HELLO my dear friends!!
It has been 6 months since I last posted, strangely.
These are strange times that call for strange omissions and strange actions. It is as if time has warped and all the cards have been thrown into the air and nothing seems real and some of us (me being one of them) seem to be tumbling in unfamiliar realms, fumbling for an anchor.
Anchor yourself in your heart, a voice reminds me,
and so I fall backwards into those familiar arms.
I woke this morning from a dream of a writing performance where we'd each written the poetry of a goodbye to someone we loved. In my waking, I felt the pull to return here to my blog. I've been writing in various other places since cancer waltzed into my life, so I apologize that this took the back seat.
I now intend to share some of the writings I've done from my Wild Writing practice that I've been doing for about 9 months. A teacher by the name of Laurie Wagner sends videos 3 times a week in which she reads a poem and then gives us jump off lines from which we then write non-stop without editing for 15 minutes. I will share some of these with you in the time to come . . . mind you, they are meant as a way to allow the inner out, not to be perfect writing, or even good writing. (whatever that is)
I especially appreciated today's prompts, it was a horse I was able to mount easily after the looming lacuna left by my dreams last night. I galloped off from this space of nothingness. Perhaps you will relate.
~after “First We Have to Start With Nothing” by Maya Stein
First we have to start with nothing, to roll softly over from that numinous and alluring reality….to wrench ourselves out of the gap between the worlds that would like to swallow us. From under 18 inches of snow that fell with such determination in the last days, we have to now stretch our bodies up from the hush, reach outward to pull out of that sacrificial halting ice.
We have to carry with us the disturbing images that flickered like an old movie from the world of dreams…the ancient, feeble elephant on the roof of my childhood home, covered with sores, withering from neglect, and aching for water. We have to drink from the forgotten, the abandoned, the relinquished goals and start again in the open space of truth.
We have to linger in the raw reality of all we have not done, all the emptiness of unfinished hopes and imaginings.
We have to start with nothing. Isn’t that the birthplace of all creation? The flimsy yet fertile black hole of neutrality….of what seems so empty and full of nothing?
We have to breathe deeply into the empty page, the messy house devoid of humans, the calendar with little written into its days. We have to reach for the edges of the ephemeral 'once was', and know we cannot pull it back.
We have to start here…find ground, stand on wobbly legs, bump into walls in the dark night, try to recall the images flying blindly in the stillness.
We have to be the bird, wings splayed helplessly on the top of the new fallen snow, unable to find purchase, delicate talons scrambling in unseen worlds to find something to push off from….rise from… left only with a feisty surrender to what is and certain demise.
We have to remember that we are that small, that we are that helpless, permeable to the wake of the world. We have to flail at times, to use wing tips or icy paws or clawing raw fingers to seek for something un-nameable that might help us up. We have to start in the in-between, the unfathomable, the unsee-able, the senseless, with only the infinitesimal thread of resolve and remembering.
We start there, in the maw of the chasm that holds us in its invisible grip, awaiting the awakening of a trembling vision.