Sometimes you just have to claim what's yours,
And this is mine.
Soulful,
Artful.
I am
Far from perfect,
Slightly guarded but wildly open.
Pay attention, and
You may get a small window into this
Spirit.
Caught in the flight of dance,
Music,
Light,
Careening around the open field.
Broken, unbroken.
Again and again.
When you let yourself be influenced,
Like I have,
Allowed the ethers to steal your magic,
Essence by essence.
Stripping you of your innocent nature.
When you believe in projections
You become dilute.
Watered down in self doubt.
Loss and hope,
Unfettered and unclaimed.
Sometimes it feels safer to be this way.
But
In the sweep of redemption that never happens
I am
Losing faith a million times.
I crack,
To find more pieces still clinging
To the life raft
Within.
Lying dormant at the level of soul
I find
Remnants of a self
Magnetically seeking it's own shards
In the push and pull of this
Spring tide.
Becoming whole.
Once again
I see her
This creature of adolescent dreamscapes.
She is the same
But also utterly different.
She is me.
Lost, found and abandoned
In the crash of this
Ambient moment.
Through the trees
She is coming home again.
Saturday 30 June 2018
Thursday 21 June 2018
Second Life
I've been thinking recently how great it would be if I had two lives. Not so much one after the other so much as one that paralleled this one. You see it seems that I am constantly faced with choices, too many things that I want to say yes to and only one life worth of time and energy to do all of them. It is a privileged position to be in for sure, but it makes me wonder what fuels this desire for a second life.
Part of it, to be completely honest, is about FOMO. Fear of Missing Out is one of the banes of my existence. It is a problem. Just in the past month I can probably list about 6 events, trips or gatherings that I have not been able to go to because I was doing something else. Each time I say no to something that conflicts with something else on my schedule I feel like I am missing out on an opportunity to show up and do something cool. I am also quietly haunted by a sense that my absence will precipitate some loss - as if by not showing up I will somehow be stricken from the list of invitees or worse, forgotten entirely. Not missed. That terrifies me, and I am very aware of how narcissistic that might be. I need to feel like I belong, and am wanted at the party. The feeling of exclusion is a trap for me. It may not be pretty, but it's true.
Another piece of this second life business is about energy. I find these days that life is an intricate dance between taking action and engaging in experiences and taking refuge in the pause. Exertion, either physical, geographical, emotional or spiritual must be balanced with restfulness. There is refuelling that needs to be done, and if we ignore that need we tend to trammel ourselves in an overcommitted slurry of doing and striving. It's not that I don't want to stop and rest, it's the opposite - I love resting, but sometimes is feels like resting comes at a cost. And I want to experience all of it - the oasis and the adventure, the party and the sleepy mornings over coffee with nowhere to be.
I think about this in bigger terms as well. I am aware that there have been times in my life where I have feared making a choice. I have hesitated, or tried to hold the inevitable rush of passing time at bay, tried to hold the people, or my idea of them in stasis around me until I have had the time to gather my wits and make the 'right' choice or action. But this is impossible, and in many cases, once we have walked by a fork in the trail, even if we have willfully paused only a few steps beyond the juncture there is no going back. Sometimes the trail has been erased, by circumstance or the movement of others, or simply by the same magic that made it appear in the first place. At other times the landscape has changed entirely in the space of our hesitation and to make our way back to that path is too arduous or thick with brambles to undertake without completely losing ourselves along the way. Sometimes what feels only a breath away is really long gone. This is a lesson worth remembering.
This summer I have made choices. I am blessed to have the luxury of a generous share of time, a lack of stress or material need and the gift of opportunity. And this is what I will try to sit with, as I struggle with the privilege of wanting. I will trust that the choices I am making are setting me on the right path
.
Part of it, to be completely honest, is about FOMO. Fear of Missing Out is one of the banes of my existence. It is a problem. Just in the past month I can probably list about 6 events, trips or gatherings that I have not been able to go to because I was doing something else. Each time I say no to something that conflicts with something else on my schedule I feel like I am missing out on an opportunity to show up and do something cool. I am also quietly haunted by a sense that my absence will precipitate some loss - as if by not showing up I will somehow be stricken from the list of invitees or worse, forgotten entirely. Not missed. That terrifies me, and I am very aware of how narcissistic that might be. I need to feel like I belong, and am wanted at the party. The feeling of exclusion is a trap for me. It may not be pretty, but it's true.
Another piece of this second life business is about energy. I find these days that life is an intricate dance between taking action and engaging in experiences and taking refuge in the pause. Exertion, either physical, geographical, emotional or spiritual must be balanced with restfulness. There is refuelling that needs to be done, and if we ignore that need we tend to trammel ourselves in an overcommitted slurry of doing and striving. It's not that I don't want to stop and rest, it's the opposite - I love resting, but sometimes is feels like resting comes at a cost. And I want to experience all of it - the oasis and the adventure, the party and the sleepy mornings over coffee with nowhere to be.
I think about this in bigger terms as well. I am aware that there have been times in my life where I have feared making a choice. I have hesitated, or tried to hold the inevitable rush of passing time at bay, tried to hold the people, or my idea of them in stasis around me until I have had the time to gather my wits and make the 'right' choice or action. But this is impossible, and in many cases, once we have walked by a fork in the trail, even if we have willfully paused only a few steps beyond the juncture there is no going back. Sometimes the trail has been erased, by circumstance or the movement of others, or simply by the same magic that made it appear in the first place. At other times the landscape has changed entirely in the space of our hesitation and to make our way back to that path is too arduous or thick with brambles to undertake without completely losing ourselves along the way. Sometimes what feels only a breath away is really long gone. This is a lesson worth remembering.
This summer I have made choices. I am blessed to have the luxury of a generous share of time, a lack of stress or material need and the gift of opportunity. And this is what I will try to sit with, as I struggle with the privilege of wanting. I will trust that the choices I am making are setting me on the right path
.
Saturday 2 June 2018
Salt
Every 18.6 years the tide cycle in the Pacific Northwest repeats itself. So perfectly predictable, it is a pattern created by solar and lunar orbits that brings about the exact same measurements - to the centimetre - on each place on the coast. We commonly think about tides in relation to a daily and monthly schedule, the higher high and lower low waters, the springs and the neaps, so it is always surprising to people when you tell them about this larger, multi-year pattern of highs and lows. Nature has a precision we cannot hope to replicate, and yet we often characterize her as chaotic, cacophonous, unbridled. 'Wild' is a word often used to describe people and things that are without discipline, impulsive or wanton.
I returned home this week from a 9 day trip on the ocean, skin and soul scrubbed by saltwater and the finest sand. I am tired, back in the routine of a regular job after being on ocean time, having returned to the lee for a short break from the windy side of this island. My clock has been reset by a feral kind of symmetry; I have made this way of living a bit of a habit, moving back and forth between the urban and the wild, always working on evening out the pendulum swing. Always seeking just the right mix of movement and staying put. It is as good as it gets right now - I have called it perfect, this balance of freedom and stability that I have built. My nomadic soul has always wanted to meet it's more settled twin, and this is possible now. Perhaps it is already happening and they are twining fingers and staring into each others eyes just beyond my line of sight.
The wild west scours me clean and works it's magic on my nervous system. I sleep well, bathed in a soundscape of dumping surf - and the slow inhale as the sea sucks itself back for another assault on the shore. Since the first time I travelled up this particular bit of coastline by kayak I have noticed that the ocean is a breathing thing. It reminds me to breathe more fully and I make a point not to forget this when I am back in the city.
It seemed like there is often no pause between these two realities, but sometimes I am aware that this life is made of nothing but pauses. The only adversity I feel is what I drum up from the inside, looking to find discord where there is none, creating a sense of rushing when I have already arrived, a sense of lack when I am steeped in riches; I am just like a human being in that way. Always on the lookout for imperfection, or trouble, or something that is somehow not enough. But these days the blows from within seem to glance off me like water rolling off freshly preened duck feathers. There is a smoothness to things, like polished beach stones.
I returned home this week from a 9 day trip on the ocean, skin and soul scrubbed by saltwater and the finest sand. I am tired, back in the routine of a regular job after being on ocean time, having returned to the lee for a short break from the windy side of this island. My clock has been reset by a feral kind of symmetry; I have made this way of living a bit of a habit, moving back and forth between the urban and the wild, always working on evening out the pendulum swing. Always seeking just the right mix of movement and staying put. It is as good as it gets right now - I have called it perfect, this balance of freedom and stability that I have built. My nomadic soul has always wanted to meet it's more settled twin, and this is possible now. Perhaps it is already happening and they are twining fingers and staring into each others eyes just beyond my line of sight.The wild west scours me clean and works it's magic on my nervous system. I sleep well, bathed in a soundscape of dumping surf - and the slow inhale as the sea sucks itself back for another assault on the shore. Since the first time I travelled up this particular bit of coastline by kayak I have noticed that the ocean is a breathing thing. It reminds me to breathe more fully and I make a point not to forget this when I am back in the city.
It seemed like there is often no pause between these two realities, but sometimes I am aware that this life is made of nothing but pauses. The only adversity I feel is what I drum up from the inside, looking to find discord where there is none, creating a sense of rushing when I have already arrived, a sense of lack when I am steeped in riches; I am just like a human being in that way. Always on the lookout for imperfection, or trouble, or something that is somehow not enough. But these days the blows from within seem to glance off me like water rolling off freshly preened duck feathers. There is a smoothness to things, like polished beach stones.
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