100*

The Dark

I wind my way downwards,
Going deeper into winter.
This storm season whipping up the sediment,
Turning me into myself.

Through the cracks in the windshield
I squeeze perceptive glances.
Wayward, spinning as I have been,
Viewing the world and it's players
through a veil of topsoil,
Buried.
As if there was no other way out of this theatre
But through the lobby
(At intermission no less).
So crowded.

I step into the still dark pool,
It's surface silk-smooth.
This is where 'I' drown,
Free at last.

As always, asking too much of the world,
Searching for magic and retribution
Out there
Where there is none.
Instead I learn
To find stillness in the greenest blade of grass,
Unspoken for in this quietest of seasons,
Left to grow wild into the dim afternoon light.

It is the minutia that kills us,
Imperceptibly.
The ever chattering mind
Throwing knives at itself like there's no tomorrow,
So relentlessly that it can be hard to see
All those sharp edges
Whipping by.
So many
Hitting their mark.

Slow it down.
Pause the tape at each moment,
Notice what has been happening all this time.
Observe the ten thousand things that arise
From the single drop,
Rippling out, wantonly percussive,
Out of control.

Take them in on the breath,
Breathing out kindness, patience
Despite the slow pace of things.
Teaching the mind to interrupt
It's rumination.
Learning to see again,
Eyes closed.


*This marks my 100th blog post. 4.5 years of the Art of Staying Put.

Ambiguity

These twisted lines,

Never straight,

Not unbending.

Winding is the shape of all the paths worth taking in this world.

Even if they don't seem worthy,

The best ways are

Full of blind corners.

Gnarled and braided like the branches of trees and rivers. 

Wisdom can be measured by the
Depth of our faith in this 

Unwavering ambiguity.

The willingness to not have the answers.

A bold refusal to call the mysteries of the world by name.

Our job is to be curious about 

Every thing we are most certain of. 

Allow the floor to drop out beneath you,

Drop down willingly.

Trust in the moments that make you lose your footing,

Follow their lead, for they have a knowing 

Deeper than yours.

Question all the things that appear vaulted, 

Pry open the doorways kept locked.

Reject absolutes whenever possible, 

Go bounding past the fence lines that border the forbidden fields.

Like deer, prancing erratic ahead of the cars on a dark road,

In un-patterned movement.

We are not scientists, not in this realm,

Just explorers.

Shiftless visitors.

Every truth only half seen. 

Fallen

The gray forest people cast off their old clothes

The mists of all twilights dance close at hand

Harvest has lifted the crown from the ground

The song of the seasons brings life to the land

~ Bruce Cockburn - The Fall (excerpts)

Fall is here, we are deep into it, the last of it's brilliant shades drifting to ground. We are tilting into winter. I am learning to live with myself again. I am intermittently happy, anxious, despairing, gleeful, laughing, crying, bored and fully engaged in different moments. I hear that is how we humans are, and the task at hand is to become more of a witness to one's own roller coaster. Watching the cars get loaded up, seeing the people scream and throw their hands up or grip tight to the bar, closing their eyes. I have done both. Neither is right or wrong. Maybe I am learning to trust that the car will come back up the track again - maybe I will get another chance to get it right, make a choice that is grounded. Maybe, as the wisdom of many elders suggests, all the wrong has really been just right after all. 

I am breathing deeply and getting out on the water and hills, waking and being outside before the sun rises and watching the light die beautifully at the end of these shortening days. 

I am admitting that I don't know anything, just like Jon Snow. There was a while there when I thought my job was to know my own heart, and I do, but I also trust that I don't. I have relied on labels too much, bent to the pressure of naming and closing when I could have waited, listened more. Spoken less. There is part of me today that fears that I have lost all my chances, a part that clings to many things past - awaiting the return of something I once promised myself. A wish to erase all the mistakes ever made on my part or anyone else's. I also know that this feeling will change again, as the seasons do. I've never been much of clinger, but now I have had the great fortune (I say this without irony) to have had this human experience. An invaluable one - to become aware of this deep sense of wanting. It will only make me better, and hopefully more fair and more kind. It is the raw material for good prayers.

There is something I started to learn once, before life took over in the way that it does, funnelling me off one course and onto another. It is as if I forgot, at least in part, what it is to be awake. I have not often been one to believe in regret, or shame, but I have come to realize that these are just words that we use to put form to the ephemeral feels that drift in and out of awareness. I recognize these things in my own inner landscape. I can see the ways I have sought to bend myself around what I perceived to be what was wanted of me. All the while forgetting myself, and the perfection and beauty that lies in the uncertainty of the journey.