Sometimes, it’s
the only way to express myself adequately.
I’m in a saber-rattling
mood this morning. The day is gray as a nun, but I am smoldering. Breathing
fire. I am of the idea that people should do their work, when it is their
perception they are too important to do so & they are too aligned with that
perception to accomplish much. Yet, am I not among them in my own way? So what
is my job? For now, let me just vent here. Lie low, readers for I am in “take
no prisoners” mode. I need either a vacation (coming soon) or more flower
essences for noncombatant status than I can afford or have on hand.
I think I can
& do make a difference. But yesterday was a revelation. I am newly involved
in a Board for a local service organization. I found out my training did not
include essential duties – actually, did not even incorporate training to do a
proper job. Deadlines are missed which will cost our 501(c)3 money better used
to help our clientele. Who passes over a title with a quick underhand, without
informing the trainee of essential responsibilities? Well, the folks who
elected me to the position. They were far more interested in the sale at Hobby
Lobby for the fairy garden gnomes available this spring than in making me
effective for what I will be doing. So I’m playing catch up but cannot do so
until they have finished their sewing project, so just hang on here,
Carol. Curb your enthusiasm, okay?
I am becoming adamantine when I need to be malleable. Is this what age is about? Entrenchment? So it would seem. I arrive on the scene, cloaked in dragon mode, all teeth arranged in a ripping row, only to find those departing have waved over their shoulders, leaving me nothing to chew. All kinds of words rise to the surface: inefficiency, drawn to detail without a glimpse of the bigger picture, going to war armed with paper clips & rearranging the magnets on the fridge as the IRS ticks us off on the box saying “no response from them, time to set the penalty fee.”
I take flower
essences for being haughty, for being pushy, for being bossy. These are needed
qualities to get tasks organized & completed, especially in leadership.
However, I’ve enjoined a flaw along the way: thinking others wanted to me to
succeed when they were more interested in finishing up the latest pièce de résistance
craftwork for the mantel than in the efficiencies of the organization they are
fading back from. Is this what public service has become?
People show up at meetings with clothing on inside out, with papers disorganized & without the simple knowledge that to get these in order beforehand might work. The Treasurer is opening bills at the meeting, trying to pull together a report offhand & full of “um, it’s in here somewhere, hang on”. He turns to me saying, “You need to run a tape of your expenses before submitting them” (I point to the totals list) “What’s your last name, anyway?” (I point to the address label on the report.) “What’s the name of the play this is for?” (Not only is he in this play, but the name is at the top of my paperwork.) The President has no Minutes from the last meeting – the first item up on the agenda. Oh wait, did I even see an agenda for this one? Actually, no. But it will be all right – the ten-minutes’- late-arrival of another Chair to the meeting (entering as we dial her number) will furnish the Minutes, handwritten & out of sequence, to be squinted at & read to the group. The entire meeting is conducted in the spirit of passive-aggressive counting coup. Few stay to topic – a specific question leads to discussion around recipes. I sit & simmer, pen in hand, waiting for a conclusion to write down. If none appears, I make one up…my contribution to next month’s confusion.
Sometimes I
feel like I’m the only one with a point to it all. But it isn’t up to me &
my point is lost in all the trying to be nice when underneath nice is where
everyone lives because no one understands how to hold a real meeting. It’s a
cabal of amateurs with the impression they know what they are doing. And why is
the group less than successful? And why do they settle for this when they
should take leadership in the community & serve as they ought?
Another volunteer gig sees me wrong in the eyes of the client – who thinks no one should be talking out loud in the room. As I prepare to ask the talkers to tone it down or leave, I am accused of not doing my job, “this only happens on your shift! Even YOU talk out loud in here.” “We’re not the public library,” I mildly protest, only to have a set of headphones flung at me as she screams “you’re a white shit” & flounces out. The client’s last name is “Mello” and she comes into the computer lab to listen to Indian Chant…guess she was having a Kali Ma day. My laugh-out-loud at these antics does not calm the situation. So I write “bipolar” next to her name in dismissive retaliation. Am I any better at handling the situation?
To say
yesterday was frustrating is to say stupid is not abroad in the land. When
people with beards & wearing fatigues are screeching, “You didn’t call me
Ma’am! Watch your ** pronouns!” I am a bit lost in it. Is everyone in town off
their meds – or should I be taking some?
Most of the time I’m a nice gal. But my slide into satire, cynicism & sarcasm is down a very short slope. My descriptions are apt, to the point, painful. I can leave people bloody & it takes awhile to scrub the entrails from under my nails & many toothpicks to dislodge these bits from my teeth. I try to remain patient, kind, loving – but I can be overbalanced by raw stupidity, discourtesy, unprofitable idiocy…just to name a few.
I like volunteering. But it makes me low on the totems. It is a false “in-charge” position against which demands are made to enforce the rights of others in a place where they um, actually? do not possess “rights.” Or perhaps these are better described as “entitlements.” They are availing a public service offering, unpaid & disrespected as it doesn’t live up to what they consider their standards. However, their life is not my fault. If one goes to a library, it doesn’t pay to throw the books around while hollering at the help. Or at least it never did before. I guess it does now.
I won’t go off
into “whatever happened to” here. That would take pages to write. But I do have
a realization that everyone is in their own space of right & wrong & it
is one I may never have visited or conceived.
Among these
experiences – being shoddily trained & left unprepared – seeing the underbelly
of how irresponsibility can slow down the results of any process…I recognize I
need to be more patient & forgiving, more forbearing overall.
I will smile
when Ms. Mello next returns & asks for a set of headphones. I will show up
to take minutes at the next Board Meeting of our town’s best hope at theatre. I
will find a way to tame the fires of wanting so fiercely for all to be “right” as
my way in the understanding that all is
right just as it exists in now-time. I will turn it into laughter, as I do
most of the silly adversity by which others use to prove they exist. I am both
larger & smaller on the scales than I like to think.
It’s far more
fun being the MGM lion though! Love that big, snarly roar!
Feeling more coherent this morning, after sorting through all my thoughts & writing Gina our daily email exchange. I remember significant dreams, tho the details are sifted thru the dreamcatcher & gone. I feel like the untethered astronaut sailing thru space, limited on oxygen, but involved in the grandest experiment & rendition of All Time, my observations birthing stars of only nascent power, tentative glow. “Even a star doesn’t shine on its first day.”
I feel like a poem, short on words, long on powerful yet truncated description & all the more intense for this, fingers dextrous, pen tapping the paper…restless yet settled with the warm, charging computer on my lap.
There are so many things I wonder & will to happen. Yet I must needs stand in the hallways of love, never settling into the pink room, the green room, the red room, the beige room. I am ready to settle somewhere. Part-time love is not what I’m about right now in my life. I need & want to give myself fully into a relationship – Bring It On, Damnit! Yet this is not available. Future is nebulous on this. I am unsettled about the need to settle for what is.
Barking Mary next door is trying
to clear her throat. I am trying to clear my heart. Noise & silence,
the story-facts of living life.
I appreciate well that you tell me loving things; I am hard-put to respond since I cannot grasp the air they ride on into my lungs, nor take solid nourishment from them. I am ineligible to ask for anything more, only able to settle for less. And I am not a lesser woman withal. My conundrum, yeh?
So, I’ll say it for now: I love you. I’ve no idea where that beach ball will blow to. I do not go gently into any lightening morning. I track bees who are about being furry, winged, hungry for sweetness. Bees who want me to accompany them into dark hives where the honey is hard, compartmentalized, both execresence & food – the gold of life made palpable. Bees who ride stingers & who can tag the unattentive most severely – sometimes even with death.
For want of an epi pen…
I do not know where anything is going anymore. I think I know what I want but the paths I take keep shifting with my dreams, kalaidescopic & tantalizingly incomplete. I dwell in the present of you & hold that at arm’s length since I don’t even quite know what to do with it: put it down? put it away? set it on the bureau to glow under a lamp?
Physical need in the space of psychic want is unbalanced & I am a Libra.
This is the thin line poets have always examined minutely. One side of the hand holds on while the other is only capable of letting go. This duality of life frisks me with cold hands, searching for emotions & wallets both…neither of which are to be found with any level purchase.
I will take what you offer, but I am a dragon sitting on a lake of wealth, licking out tongues of flame, hatching eggs that promise far too much of greed & endeavor without true bonding. My wild nature may overtake the short blonde sitting in front of you at any time, like some celluloid morphing characterization. I cannot guarantee you either flight or burning…most likely both.
What is it I see within? A universe of spiral stars’
unrivaled inspiration – stem cells growing out of undirected potential. There is
always a past behind me & I have a tendency to pull it up around my shoulders
like a shawl. It can be warm there. It’s comfortable.
But it is time to strip naked & walk the mountains unprotected
by any save my divine aura. I feel my angel holding out wings over me. His Prime
Directive is to attend the Soulspark within – my little shaving from Source around
which I have built this life. How can I not trust the light informing the dark?
Being human is like carrying a cactus with long thorns. They
catch on every silver streamer of dream. The soul cries out to me about mortality,
but this is not its true state & I know mortal ears distort the eternity of
the song intoned. There is a brutality in desire that flays willing skin…yet I
return my flesh to its hungry outreach. What I remember most about love is
goodbye. I am called to surrender to the eternity of love which has only proven
a short-term endeavor. Back to that
cactus image…I’ve gotten stuck so many times on my own perceptions.
Am I another genetics experiment in the Great God’s Garden?
I have been voluntarily immersed in the all-being of life I reached
for the inflatable ring with puncture tools & nearly drowned so many times.
Yet here I am, as above, so below.
I trust my words over family to be my golden thread of
immortality. But who is willing to delve that deeply into my little life? Does it
matter, withal? It’s my mind. I’m the only one here no matter how many humans
make appearances in front of me. The Akashic will bear my imprint. Maybe
someday someone will channel me. I was told I’d be famous for my writing posthumously.
Indeed, this took the pressure off!
I could fill so many books with writings, but I lose
interest immediately upon writing. I almost cannot bear to return to old
writings at times, at least of memories & old tales. They no longer have
meaning…I have moved beyond them, like the mile marker vanishing behind. I’ve
written love letters, suicide notes, unfinished stories from above & below
the waterline. Who cares?
Validation, witnessing, perception – all longed for but not elicited
or expected. I’ve done all I have. I’ve experienced earth, air, water, fire
& ether. I’ve loved both the human & divine in my life. I may be close
to closing the circle of life. What will it have contained within it?
Blessing: a prayer & a blessing. One song of many lyrics
sung to Source. My whole life, a lyric sung by an overlighting angel.
Ok readers, please excuse the spacing – WordPress has added a new format which I clicked on. O Lord! It’s making a mess of my poems. First, it won’t allow me to keep lines together, then it removes spacing between words & within punctuation marks. So errors are NOT mine! I am in correspondence with them about this. ALSO, I am happy as a happy clam, so do not assume that I’m in a cell of depression just b/c some of the poems are sad. OK? Thanks! Happiest of clam holidays to you all!
My heart is lost
Wandering
A balloon with no string
Nor a wrist to tie it to.
Visiting landscapes I have not seen in years.
We perambulate & each horizon brings new to the old
A childhood at the beach
Winter in all weathers
Dunes blown & tracked with triple-toe prints of gulls
“When the pupil is ready, the teacher appears,” yeh?
The title is ready. Is the essay here?
In the beginning with the Word, the original spell was cast. Fascinated souls manifested through words. As they spoke, appearance solidified. As they dreamed & spread word of their dreams, these dreams lined up into 3D reality.
We dream now of change, so vast that words cannot encompass it. Have we moved beyond words to action? Do we still need the words, made of divisive energy, supplemental movement, mountainous effort? Or can we simply sail beyond the known world into effect, disclosure, belief, movement, “effortless effort”? I believe we can.
I believe a kiss can transform a world. The light in a child’s eyes beams back out created anew, improved, bettered, calling for the next leapfrog into attainment. That one light fractures reality as we know it & have known it to be…it is a note sung so purely the world shatters &redraws itself.
There was an effort some time back to have people write the word “Love” in the air. Just lift your finger & write…love, or joy, or delight, or enlightenment, or… For the short time I remembered to do this. I would trail my fingers outside the car window, consciously forming left-handed words (love backwards forms evol which draws into evolution.)
I have written my world for years, in history, in prediction, in delight & despair. I have dissected my heart with a dictionary dozens of times. I miss the “o” on the phone all the time, writing “Live”instead of “Love” – patiently correcting it back while wondering if one is not such a homonym of the other they are now interchangeable.
The patience of eons expands growth into achievement. Where are you on this? What will happen if progress cannot? Where does advancement occur? From the connections of fingertips to a keyboard? To a musical instrument? To the hand of another human? Ha! In one & all is the correct answer! In each is such a connection/correction made to the course of spacetime that permission is granted for fruition of those preverbal dreams, felt instead of spoken.
My pajamas have pockets. I am learning to fold in my dreams,bring them back with me from the other worlds I inhabit while sleeping. ‘Pon awakening, I slide these into my open palm, wondering where I’ve picked them up from. What intergalactic beach did I walk that this pearlescent shell winked up at me, invited me into its vision? What future did it unfold for me, what secret was contained in its moistened, intimate structures that created desire to scoop it up, save it for study at home? For as soon as I focused this earth-mind on it, I left the information far behind & sit with only the aspiration of a wish, the intimation of a fantasy which was to be followed into freedom.
It is all right. A pocketful of sand may beach my sailing soul on a new planet. This one may be one to beggar the thesaurus of visions.This anchor may be the one where I may fold my sails, lean on my oars, realize this destination to be where I’ve forever wished to be.
My little heart yearns for beauty. We look under the winter-crackled leaves, turn over pebbles. We peer into relationships for Saviors. We are soothed by desert rain & the strong, piercing sunlight limning the horizon to East & West as Sol passes over the landscape, also likely searching.
What have we found? At the end of the day, I empty my pockets on the bureau. Some coins, uncomfortable earrings, a phone number scribbled with a name I already do not recall what I promised to provide them. Lately, I have taken to “listening to music” at the end of the day – putting down the book or the computer & just taking in lyrics from various songs. And these are all about love. Even in this dry & artificial way, my day ends with love.
Someday someone will sing a song over me. Someday I will wear that beautiful dress, be a beautiful mess, meet a pair of eyes in a café, be asked into relationship, be invited into the arms of an already dancing body…I just need to hold on a little longer.
My boundaries don’t so much as narrow as entrench. It is more of an effort to cross them in search of. I care less about the shape of my body than the shape of my lonely heart. As the physical condenses, the spiritual expands into a cool cloud in search of ignition. When the match strikes, I will be overcome with love, cast so deeply into the energy I am so ready for & all about.
My fate sits like the cat outside the mousehole. There is no menace here, only mystery. Will I be embraced or tattered? Can either matter? I am as old as I am…my secret passages are shattered by my own hand – always seeking.
I used to put things together; now I pull them apart for the juicy center. Now I wonder if circumcision – cutting myself off for exposure – is the way to proceed. What profit here? Cui bono? Maybe within the secret, smelly darkness where there’s a proliferation of underlife I will find love. For the sake of all holy or hellish, I have stood on the mountaintops of life & scanned the vistas.
I have seen the beauty, taken in the airs. I have profited experience from the storms at sea washing treasure onto my beaches. I have shaken spears at the menace on the horizon. I have cried into my own arms of a night again alone. I pick up smooth pebbles on the beach, lacking the wherewithal to build my own house. So I dwell in the backrooms of love, never venturing out unguarded.
No more! Now I am walking naked, fat may flab where it may…I am declaring my beauty of soul. I am tearstained, bloody, hungry. I am a menace to myself with this exposure but ask if I care. The blue days give way to white nights. I sleep as though there is a tomorrow to live for.
I am the sugar spooned into the cup of life, swirled about in a dizzy tizzy…scooped up, poured over, sipped & tasted for exotic flavor. I am in love with home sweet home, with home sweet love, with dancing every cell loose from its center. I will no longer behave according to catechism…these words have worn out a welcome I should never have borne.
Before death finds me napping on the periphery of life, I will enjoin it fully! I will take my soul in both hands, put it into the waters of love, watch it expand. I will drag it back to slit it open, inserting my heart. I am here to experience life & I will throw myself onto it in full tackle, bring it into all I am, wriggle with its subduction, its seduction. I am not here to overcome anymore; I’ve beaten at the cat’s whiskers so many times.
Devour me or drive me off, O Life. No more games here, I haven’t the time to be other than who I have become after all these years. Get behind me or in front of me but get out of my way! I’m coming through, Life. It’s my time.
