Should Probably Feel Cheap, But I Just Feel Free (And A Little Bit Empty).

I've been losing sleep, writhing, trying to untangle myself from my sheets and everything that's been restraining me, everything I've been conditioned to find truth in. I'm unconvinced that it's possible for two people to need anything the same way, though I'm not as bothered by that as I would have used to be. I'm starting to believe in keeping what I love close, separate. It's not something I will regret. No matter what happens, I will recognize myself and my experience. I can be happy and I can try to show you how too. Not only does it make my heart hurt, but it makes sense.

I'm ready to live the way I want.

Caught Up.

I've strung so many parallels from the present to the past lately that I'm tangled in my own knots. If all conflict is inner conflict, like they say, I have an overwhelming amount to think through and little desire to make the effort. Nobody ever taught me what to do when hope is betrayed and

I'm not yet wise enough to see many answers inside myself.

Just Now.

I stare absently at the horizon. The greens of summer deepen and shift with wind, the deafening rustle of leaves.
I blink and my eyes focus. The evening is still.

Serendipity.

Sunlight reflecting off every drop of dew that slicked my bare feet, I decided I wanted blueberries for breakfast.  Just to eat them off the bushes.  It didn't take me long to lose myself in the mindfulness of the morning.  I took everything in, slowly and with amazement.

Some almost non-existent impulse made me turn around and when I did, I realized I was not alone.  My guardedness and conditioned fear quickly dissolved to interest. 

"Hello!" I said, maybe too excitedly.

The man was middle-aged, grey-bearded with a kind face.  He figured I was the owner's daughter and asked me some questions about the farm.  He drove more than an hour to get here early. 

"I took my girlfriend out here last year," he told me, quietly trusting, as though it was a secret.  "She thought she was in Heaven.  Picked only half as fast as me though.  Everything with her is a meditation."

"Well, that's a way to live..."  I admired the thought.

"Yeah, well, it's hardly a productive way."  

I laughed.  I was very grateful for his conversation. 

Just Let Me Have My Coffee Before You Take Away My Day

I let myself fall asleep well after midnight, hardly feeling at all. I was inadequate and hollow, without enough justification to be upset, and light to the point I believed I could float away. The thought struck me, so I tried.
I woke up with the sun. The memories took their time gliding back to me over echoes of time and space.
The color of the sky this morning is not something I can trust.

Worth a Million in Prizes With My Torture Film

There was a '69 GTO in my driveway. Red, convertible, thrumming engine. And then I was speeding away, on the black leather back seat, rushed with sunlight and air, a new best friend grinning by my side, looking up, up, up.
We went out to the Old Stone Church which stands above a town that was flooded a hundred years ago. We went down to the river, bare feet on the slick, mossy , the cool of water in the air. When we got back, he stared and stared out my window. The light softened to purple, the city was somewhere on the horizon. Driving back, we followed the setting sun. Neil Young's falsetto resonated from the speakers.
A perfect surprise of a day.

A Wrong Exit Somewhere.

Driving back from our long-weekend in the Green Mountains, we came upon a little town that had been built at the turn of the nineteenth century for need of nothing else but a canal. Bellow Falls. After eating lunch I was restless to get back in the car, so we walked down to the water and behind some old brick apartment buildings, their fire escapes and alleys shadowed away. Sets of train tracks went this way and that. Street were wide and for the most part empty. We couldn't seem to find the falls and when we asked we found out they were closed. The man who informed us didn't seem to heed the government's warning about the bridge being unsafe and gave us directions to hop the cement barriers and go take a look. And we did.
We stood out on the crumbing bridge, a hundred feet above the river, the rocks. We stood level, as equals with the sky-seem of horizon.

Nameless.

Occasionally you meet someone and it's immediately apparent that they have the potential to change your life, and not only that, but you were meant to meet them. Right place, right time, just what you'd been begging for when they stay up all night because they're not sure when the next time they'll see you is. When while they still hardly know you, they can expose their entire soul to yours and afterward give you their most prized possession. It's only material after all.
The shrine in the garden, the tea on the bench, the cigar smoke filling up the grey sky sunrise. He taught me that to know someone you must see part of yourself inside them. Over only a few days he became a guardian angel. There are not words for how grateful I am to him and to my experience.

Sabbe Satta Sukhi Hontu.

Today I leave for four days and nights of quiet mindful meditation and solitude. I'll be spending my retreat at a nearby Buddhist center. Without any communication, distraction, or luxury, it seems to be exactly what I've been begging for.
"Wisdom of no escape" means that I cannot escape anywhere and anyone but myself. I will suffer before I learn and once I learn, I have the promised potential for wisdom. The ideology is almost to make your heart as vulnerable as possible, fill it with love and anger and fear, let all of that completely break your heart, and then let it all go. Everything.
Your subconscious becomes your conscience, so I've been told. The significance of certain occurrences in your life take prominence over others in the most unexpected way. I'm certainly uneasy to experience this for myself.
I hope I can let the nothingness wash over me and nourish what I've been so deprived of. I hope I can regain some strength. I'm sure no matter if my experience is positive or negative, the change in me will be good.

Fists Clenched.

I'm stuck in a destructive mindset. I've been tearing my life apart, little by little. Dissolving memories into nothingness. My walls which I once decorated with photographs and quotes are now bare pine. Scattered souvenirs from my childhood have been thrown out. I provoke fights with the people I love, testing unspoken promises. Last night, I cut my hair off over the wastebasket, just for the change, just to get rid of it.
Somewhere in my mind this behavior makes sense. Maybe I'm trying to blame my suffocation on the material world. Maybe I'm discarding the excesses of my life in order to get to the heart of whatever is the matter. Maybe it's just an easy distraction for me, occupying myself, intent on accomplishing something.
I can only hope I can stop this before it spreads to other aspects of my life. Is this the greatest or the least of my worries?

Kleio, Muse

I've always found it necessary to lose myself every so often. I can dissolve myself into a memory, a song, a book and stay there until it's safe for me to return to whatever reality I need to escape.
My copy of Herodotus' Histories has been doing me a lot of good as of late. Even the simplest stories seem to be shrouded by the ancient mystery of prophecies and fate that has me completely suspended in a state of perpetual captivation.
The book is an especially ideal place for me to go because the world I live in is so dissimilar to what took place thousands of years ago in the stories. The only constant seems to be human nature itself and that's not something I can hope to ever change.

Tapping on My Roof and Walls.

Morning thunderstorms, ones that wake you up in soft rumbles and lulls of rain, have always been my favorite sort. When I don't sleep through the whole night, I can't ever remember my dreams. It hasn't bothered me too much lately though; dreams too often disappoint me.
The sun is up, some ways behind the mass of cloud that has enclosed the mountain. It is a monochromatic, dark, grey-green out the window. Probably the way nature should be.