EIGHT
U8-P3
Gazing into night skies. Wondering what it means to choose life and surrender control. I have fallen into many rabbit holes and found my way around worlds unfamiliar. In my undoing. In my becoming. The night sky is always there. Even as I fall through the earth. And land in places I haven’t known. So what is the harm in walking off an edge to fall through one more hollowed space?
Perhaps the sky is the endless bottom. And falling is reaching new heights. Just look up.
U8-P4
Accept what is so you can see what’s next. There is no hoping. Knowing will not make the transition easier. The answers are in the decisions made. The decisions determine the answers you will receive. Every decision must be made with intention. Quiet yourself. Enough to sit with what is. Enough to hear your heart’s desires. Enough to establish an intention that prompts a decision that leads to an answer that will satiate you.
The hunger for knowledge is sometimes an impediment to appreciating the knowing.
*********
A different type of movement has crept into the air. Night time looks brighter and the sun misses me. I want to lean in. And sometimes I can. Finding no walls to stop me. Endlessly leaning into every upright. Gracefully gliding between spaces of time.
And sometimes I forget that this is me and I seek lines that don’t exist. And there I find walls and feel the weight of gravity. The thud of resistance resounds as I meet imposed limits.
May I grant myself the grace to lean for the rest of my days. May I remember the only walls are the ones we create.
*********
Do I need to be in it to know that I don’t want it?
Rephrase the question with some honesty. Am I in it because I agreed to it? And there I find some responsibility. Some indication of the power that I so easily disregard. Shield my eyes and cover my ears lest my own light be too blinding and deafening.
The gathering here is orchestrated. And was set in motion long ago. I don’t know what All I will gain or by what means. But I know there is honey to pour in my cup and gold to sprinkle everywhere. Bitter or sweet, the fruit is still good.
So really, this is a prayer of gratitude.
*********
Be in water but don’t get wet. That’s the illusion. The measure of privilege. How joy morphs into distorted shapes and makes privacy out of what resists being owned. The nonsensical before my eyes is what we have chosen.
And what happens when we finally get in? When we make our way off of boats and across twisted paths?
We finally know. The touch and taste of salt in the open places. What it is to be carried. What is lost and found when a shore is rediscovered.
U8-P6
I can’t name it. I can’t name who is real, who was shaped, who has died, who is crowning, who was here all along. Perhaps there is no difference in these multiple whos. Perhaps her shape only changes when I shift my gaze. What lens have I been looking through? The ones that cannot hold me because I spill out? Are we trying to find a lens that can contain me? How many times will we shuffle through the list of available boxes to find that none can quite hold me no matter how well I have managed to fit?
I do not know being rooted without being able to bend with the wind. I know not of lines but of angles and networks and cycles. If I am endless, then what is containment? What are lenses always shifting that cannot see me clearly and fully? What is being here now as I have spilled and grown beyond edges?
The first is how I learned to shapeshift. The second is how I learned to hold contradictions. The last is how I learned to die and live. Perhaps I cannot name it because there is no new name to find. I have known it all along but was reading it wrong.
*********
If I show up will you see me and throw daggers that cause the sun to explode into infinite bits of stardust? Maybe it is better to be spread about than to shine so brilliantly.
Who told me that I can only be loved in pieces? Who told me that I must separate myself to make sense? Who loved a tiny fragment of a life force more than they loved the life force itself? And who told her to pass this distortion to me?
U8-P7
I am a wordsmith shaping reality in different languages. That’s my soul.
I am a creator crafting a future of liberation. That’s my path.
I am a portal birthing myself in the highest. That’s my destiny.
*********
The feeling hasn’t gone anywhere. I just need to be reminded. Sometimes. Most times when I jump out of my body and into my head. But tonight I looked at a picture and felt it all the same. Deep at the root. Shockwaves through a sturdy network that I once thought couldn’t be moved. I am moved. Still. Present. Calm. And moved. Releasing. Cleansing. Illuminated. Damn! How long did it take for me to see myself? Lifetimes. And you must have been there in every one of them calling the lion out of her den. She is coming forth. She is crowning. Here comes the push. Can you feel it?
U8-P8
Stray cats creeping.
Snakes that slither
And then die.
Mysteries that sit
Outside my door.
The endless
Cycles between new
And full. Illuminated
Intentions and their
Aftermath, coming
Out of the dark.
What messages
Have I misinterpreted?
What reading has
Failed me because
I did not understand?
There is no more
Believing that answers
Appear just because
I asked for them.
The white flowers
On the pear trees
Will soon see
Green leaves. And
There will not be
Pears. But it will
Be Springtime and
Something new to
Ask and answer too.
Not because I desired
Or avoided or stayed
Or left, but because
That is simply the
Nature of seasons
And signs and strays
And slithering and
Cycles. Be easy.
Have grace. Don’t
Spin new fears when
There are already
Enough for now.
U8-P9
What do you hope to find under the cover of darkness? What solace will the silence bring you?
All my prayers are to be brought through the void. To feel life filling lungs. All the way down to the root. To unblock my channels and clear out the wounds. And to gaze at a reflection that’s cool.
It’s been too hot here. I have spent too much space on fire. Inhaling and swallowing ash. Gasp. Where is the up that I must come to for an unburdened inhale when the smoke is still everywhere?
When fire can walk right up to my doorstep? “Come inside. Have a cup of coffee. Eat until your belly’s full.” And then I cut open aloe to rub on my burns. And sweep the porch as if the ash marks will disappear. Wash my whole place from top to bottom, inside out.
But I can still smell that fire’s been near. And remains. So all my prayers are to be brought through the void. For my eyes to find rest from that blinding light. For my ears to no longer ache from the deafening roar. To go dark. To go still. To let the void do her work of birthing me.