The In Between

I come back to ground, slowly after being in the air for a while. I land softly, so much so that I am barely aware of the reconnection of feet to earth. My eyes open. There was a while there when I was floating, unable to feel what was real and solid and what was a fabric made of imagined things. Vestigial dreams suspended in the threads woven from stories half told.

I come back to earth now. And I accept what is and choose to put little thought into what might or might not be. Things that seem opaque,  part or future, can remain so, and are not going to come into clarity by the simple force of my gaze. Any disasters have been of my own making, sewn into my skin by a constant desire to know the unknowable, to see storylines that are not mine to see. This is the source of whatever deep sadness resides in me, in us, this need for things to be different from what they are. Trying to stretch too far outside of ourselves. We created this reality, for whatever reason, perhaps to solve it and come more fully into the light.

And with that thought I remember that it is the first questions we ask that are the most important.
Back then, I wondered aloud whether I was just a catalyst. I suspected that I was, or something like it; a wake up call, a beautiful interruption to an empty sleep. For a while we lived in the magical in between, reveling in the soft light that lingers after dreams. Before our minds returned to this mortal place, to pick up the burdens we had chosen to carry in this lifetime.

At this time in history the truth is being revealed that we are just part of a process, and an uncomfortable wedge is being inserted into our willful slumber.  Amidst this turmoil there is a forceful upwelling of emotional discord, we are waking up and coming to the realization that life is not meant to run us over. We are not meant to drive this machine, but neither are we meant to get dragged behind it like tins cans behind the newly wed.

Our light-handed purpose; to fall asleep and wake back up again, over and over, in order to better understand and hold on to that middling place between dream and wakefulness. This is where the divine meets the human, where we are meant to linger in those moments when we are barely awake, remembering. We all know it, whether we choose to admit it or not. Where we understand that there are two worlds; this earth with it's hard edges and the dreamscape which lies shimmering beyond our touch. Neither less real than the other. To walk the in between is our task, to hold on without grasping, to stay put without letting our feet plant too deeply, so we can see the intermingling of worlds. All this so we can sink into the ground that birthed us, fall to pieces, and begin again.

Flight

I wish to divest myself of these weights that pull at my shoulders. Step away from the wreckage that lies strewn all around me, within me, in the broken ties and twisted fates of those who have accompanied me on this journey, for long sections of trail and short. I am ready to let it all go, to release these stories into the ground to be digested and turned into something more fertile. They have served me well, but now I am ready to stop dreaming of the unrequited, the untenable, the angry and departed souls that populate my sleep. They have no more to offer me, and I have no reason to keep them here.

You saw the relief in my countenance before I knew it had landed on my features. Respite. Yet again I am adrift, pushed off from shore, this time revelling in the stillness of these seas. It is quiet here; there is peace, and knowing. In a distance I cannot yet see there are likely storms brewing, building sea states, beds of confounding kelp, but for now I am carried gently, buoyed by these saline depths. Welcomed into the watery next leg of this mysterious journey.

Each time it seems I experience a little less sadness, and altogether less fear. Maybe I am learning that worry will not change the texture of my future, the beauty and the sorrows that lie in wait. I will be found by these things regardless, whether or not I choose to push or pull away, or take an unexpected fork in the road to evade them. What I can choose is whether to revel or run from the beauty, to sink into despair or foster hope in the face of grief. I am not heartless or lacking initiative, I am just following the wisdom of release. Relinquishing control of this vessel, taking my hands from the instruments and trusting it to fly itself for a time. Perhaps that's how it's meant to be flown anyway. It's possible I've mistaken this bird for a machine all these years.

Dreams

Last night I dreamt of an autistic man. Maybe he was me and I was him. It's always hard to tell in dreams. But the point was this. He was crazy, unacceptable, dangerous even,  when squeezed into the societal shirt that is required. He would burst buttons, rip fabric, all the while tearing his own hair out.  Tortured by the beauty and power that resided underneath.
Then we let him out. Unbound him from the expectations and unnatural contortions we asked him to conform to. Released to be who, and what, he was. And it was magical.