Oh!
Has this truth been truly seen!
But a glimpse into a floating sea
of strange reality,
but a knowing truer than true can be!
Who is Shakespeare?
That terrible, desperate soul,
falling,
falling,
landing evermore in the stories
of aching romance and tragedy?
I am Shakespeare.
I am the writer.
I am the lover.
And so are you, love.
So are you,
lover of passionate life
and love.
How delicate it is, the garden of eternity.
Interwoven; the past, present, future
of our sleepy meadow, dear.
One cannot possibly know how
or what
the wind of today will drift to the valley
of tomorrow.
One can only hope to gather roses in arms
and lay them down, admired.
But what of tomorrow?
A dried rose is surely a beauty.
A delight preserved from time gone by.
Take these roses, fine.
Take this heart
and scatter my soul freely
into the arms of the dreamers, next.
Tomorrow’s rose.
Today’s quiet and careful sun.
The room glowed orange. And LOVE. A wooden carving of the word sat against the wall in my room, opposite my meditation cushion, on top of a painting of my favourite tree (the letters light up if I really want them to. I very rarely want them to.)
I’ve become increasingly frustrated with words and their inability to capture and express the absolute truth of the concepts they frame. Love is one of the best examples of that, for me.
Love, for instance, is on a spectrum, for starters. There are differing types of love, differing levels of depth, differing levels of understanding of it as a concept, differing levels of experience with it.
And here is the problem I have: LOVE, the word, is far too small.
It is too small to capture
and hold
the vast ocean
that love
truly
is
to me.
So I get a little frustrated.
Words, in general, are a little frustrating to me, because even people we share a language with will never know the exact meaning of a word according to our perception and expression of it.
An example. I experienced the most profound moment the other day, when discussing some things with my beautiful, spiritual counsellor. She is trying to help me work through some of my energy blocks, at the moment, but as we discussed a particular topic I found myself fumbling. I knew exactly why.
Words. They were vastly limiting us in a few ways: one way being our different perception of particular words (it seemed we weren’t quite on the same page). Another being the energy beneath the concept I was trying to express. The whole thing seemed far bigger than any means of communication we had in our toolbox to discuss it with. It was as if we were trying to catch a whale with a plastic fishing rod. It was just never going to happen.
I even said to her that I felt so frustrated because I couldn’t possibly express the depth of what I was trying to convey to her in words. This was a feeling. But it was also something so much more than a feeling.
I don’t need to capture the entire universe and express it in form. But if I did…words couldn’t possibly reach the heights I’d need to climb to pick that apple.
I wonder if there is any human tool that could.
I wonder a lot of things, actually.
Perhaps I’ll keep wondering.
Hush.
Here in the silence
that lingers between each star.
Close your eyes,
let the sweet velvet black
hold you.
And you will know
(you will know)
that this is all you need.
The twinkling silence that is you.
This is all you need.
How lovely it is
to find home again.
In this home
I am what I am,
and what I am
is a river,
a rock,
a lion,
a ballerina.
What I am
is all I am.
All I am
is all there ever was.
All I am
is all
I am.
I’ve always looked beyond.
Always searched for the more.
Sometimes I wait for the more,
craving the sweet beauty of tomorrow.
Other times, I wait in fear.
For horrors that may, or may not come.
None of it is real.
None of it is now.
None of it is me…
until it is.
And even when it is,
it is not me.
It is always only life.
Life that has come.
And life that has gone.
This messy home,
an incorrectness:
something broken
needing to be fixed.
The wars we rage inside ourselves
just to keep control,
to maintain clean,
to maintain ‘right.’
It is a mistake of the eyes
and the heart
not to see the true beauty
of a home:
messy, chaotic,
beautifully lived in.
These crumbs on the floor.
They are not bad or wrong.
They are a reminder of my children.
How lucky I am to have them at all.
This beautiful mess a child does bring.
Mess is life.
And though a pristine home
is a gift to be treasured,
so is this mess.
This mess of sweet
imperfect
life.
I have seen myself in the world around me.
In the people, things and places I love.
In the people, things and places I hate.
In the people, things and places I care only slightly for.
I block myself from myself when I am afraid.
When love is too much, too broken or not enough.
When dreams meet reality and reality must win, for the greater good.
I block myself from myself because I don’t know who I am.
And I think I should.
Because others do.
I should, too.
And so it is I unzip my skin and let it all fall down around me.
The aching of lost dreams.
The stinging hope for dreams to come.
They eat my soul, I hold them close.
I am meeting myself.
I am losing (and missing) myself at the very same time.
The soft girl whispers in my ear.
I drift each cushion to the foot of the bed and carefully place it off to the side, as if it were made of precious, gold leaf.
I peel back the doona; the sight of a crisp sheet peeking out beyond its triangular puff will never cease to satisfy.
The world runs fast.
I run slow. Smooth. Deep.
Just the way I was made to run.
I see the pace of the world, I do not choose it.
I see me, now.
I choose me, now.
But if you only have eyes
for the way you think life
should
be,
then surely you are forgetting
to live.
To truly live.
As you are.
In this moment, this
version of life that you
so desperately wish
to escape.
