Hope Lost... Love Remains

Contemplating the notion of simplicity, she lingers a moment at the leading edge of life. "Slow down" she whispers to herself, knowing that if she doesn't heed the warning, the whole train wreck will careen beyond that edge, and who knows what damage it will do. At times like these she'd like nothing better than to walk away. The load is so heavy she can barely breathe. She tried to set it down, but it didn't stay.

Exhausted, defeated, she gives up the battle. She cringes as she thinks of the damage already done, the stress he endured, the frustration. If her love causes him pain, she'll stop feeling it. But, God... can she stop? It's beyond her, or rather, it has consumed her. She can't control what she feels, she'd have done that by now. Expression... that she can control. She's learned to bury, to hide, to retreat. She can focus on that. Blank, immobile, unexpressed...

So, she loses again. She lets him go, and with him goes her heart. She won't need it anyway, she knows the only way she'll get down this path is to stop feeling. So, there you go, she thinks. Just stop. Stop thinking, stop wanting, stop loving. What was that word he used? Yearning... stop yearning. Let it go.

Losing hope is different than stopping love. Hope is fragile, easily damaged, often destroyed. Love, when it is real, is strong, enduring, resilient. Love goes on, even if it must go alone.

She understands now that it will go on.

And so will she.

Letting Go

Now and then I find myself learning to let go
to turn within
to settle into an easier presence.

Unreliant on another
unattached
independent, self sufficient
free.

My assumption is that I will loosen up
lighten up
perhaps to the point of floating
someday.

But instead
this centered, settled ease

leads me deeper
nestled, rooted, focused
comforted

connected.

Beyond the beginning
to the realm of pure existence
to the place of calm assurance
to the strong and steady, gentle current
of all enduring love.

Empty, Still

Used & abused seeking used & abused
Cloaked by night
Creeping 'round dark edges
Grimy from years
Wasted years
Of smoke and sweat
Of piss
Of tears
Solitary against sticky walls
Drawn to a flame
Mindlessly together
A jumbled mass
A stumbling mess
Writhing, reaching, grasping
On the floor
While timekeepers, dream weavers,
Interpreters
Gather on the stage
To witness the disease
Played out
The inflicted puking pain
Bleeding confusion
Swaying, rubbing, grinding
Groping for connection
That isn't there
Empty, still

Refuge

She sits in quite solitude, above the river, among the rocks, in easy company with her thoughts. Closing her eyes she feels the heat rising from the boulders. She absorbs the energy, feeling somewhat grounded once again, sensing new direction, new hope.

But hope is the wind… unpredictable, insubstantial, unseen. Like hope, wind is best experienced with closed eyes and a quiet heart. Focus. Feel it. She is aware of how it caresses her cheek and the base of her neck, whispering gently across tender places, stirring tiny hairs on soft skin which yearns to be touched. Breezy fingers trace a lonely curve, following a line to the small of her back, pausing there, and in doing so, ceasing to exist.

It is the same way with hope. She sighs, feeling dampness at the corner of her eye, a tightening in her chest, a squeezing in her throat – as though the wind is being forced from her, along with any hope. She is aware that as long as she has a direction to move, she can feel hope, blowing softly about , keeping the air fresh and alive. But if she pauses, like the wind suddenly stilled, hope fades quickly into nothing. So she keeps moving, keeps creating, keeps dreaming. In doing so, she struggles to hold on.

Opening her eyes, she lets the sun guide her focus into the distance, following shadows cast down from the clouds into the mountains to the west. It can be mesmerizing, watching forms change, colors glow and fade, shadows dancing through rimrocks, through valleys... and through each other. Dreams change too, depending on the light, or on the shadows. And they change according to perspective. She knows that the dream she holds in her sight is hers alone. No one sits with her, sharing space and vision. From the other side of the mountain, maybe the dream can’t be seen at all. Nor the path. Nor can her trembling be felt as she thinks of losing touch... From there, perhaps clouds don’t appear to cast dancing shadows, perhaps clouds seem threatening, ominous, destructive. And from there, perhaps mountains seem like no place to dance, but instead an obstacle to be overcome.

Below the rim where she rests, sorting through thoughts and reasons, there runs a river. A giver and taker of life. From these rocks it looks quite benign, quietly contained within wandering banks of green. But the river, too, is not all it seems, difficult to define with any accuracy, continuously evolving, morphing, moving. Taking with it ancient elements whose remnants are the very rocks she’s taken refuge in.

Refuge... A word which shakes her soul. Suddenly she has found herself without a refuge. Or maybe it hasn’t been so sudden. Looking back she can see how it happened; a vague pattern perhaps, and somewhat sketchy, but she notices from here how the boundaries of her last refuge have been chipped away, peeled away… so violently blown away. Shit, even given away. She winces in recognition of her own part in the destruction. Means and reasons don’t matter, the refuge is gone. So, once again, afraid and exhausted, she must look within, to find answers and healing internally. That’s why she’s come here, instinctively returning to a place of beauty, of rest. Drawing energy from the elements of the earth, and finding hope in the wind… opening her heart, and gathering strength for the next big step.

The Journey

Trapped. The only thing she fears more is being abandoned… left behind. Misunderstood and left for dead or desperate, neither of which is true about her. At least she still knows this much, so she hasn’t really lost her mind, just her focus, just for the moment. She feels everything too deeply to be any shade of dead, and if she were desperate she would settle for the stuff life has thrown at her. She’d stand against some cold, stiff wall with arms outstretched; taking whatever comes, until something stuck. But she knows her own nature well enough to know that she’ll never be passive about life. She’s not a reaction, she’s more of a trip… or maybe that’s “journey”. She remembers an old friend who after arriving safely from the road, would answer the standard “how was the trip?” with “hippies take trips, we had a good journey”.

To be a decent journey, there must be adventure, and some measure of safety, although not too much. She wonders if she’s played it all a little too safe… no, that can’t be true. In her own way she’s lived right out on the edge, baffling friends and frustrating family. She defined wild for herself, not with in-your-face behavior or with drugs, but by simply defying expectations, refusing to do or be anything just because "that’s how it is”. Sadly, sometimes she tried... to follow the rules, to be what was expected. Time would always take its toll, and she would start to crumble, to fade, to die. Intelligent people deserve better than that. She knew that even when she was young. Knew it at her core, in her heart, in her head… in her gut. She thought that following her heart would keep her on the right path, and that often meant taking the trail to the left rather than staying on the highway where they said she belonged. She has sat on the edge of the road many times, studying the world with a sense of fascination. She is aware that often people assume it is judgment rather than wonder that she feels. Sometimes it’s more than wonder, it’s longing. An ache for what seems like a simpler way to live. Sometimes the wonder and the ache reveal an awareness of the pain people feel in that world. In her head, she knows that all people suffer, but sometimes she convinces herself that she’s made life too complicated, and a good hard party would be better. Or maybe to just get laid… to hell with spirit, emotion or connection… to hell with love. Put on the costume, practice the lines, join the party… Why wait any longer? Waiting hurts. Being left behind hurts. But in her soul, she knows better. To live to the fullest, taking every chance is one thing, to be a fool, the jester in someone else’s court, forcing a fit where there is none, is another. It is best to carefully follow your own heart, even if the path gets lonely and dark.

The journey is an adventure. She smiles when people think she’s tame, when they don’t understand that all facets of her are not displayed publicly, lightly. And sometimes she bleeds because of that, and sometimes she grieves. Being misunderstood… one of her greatest fears. Yet, some things are more real, more alive if allowed some sanctity, if exercised with purpose, if experienced with heart. She knows that, but she doesn’t make the rules. “Wild” has its own expectations, its own image. The drinking, the partying, the stupid illusion that one has to lose self-control to be any kind of edgy, any form of free… to feel any kind of life… any passion. She can’t play that game, never could... not that she didn’t try, she just didn't play well, couldn’t fit in. It always felt like a sham, a fraud... a street level performance of tabloid exhibitions. Players pretending to be erotic, exotic and free when they were really just hiding, needing something artificial to get someplace else, to get high, to get wild, to connect... to fit. No one seemed strong enough to face their authentic self, to illuminate shadows they might be running from. So they ran, and she stopped. Some suggested stopping was weakness. She didn't bother to argue, it only mattered what she knew… and she knew no weak soul could stop, and no weak heart would understand her. Some things you just have to accept.

She recognizes this feeling of being trapped. She’s felt it before. She talks herself through the thoughts, the words... tries to be mindful of the experience, to accept the feeling, and to know that it will pass. She remembers the teachings, that the experience, the feeling does not define her. It is a thought, it is not her. She is not trapped, she’s simply experiencing that feeling. Like feeling lost. Like feeling alone. She is not lost or alone, she's simply conscious of sensations. They are temporary, they are illusions, they will pass. They always have before. Like with quicksand, it’s hard not to struggle against the feelings, but struggling, fighting, trying to control them simply gets you stuck there.

Breathe, let it go.

Focus on the heart.

Focus on the path.

After all, how can you trap a journey?

I

I am the rock wall, burnt by the sun, too far from the water to quench my thirst.
I am the boulders and gravel and dust crumbled from the wall, lying at its feet.
I am the sun which warms the rock.
I am the frost which heaves it down.
I am the river, ever changing, flowing through the jumble, around boulders, over gravel, carrying the dust with me as I go.
I am misty moisture, returning to the clouds, rising, cycling, ready to be thrown to earth again, diving with abandon when released - with the storm clouds behind me and thunder urging me on, crashing into the rocks, dripping into the dust.
I am the echo rolling along behind the storm.
I am the lightning racing through darkness.
I am darkness itself.
I am silence.

outside

There is this distant place, a vast expanse of dust and rocks, of too hot and too cold, of wind and of resistance. It is a false haven of the “us-s” and a true hell for the “thems”, it’s the in-crowd and the out. It is a divided place. Yet in many ways the place is beautiful, sometimes staggeringly so. Maybe it is only the sense of separation which causes the pain. Maybe the separation is an illusion. She isn’t always sure.
As she thinks about this web of reasons she realizes she hasn’t been there in a very long time. At some point in the past ten years she excused herself from that place. Or maybe she made no excuses at all, but simply stepped outside. That would be more her style. Now-you-see-her, now-you-don’t… Over the years she has learned that nothing is ever worth the struggle, the uphill battle, the “one against the world” bullshit that people make movies about. Save it for the cinema. One of the few truths she accepts is that everything is connected; life is of one web. Knowing that reality, what’s the point in fighting? Wrestling with someone else’s illusion is a waste of precious time. So when she reached that point, she must have simply walked away.
She can’t really remember making that kind of considered decision, but somehow she ended up outside the battle again. It’s more comfortable here. Standing outside looking in, she can barely remember what it was like; it all seems so foreign to her now. Yet, she knows she was there. When the light is just right she can still see the scars, still finger them just beneath the surface of her skin. Though she was told to let the blows roll off of her back, too often she felt them sink in deep, deeper than they could have if she had been stronger. And she knows she left some damage of her own in her wake as well. The thought makes her cringe, her stomach tighten, her mouth dry. Karma, be kind… She never intended to hurt anyone, disappoint them, fail them. The pain she felt herself must have made her somehow blind, numb. It was that half-crazy struggle to keep it all together. That illusion. The illusive dream. Another’s dream, as she lay dying. She sighs, shaking the darkness once again, and figures that must have been when it happened. Like Alice through the looking-glass, she simply walked away.