Tag: blogging

Time is running out, I can feel it in the way the cold air bites at my bare throat. As I walk around the lake for the thousandth time since I discovered it years ago far away off in the hills, the colors of the trees change right before my eyes. Flashes spark in my mind like flecks of flames burning; hell tongues of spiritual ritual.

The smell of damp earth, rotting leaves, firesmoke. Season of shadows which eclipse the light I once held so close. Inside of me I can feel the separation. It can happen even as it appears invisible to the naked eyes of others. I long for my secrets to be revealed if only for the intimate satisfaction of release.

But more than that, I want to keep them for myself. What is a woman without her mystery, without the dark depths of what she may or may not choose to invite you into. We say we want freedom but most of us are too weak, too terrified, to handle that in full. To be stripped of all boundaries, directions, structures or instructions.

We do not want the free fall of total limitlessness. The human mind grasps and grips for something to steady itself. Something to hold on to, to press itself against. I have had vertigo on and off for years. It’s a trippy thing. You feel like you are tipping over, as though the ground has slanted suddenly beneath you. I once set foot out of bed and fell clear into the wall. Had to crawl on the floor to feel safe enough to move.

It is a time of transformation. I do not know if we are able to choose this for ourselves. Are we all called to transform? Called by what or whom? Why now? Why not never? To be ‘re-born’ as something new is in truth to be more of what you already are. I light up a cigarette and pull my hood over my head as the wind picks up and dark clouds roll in over the open water. Mirrored sky. Gray on gray on looking-glass.

There are nights we spend alone and never speak about because no one ever asks. To see and be seen are frighteningly powerful endeavors. Most won’t dare. The hands tremble as they reach, the stomach quivers and the sex aches with need, seemingly inexplicable. The trouble is the poet’s soul is different. We suckle the flesh of the living word, we hang upside down suspended. Vampirish. Sirens. Sign posts. We invert the world and the way it sees – not so that we can be free but so that we can be sure we are true to our own vision.

“What a lot of us are seeking is the power to choose what rules us. Our world is composed of dominant and submissive dynamics. Some are consensual and chosen while most are inherited through blood, institution, or country. Why do we play this game of cat and mouse?” (Penelope Dario, editor in chief of petitmort.mag)

There are two definitions of the word true. One is an adjective: in accordance with fact or reality. The other is a verb: to bring into the exact shape, alignment, or position required.

They say the truth will set you free. But I think that is a bit misleading, or at least flat. What being true really does is it allows you to finally choose for yourself what you know – with all of your innermost instruments, sensations and intuitions – aligns you with the whole of who you are: body, mind, heart and soul.

As the rain begins to fall, mist moves in. In a far off corner of the lake where it curves its banks against the mud and trees, a gigantic bird opens its wide wet wings, lifts from the surface and takes flight. Ghostly white, silently soaring, serene.

They say that in the end it’s all a stream of soft quiet light so perhaps work backwards from that. Like a destination where you arrive empty handed and alone. Forget it though, even just the thought of it gives me the shivers. Death is coming but no one can say when. Meanwhile, here we are.

We sip whiskey as we walk through the crowds at a fall festival way out among the rolling countryside hills. The wind is whirling dead leaves all around us in the air, which is also inexplicably full of gigantic bubbles blown by some machine far off behind the guy selling bacon on a stick. The line for that particular delicacy is endless. What is it with people losing their entire goddamn minds over bacon. The smell of bonfire smoke and funnel cakes makes me nostalgic for years gone by when all that mattered in October was a count down of how many sleeps until Halloween.

He steals a kiss as we stroll past the tiny scarecrows assembled as part of some kind of scarecrow-making competition. He likes the way my mouth tastes like raisin lipstick and peaches. It has been quite some time since we have been together and when he takes my hand in his, my heart melts which turns into the low simmering heat of lust all over my body.

We buy a handful of cigars from the local shop. The guy behind the counter is trying to be helpful but he never stops talking about himself and his odd little cigar salesman life. He asks if I would like a blueberry flavored cigar and I tell him no, to which he responds by informing me that ninety-nine percent of the blueberry cigars will go to women. I stare at him blankly because this is not useful or interesting information. I don’t like blueberry anything.

Stepping out into the sunlight with our little bag of tricks, we decide the festival is adorable and far too crowded. On the drive home we put the windows down and turn the music up as the green and orange pastures and farms fly by alongside of us in a magical blur. Autumn is ringing its gorgeous amber light through the multicolored trees and I feel more content than I have in a long time.

The wide open blue sky is painted wild with ferocious charcoal clouds, monstrous and menacing. When we arrive home, we undress and put our bodies to good use pleasuring each other. His touch is disarmingly sincere in its desire, breathtaking in its expertise. Underneath the dark grip of a late evening storm, we are alone but tangled up together. The sky turns to purple and then fades smoothly into black as he sends me into orbit with just the tips of his fingers in all the right spots. For a few sacred hours, we are the only ones anywhere for miles and miles and miles. The only ones on earth.

In the center of your heart lies the center of the universe which beats the seconds by like a drum. You cannot hear it as much as you can feel it in the pulse of the blood as it courses through the veins in your neck. When he presses there gently with his fingers it makes your breath quicken, and he knows this. There is a perfect pressure point. He’s learned it. And so you are his but only when he’s holding you.

The dream is the same each night but with a different person. I try to kiss a faceless man. He always disappears, but just before he does, his face is revealed. It is handsome. I can never remember it. The night hangs around into the pale blue of early morning, a pink blush sky and the soaring cry of geese, outstretched and black as ink against the wind.

As my eyes flutter awake, my mind is already alight with ideas, words, tiny flecks of embers of imagination. It has been quite some time since I felt hopeful. But somehow today I do. Like perhaps things can get better for me if I could just learn a lesson I have been fighting learning for years. I’ll keep that to myself because it is, as are most lessons in life, complicated. What I can tell you is it has to do with the lies we tell ourselves to keep from accepting the naked truth.

Somewhere down the street, a dog is barking and I know the one. He’s a beautiful German Shepard puppy, maybe nine months old. I met him weeks ago but forget his name. All joyous flashing brown eyes and high perked ears, alert and a tad rambunctious. There is some kind of spirit in him that is so innocent with passion for being alive it could almost break your heart into bits. What is it about some creatures that melts your insides. Claws the iron bars away from your calloused heart. The pure charm of his oversized paws could kill me dead with adoration.

I have written on this blog for so very long now. Lately it feels a bit more like an observatory. A journal, a diary of sorts. I think of Nin and Miller, sending massive bound handwritten journals, letters, and various correspondence to one another across the sea. No subject, no observation or experience of event or circumstance or feeling, was off limits. That, to me, is every kind of riches.

People, writers, artists, have been writing for centuries and yet it is never done, never complete. The work of living as though through the pen. Mmm… the keyboard, as it were. This never ending quest to feel the words come through for their own sake. What is there to say of writing, its allure? It is an affair. An affair with all aspects of life and death and every experience inbetween. I ache for it.

What was it that Elias Canetti said over half a century ago... ‘I cannot be modest; too many things burn in me…’

Imagine all the things you could write if decency were of no concern. I do.

I pour my dark coffee and pick up my jet black pen.