Saturday, April 28, 2012

Me Neither

Do you ever feel like you have no idea what you're doing?
Like, you're doing stuff you agreed to do, but are totally bullshitting your way through it?

Do you ever feel like you're an imposter and all of these people think you are some sort of expert, and really inside you wonder if they can tell that you feel ... at best, average and sometimes way less than that?

Do you ever feel like you wonder if the thing you're supposed to be doing will ever come clear? Like, crystal clear. Angel with a big sign, clear. Airplane writing in the sky clear. And then the path to that thing, whatever it is that you're supposed to be doing will open up like a moving sidewalk in the airport and you can just step on and you'll be on your way? The angels will sing and the air will turn golden because you've FINALLY gotten on the right path?

Do you ever feel that way?

No?  Oh. Uh...Me neither.


Sunday, April 22, 2012

I Don't Know How it Works

I don't know how it works.

But... Sometimes I feel like there are hints, or glimpses into the space where how it works lives. I don't know if I'm right. No idea. I have a feeling that it doesn't matter, really.
Like, when it's been a long time since something. There is part of me that knows that somewhere,
somehow, it hasn't been long at all.

A blink.

A moment.

Spaceless, timeless, everything-full something.


I don't know how it works.


I really, really have no idea.  There was a time that I thought I knew. I was harmlessly taught the truth about it all.  And that was ok. Yet....  I'm pretty confident now, that there is much more to it than the story I was told.  All of us write stories to explain that which we innately experience. All of us, everywhere.


I don't know how it works.


Honestly. I don't, and I don't think anyone else does either, except for the all-knowing, something inside of each and every one of us that whispers hints to our quiet, noisy minds. It's like being given one or two pieces to an eight-million piece jigsaw puzzle.  Or...maybe four pieces.


I don't know how it works.


But sometimes.... all times.... I feel this

something.

I sort of want to call it love, and I think it is, but... I heard recently a quote that said, "The truth is the truth until you name it. Then it becomes a lie." So this something, this thing I want to call love, is ... i think... much much more than a name could ever justify.  I think. But then again....


I don't know how it works.


And still, there is this peace that resides beneath all of the questions and all of the rumors, and all of the fears and stories and threats and wonders and theories and ... all of it.  As if it is maybe the very IS that all of those things are sprouted from.  But I don't know.


I don't know how it works.


And

I'm
okay
with
that.

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Turn.

I stayed still
as I woke today,
hovering in that soft, grey ether space where waking up happens.

I thought about how life can so much be like
turning one's head to look at a snapshot.

Turn,
a still.

Turn.
a moment in time.

Turn.
A smile, an expression of love, an act of anger, a parent, a friend.

and then you turn your head again
for a split second
and that picture is gone,
replaced
by a new one
a different moment
altogether.

I decided to begin looking at those photos in my mind
and I wish I could show them to you.

I want you to see them, the filtered green light of the ones from when I was a very young child.
I want you to see the one with my mother making dinner in the kitchen with orange, metallic wallpaper.
I want you to catch the one of that moment outside when my dad was talking to the neighbor and slid me his can of beer for a sip.
I want you view the moment and to know the feeling in my little mind when he left our home with an army green duffle bag, for the last time.
I want you to hover in anticipation with me as my young sister and I awaited our mom's new friend to come to the door as we played toss-a-ring-around-a-daisy in the entryway.
I want you to hurt with me when you see the shot of when I rolled my sky blue 10 speed into the house next to the yellow couch where my mother lay, dying, to show her my new birthday present.
I want your eyes with mine as we look at a picture of when I lay on the bottom bunk of my sister's trundle bed, the light in the late-night hallway mocking the time, as the sounds of quiet-voiced strangers wheeling my mother's body out of our house.

When I look back,
the photo has changed again.

Time has moved.
Particles altered
Players replaced.
Sets changed.

I see a picture, no longer edged when white, tiny black numbers narrating the date,
but one where the picture goes all the way to the edge.
The corners rounded.

Turn. A new woman in our kitchen making a salad. Light easy banter with dad, and we girls standing around.

Turn.  A surprise 40th birthday party for my dad, gag-gifts presented by his friends.

Turn. The house we moved into, big and beautiful on a sunny day. White curtains hanging in an empty room before our things made their entrance.

Turn. Yellow light on a September day, a wedding...  So many people I don't know. A happy, confusing day for me.

I wanted the photos continue.  Thy took me through the halls of my Junior High, showed me a moment when I got a locket from my 6th grade boyfriend, the day a student bounced a fish eye in science class, a fight with my 7th grade best friend when I threw her yellow jelly jacket into the hallway.

The pictures would have kept coming,
changing with the turn of my head
reminding me of my own, specific story.  But for right now, I'll stop them there. Maybe later I'll go on.

I wish I could show these pictures to you, so you could feel my life.
Feel what it is like to be me.

You have photos too. Moments that are forever filed in your mind.
Have you looked at them lately?