Comparisons and Liberation

I hate how I descend into this, energy turned inward, my stakes to identity threatened by comparison, and I feel transparent and flat as Kansas, though I shouldn't compare. I feel vacuous, vapid, suffering from my own self-absorption and psychology when I want to touch physicality. Story of my life. I am never filled enough with vision or meaning. How else ot move past this, not only biting into the apple skin of the present but also turning my eyes toward the lives of people around me, toward the Uncreated one. Listening, asking more questions: understanding the way they see is a new world, every relationship is a way out of my one-dimensionality. In philosophy i was realizing how I would rather have reality/encounter (even if it were humiliating or hard) than entertainment, idealism, unreality. I fear inertia. I am compelled to impuslive self-disclosure because I need something to happen. I linger in cg, I write letters, I stretch out my tentacles, seekers, hoping that one more interaction would change anything. I want to be more  that I am. Is it the pressure to do more? create more meaning? hyperactivity? What is bad about slow? do I really fit more (and more what) into my day by facebook, by constant go, by constant music, by constant purpose? I am essentially reducing meaning to consumption. To consuming doing. How would life open up if i only used my computer one hour a day? What would i loose by that? What am I "saving" time for so urgently anyway? I want to spend it. When does advancement over do it? Life feels concrete, essential among the under-privledged tin ways the suburban hub-bub can't reproduce. They aren't less happy (unless as a result of injustices or lack of access to being, to their hopes.) What if I did things slower? Less hyper efficently? Patiently. If I forced my boredom into using my body, sustaining my life in non-alienated ways. Could that possibly make me less happy? I can't imagine so. Repetition is not an evil- kneading bread, watching a thoughts sunsets, tasting any flavor. And presence helps me to have solidarity, to lip-laced listening, not Saviour-status. 

    I have incredible laziness and a dose of apathy to fight, and I think its most realistic to do so by gardening, writing letters, collecting objects and collaging, collecting impressions and writing, reading, looking for ways to serve my housemates and community (to love them, to lay deep roots), to stop whining about my emotions and invest in joy, in love. To stop feelign disconnected from my body and start dwelling in it. With less. Becoming rooted in reality. More dependent.

[Reflections from Borgman and http://www.geezmagazine.org/blogs/filter/amishmash/]

I just want to know the meaning of life, no big deal.

This morning when the ten faces of my room woke up-- glaring horrid faces of light, I did not want to get up. Sometimes my ache for purpose is counter-productive to my desire to live deep awake. I have been talking to God a lot lately, because we're brawling, and I am not ready to let him come sauntering back in with his silences, so I am holding him at arms length and leveling every accusation against him-- this time the fight will be out in the open, down and dirty, and I will not let go until there is some resolution. But, He prefers this, he is inclined towards those who never shut up or sit down with their hopeful doubt. 


And this morning I recalled: "all actual life is encounter." And that struck me, as certainty and determinism are lost to my vocabulary-- the glory of every day is this: to encounter, to search, to "purpose" of right now is this- to indwell the moment, to encounter an Other.  To live as if it were my purpose to pour all of myself into the present, to hear others, to love others, to love God. 


Since I am not nearly as stubborn as God, this morning He managed to wrangle his way back in, sneaky Being. I chose to just move moment by moment, with joy. I spent an hour doing yoga, then drank coffee and ate pastries with my housemates in the kitchen. I search for meaning to much when meaning may be as simple as being witness to this moment, cherishing it, filling it with love and allowing myself to be filled with it...  "Most of the time, there is only this moment, and the imperfect love of people."


I feel peace, not because of resolutions, but because God is more ornery than I am.


"the way will descend into my

soul as the dew, inescapable,

I adore the distance as a

worshiper of wandering

of the thousand lives indwelling one 

and this storm shuffles down the valley,

a steady unhurried approach, 

where time is only a servant to emergence

an arrival that can never be late

all i have left is this

is this and only this

(and this is more than enough)" 

how to lay the mind to rest?

Another chilly night, and I feel restless, sleepless again: searching for an activity that satisfies my exhausted mind. Non-verbal ways to process (yet here I am, scribbling.)

Thia and I sat on the porch talking of how endlessly we return to this navigation of identities, the struggle of margins (blurry lines we barely fall across, and yet, are torn by still.) 

These words from the summer resound:

The coyote howls, mangy gray, on the horizon I sit and simmer, I simmer like steam leaving tea, simmer, like a low turned burner, like less heat rising, the emotions simmer, they do not cook up or boil, slowly they turn into something more steady, more concrete, steam leaves, exhaling, I breathe in the vision of a dawn I breathe in the vision of...

I feel the jagged edges of my soul, like these broken mountains. Befriended, I want to reach my hand out and press it into another's, amiably, comforted by the physicality.  To know how to feel my way into another's existence… in the cracks, to climb the crevice, pressing what can reach into a hole and pulling myself up, invitation, not invasion.

The wind is singing, slowly, a lullaby for waking, a lullaby for stirring, she calls forth from our hearts the tune of movement, the lust for touching (dancing) moving air around our forms, occupy this space, occupy this territory of myself so that others can move into it, the settlement of hospitality even while we emerge, this is the story, this is the tale she has to tell:   “I will be a human like a tree is a tree.”

another day.

(from woolgathering)

messy room, troubles sleeping, blank pages in my journal, heavy boots for one reason or another. 


tonight I made myself resurrect the stillness of desire, of the summer and sit, and sit, and sit... under a black sky, gleaming lights, backlit leaves.


doubts. wonders. 


so many things I silence inside myself.


// we'll find a cathedral so you can convince me I'm pretty //

Lipogram...

I am in an 80-works poetry class (which is inducing a feeling of sub-par-ness)... but, in response to Emily's glorious one, here is mine: (a poem without the letter e)

Upon Waking

    Luminous glow, pursuit of my soul

       Through nightly fancy and whimsical vagary,

      I follow your hand, a landmark to waking.

     Light strands amiably conducting in flourish

        Draw from my lips a salutatory murmur,

     an animal purring, lapping up morning.

    Dawn’s pallor lights crimson by

        sun’s arching digits, and yogic arms waving

     I cast from my body night’s rigor mortis. 

    Baptizing day’s hours with a nod to St. Francis,

      Crown to the floor, limbs pointing skyward,

     throw in a cobra, a locust, a willow.

  

      In this sanctuary of body and of spirit,

        I anoint God, as glory of ordinary.  

Day 7

The first strand reaches me like the thin tendrils of underwater plants entwining around your ankle as you swim, or the incessant beeping suddenly morphing from an element in your dream into the piercing alarm of reality. Internally Displaced People, sisters, brothers, listen gently, I have occupied the same fate. It tugs. The forgotten is always remembered right past convenience. Those movies you were going to drop off-- at the front door, that reluctant memory of a grocery item-- as you pull unto your street, the word you were searching for all day-- just as you drift to sleep. '


What is the strand this day? A feeling passing through you like a scent hanging low in the branches of the trees you stoop under, catches unto you. It isn't as clear as it was last fall, the hunger for possession, for resting, but it is still familiar. You've carried armfuls of shadows into daylight and cleansed them in the river of acknowledgment, you've "come to terms" with. But, count them again as they gather for darkness, there are always lingering ones.  This time though its faint. A certain distrust of the delicate peace settled inside you. Can it be trusted? Can you put weight on it? This feeling of tender happiness, of softly spoken home. 


You spoke for an hour of feeling a close to the time of drudging up those memories, you've milked them of their emotional worth, you've gleamed their lessons-- and now the present smiles, enticing you to finally rest and to awaken into this deep living. Stopping the planning - the incessant need for actions to fall upon utilitarian lines, for everything to be a mechanical answer. To realize the worth of breathing, of gazing at a sunset, or stopping to honestly listen to someone, however flawed our ability to do so remains.

Day 4 or 5 or something

"Maria, are you studying?"
"Yes... why?"
"Want to play wild-african-princess-study-break-dress-up with me?" 
"Whaa...hahahaha." 
"Go change! And put purple eyeliner on your face!"


And thus commenced the epic adventures of an already satisfying day.