Already, it’s winter.

We’re huddling, skulking beneath
our goose-down hoods and discrete
comforters.
In one-degree weather, we’re slipping on
treacherous black ice and
closing our eyes to the first
snowfall’s unbearable brilliance.

But I’m left drained. The scent of hot cocoa and
strains of muted folk songs
drift through the frosty air.
But I’m still left cold.

I’ll take your blood, rub it into me like
ointment.
An emollient for this
throbbing brain, stinging from
the intricacies and labyrinthine memories,
legacies from you.
Maybe then I’ll feel like you’re close to me,
all over me, just
like before.

Maybe then I’ll burst with warmth, and
maybe my heart will take wing to
some fiery paradise.

I’ve been ready for so long, that nervousness has fallen away and the deeper, sub verbal currents of feeling are all that is left to my internal life.

There is no need to exaggerate nor possibility of diminishing the size of what is coming. Some changes are susceptible to the whims of a perception driven by fear and hope. This one is too great for that – it is as undeniable as the hurricane or earthquake through which Nature reveals her full force. It is perfect and devastating in its power and inevitability.

Choices were made long ago to bring me into this great force’s path. Some were before memories, others more recent. The last was an answer to a Call that did not require my understanding, only my trust. This will come now, if for no other reason than my desire of it being has become greater than my own entirety.

The only decision left to me at this moment is how desperately I will cling to what I was.

Could I have understood how fundamentally altering this would be? How its power would rip away my constructed bits of self like a wind stripping leaves from a tree? How its great current would scour my identity and leave only the basalt bedrock of what I am and am meant to be?

I will not hold on to what I was, but I will not seek to rid myself of it either. I will only let go and find out what is to be taken away and what is to be taken with me. I must risk the terrifying possiblity that there will be nothing left after this is done for the single hope that the uncompromising core of who I am will be found on the other side. This will either decimate me entirely or make my soul irrevocably manifest in the world.

Destiny is the undeniable force which draws us toward ourselves. To follow it, though, we must first let go of all we are.

The images are pouring through her as she spins faster like motion-capture city streets and so loud, so fiercely bright, that it’s impossible to grasp a single aspect. There’s too much to remember and grasping at the nettles of imagery only leads to bright flowers of blood on her palms, a sharp sting and an empty hand. It’s thundering through and around her and anything for a moment of stillness, a moment to pause and hide and wail, keening into the darkness, a moment to comprehend. A thousand faces are shouting, whispering, talking, glaring, all of them saying their different truths so the words mangle together into a meaningless, scalding heat and pressure. It all flickers by much too fast to hold on and she is dwarfed by everything within and without her. It’s terrible, horrible, hang on by the hair of your own neck as you breathlessly await the future chaos, rubber-necking at the train-wreck produced by an overstimulated mind.

Closed:

As soon as it came, it ends. A whimper in the dark and there’s nothing for miles or further but the ticking of her mind as she tries to remember anything more than a blur of shouting and orange, lights flashing, velocity, flying/falling. There is a page, with words. They might be important words but it feels like reading them through an atmosphere as almost dreams haunt her day, trespassing on the borders of her consciousness with the aura of smell, motion, a face she’s seen before but only in restless sleep. There is coffee and sustenance, flavours that seem one-dimensional.

The world waits.
The sun rises and waits for us
Travel-weary, we awake
and not acknowledge the sky, the sun, the cosmos
As though we’ve never seen them.

Just an hour before
We were swimming in stars
The sky our beds, blanketing heads
Hate, we remember vertigo
And hate
Resentful at gravity, at awakening
“You’re still here,”
We scream to the sky

(only in secret).

For mentioned, we validate
The dreams we try whole lives to forget
Countless sunny days we try to sweat
from consciousness

And still the world waits.

He didn’t have a destination in mind, so he just followed the crowd for a few steps, getting to a street corner and falling to one knee, head bent over the edge of the sidewalk, and as he saw shins and knees float past him, shoes kicking up dirty snow and water from the ground to his face, he spat out the shit that got into his mouth into a puddle in front of him, and he looked down into it, reflections of anonymity passing through it, but he looked past those, straight down into a cloudly blue sky and he leaned over into it, bringing his lips to the water, kissing it, drinking it, talking softly into it.

“Excuse me,” he said.

“Excuse me,” he saw himself saying against the heavens above.

“Excuse me,” he listened for what he would say next.

“Excuse me while I kiss the sky.”

And he remained in the same place for seconds, minutes, staring at himself, before dropping his face through the floored portal to heaven. He closed his eyes and let himself go, if at least for a moment.

I watched him from across the street, being made anonymous by my own crowd, I was sitting on a park bench, observing him, and jealousy coursed through me as strongly as I had ever felt it before. Right then and there, I realised that he’d done the one thing I’d always wanted to do, but had never mustered up enough courage to.

And I swear, right before my very eyes, he melted away and was gone.

The crowd carried on without him.

Info: In late 1880s England, human taxidermy was a brief fad that never quite caught on, despite the efforts of Lord Wisley Brilliantine, the Fourth Earl of Plumb. After Lady Margery, his bride, was cut down in the flowering of her life by a poacher hunting quail, Lord Brilliantine had his soul mate stuffed and mounted on a wheeled pedestal with a golden chain, so she could be pulled from room to room and be part of social gatherings. Her head, of course, could not be salvaged, as the poacher took dead aim at the stuffed quail she was wearing on her hat. The incident marked the end of lady’s avian headwear in England, though in parts of Scotland bird hats were worn for another fifty years. “Aye, we doan shooot laaaydies,” Angus MacDonald said, in defense of Highland fashion. “We kno’ a birrrd when we seeee wun.”

But not just any kind of love will do. The only kind of love that can fill us up and make us whole emotionally is Real Love.

Real Love is caring about the happiness of another person without any thought for what we might get for ourselves.

It’s also Real Love when other people care about our happiness unconditionally. With Real Love, people are not disappointed or angry when we make our foolish mistakes, when we don’t do what they want, or even when we inconvenience them personally.

When I use the word happiness, I do not mean the brief and superficial pleasure that comes from money, sex, power, and the conditional approval we earn from others when we behave as they want. Nor do I mean the temporary feeling of satisfaction we experience in the absence of immediate conflict or disaster. Real happiness is not the feeling we get from being entertained or making people do what we want. It’s a profound and lasting sense of peace and fulfilment that deeply satisfies and enlarges the soul. It doesn’t go away when circumstances are difficult. It survives and even grows during hardship and struggle. True happiness is our entire reason to live, and it can only be obtained as we find Real Love and share it with others. With Real Love, nothing else matters; without it, nothing else is enough.

Conditional Love

Sadly, few of us have sufficiently received or given Real Love. From the time we were small children, we observed that when we didn’t fight with our brothers or sisters, didn’t make too much noise in the car, got good grades, and were otherwise obedient and cooperative, our parents and others smiled at us, patted our heads, and spoke kindly. With their words and behaviour, they told us what good boys and girls we were, and we felt loved.

But what happened when we did fight with our brothers, made too much noise, got bad grades, and dragged mud across the clean living room carpet? Did people smile at us then or speak gentle, loving words? No—they frowned, sighed with disappointment, and often spoke in harsh tones. Just as the positive behaviours of other people communicated to us that we were loved, we could interpret the withdrawal of those behaviours only as an indication that we were not being loved. Although it was unintentional, our parents and others taught us this terrible message: “When you’re good, I love you, but when you’re not, I don’t—or certainly I love you a great deal less.”

This conditional love can give us brief moments of satisfaction, but we’re still left with a huge hole in our souls, because only Real Love can make us genuinely happy. When someone is genuinely concerned about our happiness, we feel connected to that person. We feel included in his or her life, and in that instant we are no longer alone. Each moment of unconditional acceptance creates a living thread to the person who accepts us, and these threads weave a powerful bond that fills us with a genuine and lasting happiness. Nothing but Real Love can do that. In addition, when we know that even one person loves us unconditionally, we feel a connection to everyone else. We feel included in the family of all mankind, of which that one person is a part.

Suddenly I looked up and the night sky lay spread across my vision. The stars were out. “Oh, the stars!” I exclaimed, never having felt them so completely.

You leaned toward me just then to say kind, prophetic words “The stars are very old too.”

“Oh!”

Revelation burst from my chest, filled my eyes, streamed down my cheeks unchecked in tiny rivers, left in quickened breath out my awe-opened mouth.

So old, but so alive; so wise, but so playful; so experienced, but so enraptured. They exist in humble awareness that somehow, just by delighting in being themselves, they are enough to bring joy to an often dark Universe.

“They are old but also very young. I get to be like like that too.”

In a moment, the child I never was, yet always have been, rushes into my arms and I make the perfect space for her in me. A home of kindness, love, and safety. A place for make-believe and comfort, freedom and security. It really is all ok here.

I spent the rest of that night crying and laughing, exactly like a little girl who was woken up from a terrible dream to the arms of a loving family. You tell me that it is ok and I don’t have to go back ever again. There are no end to the hugs and kisses, the soft stroking of my hair and the looks of delight and compassion that I meet.

I am loved and I love – balance is restored, and all is as it is meant to be.

I woke up into the rest of my life that night. I will not go back to sleep.