore.”

These non-beliefs or un-beliefs feel a bit like rocks on a creek-bank. I’m walking on the tilted gritty shores, reaching down to rub my fingers over a rock or two at a time. These stones used to be more grippable, cratered, creviced, cracked, but they’ve gotten worn down. My friend Janae speaks of beliefs that she has poured oil over to loosen them up, stretching with tender strong hands, making the skins of faith more malleable. I believe the same could be said of these rocks. Thunderstorms and wind and the lapping creek during times of flooding, the rocks are now smooth. They slip through my fingers. They are asking me to let them go.

I stand on a bridge, moments before passing over, passing thru, passing by, and I examine them in my hands. The process is touching. Oh my, I’d nearly forgotten about you. Oh my, you are a treasure. Oh my, I can recall the time I first discovered you. These are buried shoeboxes in the attic of my life, and I know the home I’m moving into isn’t going to have space for every keepsake I’ve collected. Some stones are begging to be released, like in that soaring through the air before plunging into baptismal waters, they are singing their last notes to the world, wind winged whistles of farewell, echoing every bit of the “good” in goodbye.

We become and we unbecome. We believe and we unbelieve. It’s a cycle. A process. A loss that is an offering. I accept that. And I accept that I have new loose soil of desires to explore that replace the calcification of former beliefs. There is an expansion happening and everything belongs. Even the skipping of stones off the bridge on which I am crossing over.

***

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