On the last page of the SUN magazine. I'd thought it would go on forever, at least, I had hoped this issue would have no end.
Well, not the very last page, I suppose. In a normal issue, this, the Sunbeam page, would be the very last. But in this issue, there are two more pages, an extended sunbeam page, and the dog-eared page as the last breath of this song without music.
***
Now I sit here, holding the back cover in my hands and eyes.
Here's to many more years, SUN. We'll walk together throughout the next decade, and, love, I do intend to contribute to your fiftieth anniversary. Bless us to bless each other, dear friend.
Hello, it is me, come to visit this place of home.
There is a child hiding in my closet. I have no idea how there is room even for her small form in there, stuffed full as it is, as everything in my room is. I suppose I shall look back on all of this fondly someday, and indeed, I do not hate it terribly right now.
There is another child struggling to hide behind a dresser, but he has been found. The child in the closet is smiling at me from between the folds of a few dark dresses, and the child who was found is back again, hiding under my blankets and rocking my bed.
Apparently this is a game of hide and seek, based upon some sort of prison system.
The closet child has been found, a white arm and mess of hair were visible and the "warden" called her out. The child hiding in my bed has also been recovered and led to the next room, to return to "prison" once again. Now there is no one in here but me, and my sister who is actually in dream land still, so she doesn't really count.
I sit cross-legged amid mountainous folds of purple afghan and floral bed sheet, the corners of my laptop resting on my legs below my knees.
I'm kinda sorta lost. And I don't really know how to find my way back.
Never alone for long, a child darts into my room and onto my sister's bed pursued by the "warden" and is hauled off once again. My sister is sitting up, looking at me blankly, says "I hate getting up". And she lays back down, all yellow shirt and hair, sits up, blinks. I look at her, she looks at me, and says "what? what are you doing? what are you doing? Smiling so sneakysly."
I rather miss my school-time schedule. It's easier to write and remember to nap and exercise. I've given up on all else during vacation, but writing is life and nap-time, haha, makes life easier. I really am quite the four year old.
Never did it occur to me that I would be comforted by schedule and regularly ordered days, but I am, silly girl who thinks she's so very random. But ha, balance... Because yes, I can get very, very bored by too tight of a regimen.
How does this all fit together, I wonder? I followed the thread, but I also wound it. It is my making, so do I have the key to pulling it all tight and tying it neatly, or having been made by me, is there no answer nor key at all?
Well, I just figured out why this whole "true power comes from within" and "look inside for the answers" is kinda messed up and definitely unbalanced.
It forgets the importance of community and friendship, and the very reasons why we converse with other people. There are so many other viewpoints, why learn only of and from your own when you can learn of and from the experiences and philosophies of others as applicable to your own life or purely abstract?
We're not meant to be alone, we're not meant to rely only on ourselves, on our own strength. We're meant to have relationship, community, support and we're meant to support others. We are strong and we are weak, and we do life better with other people around us.
I want to be a mystic. I want to devote my life to the pursuit of learning and spirituality. I really want to get married and have a family as well. A career or any kind of work outside of my own home and family would make this very hard.
I don't want to work.
But I don't know what to do, okay? Because yeah, I'd like to be some form of independent for a while, I'd like to travel and live and take care of myself, but what do you need in this world for anything? You need money, dammit. I have a really weird mindset about money, a really weird relationship with it. I hate it but I understand why it has its place in this world and that it is kind of essential right now. Sort of, but not really. And I deeply hope I can live to the age where it is given up as the bad and destructive habit it is. Maybe I'd like to help bring that day to a pass, but I don't know how to do that. Living as I do in my parent's house, relying on god's will and kindnesses: the kindnesses of other people (that must never be forgotten, and thanks must always touch down there first), all of these things generally spring from money in some form or another. Not my own money, but somebody else's. So here I am, avoiding attachment to money and the making of it, but it's still all around me like a hobbit tangled in spider web.
I have this idealistic vision of what I want my life to be, and it's constantly changing, but there isn't a bridge between now and "the future" yet. I think I've given up on the wanting for saviors, that was never very realistic. Still, there's a balance between relying on your own strength and trusting the community you build around you. I don't think we're meant to be alone or fanatically independent ever, it's not very healthy for the heart or mind.
I want to be a mystic, I am a mystic, but I guess I'm cloistered right now, all shut up in my monastery, or, what's the Buddhist word? Maybe that's what I need to grow into, what I'm trying to find my way into, there's a Buddhist word for a spiritual community, the people around you who support you in your pursuit of living a life of revelation. Maybe I'm making this up, but it does sound lovely. I guess mostly I just need to connect all of this "then" in my head to now.
Hello idealistic future, I always forget that you live within the present.
(Written last night. I was reading some poems in the theme of youth and grief on a poetry app and noticing this pattern all through them and wondering how, as a young poet, it all applied to me. I am writing in my youth, now, it is not yet nostalgic, though it may be in the future. Still, I intend to carry my youth with me all through life, I have not left behind each age as I grow older, they are still inside of me, like many layers of cloth, or an onion skin, if you will, and they ebb and flow back and forth across my days and life.)
Grief And youth
You-th and grief,
We were young, once,
They all say,
And love was bitter-sweet,
Touch was sweet pain.
Growing up hurts,
The pain doesn't stop when your limbs cease to stretch,
Your skin ceases to stripe,
Your mouth ceases to crack and whine.
Love is like breaking,
But it's also like living and growing and learning,
It never stops hurting,
And nothing is happily ever after.
Once upon a time
Wasn't so long ago,
And it will come again
Before it is all over and the sweet black pool swallows you whole
This whole year has felt a little like a breath held in anticipation. Anticipation of what, I don't know, and whether it applies only to me or to the world in general, I am not sure.
This is actually something I'd planned before that whole Kesang Marstrand
post from a while ago. But now the two have inspired and collided and spun off from each other. Anyway, I rather enjoy documenting some of my music discoveries on here, lengthy or otherwise, and it creates an interesting sort of stream-of-consciousness commentary, which is something I feel like writing at the moment, but can't really figure out how to begin.
Ben Howard - Oats in the Water
To begin with the first, found by my best friend, shared between and then adopted, a thing not my own enfolded into my being, by me.
Probably the one many of his fans heard first, for whatever reason, lately as a result of the song playing in a Walking Dead episode.
Absolutely beautiful, my love. Heart aching in a way, and the music has a lovely rhythm to it.
I love Ben's intonation and inflection, it sounds like he's singing it for the first time, with all of the thoughts and emotions fresh in his own mind. Reflective and darkly tranquil.
Ben Howard - Esmerelda
Lordy this video is lovely, black and white, the stormy skies, the waves crashing backwards, like time is rewinding underneath everything being said. It very much evokes a feeling of looking back to something long past and deeply missed.
All of Ben's music makes me just a little sad and rather meditative. It's fun to pray along to as well.
That all probably sounds pretty weird, and it's hard to explain, but that's as close as I'm getting at the present.
Ben Howard - Depth Over Distance
This is one of my very favorites, I first discovered a fantastic layered version on Tumblr, which was haunting and beautifully rainy. I adore both versions, though; this one's warmer, the other very still. Here's a link to the layered version, Layered Depth Over Distance
Ben Howard - Black Flies
Terribly lovely, and it seems like it was serendipitous the day I heard it, though I'm not sure. I think I wrote the October Fly poem the afternoon before I first heard Ben Howard, the first three of which were Oats in the Water, Esmerelda and Black Flies.
I remember walking in the dark, speaking about Ben's music, and having simultaneous thoughts, speaking at the same time, weaving bright threads of gold in the dark of the night, the winter not yet cold enough to draw our breath upon the air.
Ben Howard - Old Pine
He makes want so dearly to learn to really, truly play guitar.
All of his songs sound so different, and have such different subjects, but still they have a blue thread wound through, a life all their own shared throughout.
Ben Howard - To Be Alone
It sounds like he puts a lot into everything he writes and sings. Seriously, the emotion of it all, every one of his songs sounds like it's being made up as he sings it, every feeling felt in the deepest way. Reflective, Introspective... Do you suppose every artist, musician, public figure is a mirror whether they mean to be or not?
I act like I'm a mirror, though I'm not entirely sure I actually am. Or maybe I am too much a mirror.
Watching "Rise of the Guardians" last night, you wouldn't expect it to, I didn't expect it to, but it raised some rather deep questions within me. What is my core? I don't think I really know, and that's why I'm kinda lost. But I guess I also don't really want to look.
Ben Howard - Promise "I think," he said, "that it's a good thing to get out of your usual, you know, surroundings. Because you did things out about yourself that you didn't know, or you forgot. And then you go back to your regular life and you're changed, you're a little bit different because you take those new things with you. Like a Hindu, except all in one life: you sort of get reincarnated depending on what happened and what you figure out. And any one place can make you go forward, or backward, or neither, but gradually you find all your pieces, your important pieces, and they stay with you, so that you're your whole self no matter where you go. Your Buddha self. That's my theory, anyway." -From "Criss Cross" by Lynne Rae Perkins
Ben Howard - Keep Your Head Up That looks like so much fun, can you imagine doing that? The grandeur of building and then using that magnificent slide? Can you imagine thinking of that and then actually sharing that dream with others and acting on it? :D It's absolutely beautiful, and yeah, it's a music video, so it's terribly idealistic and it's taken for granted that it was edited and a little contrived, but that's still cool, and from watching the behind the scenes video, it looks like it was a ton of fun.
What does his music mean to you? How does it make you feel? What does it make you remember?
I.
Do you think I could tease you out of your corner, my dear?
Take your hand and coax you from the wall.
But maybe I don't even see that as it truly is,
maybe it's not a corner, but a whole other world,
different and not so different from mine.
Perhaps you like everything just as it is.
II.
I want to reach deep into the universe,
--my arm plunged in up to my shoulder,
and pull the heart of it into sight.
I halfway suspect it would also be my heart,
your heart,
their heart.
In theory, I am the adventurous type,
In theory I want to get out, to go far, far away.
And then maybe I will come back, and I will find what I am looking for
Right here,
Where it has always been.
III.
I yelled down the stairs, deep and loud,
and in the silence left alone afterward,
a string on my guitar rang in reply,
and I smiled and laughed and said hello
before flying away.
And so it is that I always find these things again, and they are different,
I am different;
With a firefly
Blinking in my heart
and guitar dust shining golden on my fingers,
in my soul.
Split wood again today, we found another anomaly and I finally photographed snow crystals like I've been planning to on the walk back home. (I have no idea how this font materialized...)
I have spent today doing the things I enjoy, and yesterday I did the same.
It would seem that I turned nineteen at five in the morning a great many more than 24 hours ago, one more year spanning across the ages in this grand, small life.
That's the age two of my best friends were, nineteen, when we met one of them, and really started hanging out with the other. They made being nineteen look absolutely awesome, and I seem to remember and hang onto weird little things about other people, remembering conversations and idiosyncrasies and outward appearance and small details of lives and being at certain times.
This is a year I've been rather looking forward to, for abstract and intangible reasons. This is an age and birthday that arrived gracefully, fitting and flowing freely. Still, I never really think of myself as just one age. I am many.
I had no expectations, though many hopes for my birthday, however, hope is more flexible than expectation, and doesn't fall as hard when it is not met. Everything was perfect, which I guess is just how life has been lately, perfect as it is, perfect day by day, nothing amiss, though, yeah, there are still things I wish would happen or happen more, and it's not like I'm just blithely happy all of the time.
I am exploring life and being, and rather liking everything I find. There's not much of a concept of good or bad in my head anymore, which in itself, isn't necessarily great or worse. I mean, I do things that don't strike others as kind or safe, but I see no "wrong" with them. Maybe I'm overconfident. Part of the problem with being in the moment, I guess. But I still feel that I straddle past, present and future in my life. I'm getting more and more independent, even though others' still matter, other people still have wisdom and can offer guidance. It's confusing though, because I look at my grandmother, who asks for advice often, and voices her grand dreams, but she doesn't necessarily actually listen to the advice and guidance she gets. I don't really want to do that, because it makes people feel ignored and ill-valued.
I dance around the concepts in my head, as well as the things in outer life, looking carefully at every side of all the dimensions I sense. This can make for confusion, or at least, confusing writing. I look at every side, up and down and in and out, and I can see how I could go spinning off on the tangent, but I hold my core still and continue to observe the thing I am exploring; I want to see it all. Like the blind men and the elephant, except I want to feel every side of the elephant, and I want to know what others feel, what the elephant is to them, and then I can fit it to what I know of the elephant and know the elephant a little better.
I want to choose, not just fly off at the most opportune sound or sight. I guess that's why I don't really get mad anymore, at least not lately, not necessarily never --stretching of into the future-- There are so many sides to everything, and so many sides to every person who, themselves, feel so strongly. And the why for their feelings, oh, that could be explored forever too.
My brother, who reading a piece out loud during the Christmas organ recital, mispronounced a word. This, along with the absolute beauty of his tone and inflection while reading, striking every word in gold and mahogany, sent me and my sister into a strained giggle fit. It wasn't meant to make him uncomfortable, and it wasn't even entirely because of him, but also of the absurd beauty of the entire program, the emotion and setting and remembering there, everyone singing lovely songs off-key but whole heartedly and in easy companionship. Beautiful things can be amusing, you know, and I am elvish, fairy-kind, Gwragged Annwn, seeing the world at odd angles which can elicit strange reactions and emotions from me. It was exhilarating, in a way, and uncontrollable, I knew it wasn't a good idea, but it was nigh unto impossible to stop. I kept bumping up next to and careening off of my sister's giggling. We did eventually get a hold of ourselves, though, when the next carol finally started.
The whole thing was kind of embarrassing, and I apologized profusely to my brother right after and multiple times over the course of the evening.
Somebody asked that evening, after the program was over, whether I felt more mature, it being my birthday and all, and I said yes, though inside I was remembering the giggle fit and how childish that was. It was embarrassing, but it doesn't actually bother me a lot, it was what it is and will be. I am forty and four and nineteen, you know; I'm not sure how it all meshes together, but somehow it does.
Adopting- to make something our own through reaching out and enveloping with our heart, a sort of folding under and integrating something "other" with your being, making it your own.
Click on all of them to make them bigger, the second sunrise photo is a panorama and won't show up in full unless you click on it :)
I noticed the deer tracks all over the front yard when I went out to photograph the sunrise, they are the most noticeable right in front of our porch. I just find it very interesting and in a way, beautiful that they were so close to our house and we had no idea, but there they were, a great many of them and their tracks remain when they have moved on.
I think this is one of the days I've been waiting for to come to pass.
I've made a choice, and I've rediscovered something that once struck me as so beautiful, but I didn't investigate further, maybe because it just wasn't time. I took note, however, and that has enabled me to find it again.
Kesang Marstrand - The Spell I'm Under
I don't actually remember hearing this the first time, but I wrote Kesang Marstrand "The spell I'm under" (Incredible voice, that one...)
on a piece of paper taped to the side of my dresser. Today I glanced at it and thought it might be interesting to look the song up and listen to it again, and so began my plunge into a world I didn't know I already knew so well.
(The man in the video? The one with the baggy eyes? There is a lot of beauty in him, he just is.)
Kesang Marstrand - Colorless Farewell
Oh love, this video, this song, this may sound silly, but this is almost exactly what I would film and sing, maybe that's a little presumptive, but I feel this whole thing so deeply in my heart.
This is the music I've been looking for, the girl I thought I'd never find outside of myself.
Kesang Marstrand - Grow a Garden
This song makes me smile, this video looks so much like how I see the world, I understand it so much, I think, though that may be presumptive too, I don't care anymore, though, all that is beautiful in her I see in me, so I will try to stop being so critical of my own heart.
Everything is so profoundly beautiful lately, I thought I'd lost that, but it's been with me all along, I've just grown accustomed to everything being so beautiful, and my heart's already broken, so it doesn't break all the time every time anymore. Everything is beautiful, always.
Kesang Marstrand - Endless Skies
Different sound from a lot of her other songs. This one I don't really know how to say a lot of what it means to me. I guess I feel like hiding today, I feel like living in prayer and meditation and quiet today. Endless skies inside, you know. Reflection and introspection. Ohm.
It feels like she so freely writes the things I hold myself back from. Why?
I'm still so self-conscious of myself, of the things I like and want and discover and want to share.
You see this? What I'm doing right now? Maybe it looks uninhibited in a way, but also it's not. I choose to stop being so self-critical all the time, but I've chosen it before, and that voice is getting weaker, but it's still hanging around my neck, guarding my heart.
Today is supernova, though, a quieter sort of supernova, but supernova all the same, my heart burning pretty clear and bright. Can you see it?
My heart as the sun, dark spots here and there, but less than the light and shrinking as I see them and light them on fire again.
Kesang Marstrand - Bodega Rose
The second of her videos I watched today, right after The Spell I'm Under.
It is funny, this feeling like I know a person so well even though there's no way that's possible. Kinda naive and silly, but hey, interesante. Something to think about.
I wonder who she has loved? She sounds so earnest.
I may be supernova, but I am also eclipse and must remember to relax over and over again so the curtain may fall away.
Kesang Marstrand - Stand By Me
I think it's really cool that it looks like she just sat down and recorded this in her home one day, maybe with a phone or some sort of low-grade camera.
I guess I hold myself back in some things because I have this wish to share, but I don't think anybody wants to hear all that's in my head. Kinda the problem with my poetry lately, I write stuff and I don't like it and I figure it's not worth anything anyway. But it's still something close to my heart, things that mean a lot to me. How can one disregard and devalue the things one cares about? I guess I don't really take myself seriously, and I've noticed that in some strange, small way, I'm afraid that others will take me seriously.
I'm not sad today, I've acknowledged sadness in myself, and I've chosen to stop dwelling on that so very much, because it seems like I've become slightly bitter, and I don't want to be that. I'm still kinda snarky about myself, but hey, if I can write all of this on here, with a clear voice and steady eyes, I think I'll be ok.
Namaste
Just kinda cool, Torthadiel pointed it out to me when we were chopping wood for a friend. It looks like a heart and now when I look at the photos it's got a scary face right in the middle, bwaha :)
I'm not despairing, I feel like it'll all be taken care of, I know I won't be unhappy forever, I know I'll find some answers eventually. And I'm still sad though I'm pretty much okay with that too.
Kinda just floating on the water, not sinking under, still creating ripples, even though I don't think they make any sort of a difference and I guess I kinda care about that but not really. Not really moving, no current, no wind, and I'm not swimming. Don't wanna swim, just wanna curl up in my heart and go to sleep for a while, thoughtless, dreamless, but time-traceable. Is that even possible? I don't really think so... Don't even have the will to just sink under. Or something's holding me up. I guess, like I said before, something's just kinda protecting me. I could fall, but I don't, and I imagine I just won't. Doesn't really even appeal to me.
Why do I even write this stuff? None of it seems to matter.
I thought of something today, though. I'm not sad all the time, I just write more when I'm sad because I feel the need to explain to myself why I'm sad, not even so much to other people as just to myself. 'Cause half the time I feel and I have no idea why.
Everything I feel lately makes my heart a shape that doesn't fit inside me anymore, and this, in turn makes my body a shape that doesn't fit to the edges of life.
I'm sorry, little brother, but I'm not all here lately. To be honest, there's a part of me missing, and it walks the world somewhere else. It was taken from me piece by piece, but I gave it all willingly.
I keep anchoring myself to things beyond my control, and this is never good because when nothing works out, I am lost.
It's just, I don't really feel like anything matters lately, not my emotions or wants or feelings, and this applies to the outside world and other people to an extent. It's like I just can't care, but that's not true because I really do care and that's why I'm so sad right now, and why everything that happened yesterday affected me so much even though I tried not to let it because nothing matters; The leak in the gallery, the crabby lady, the blithe and standoffish musicians. But it's not like I see anything truly, it's not like I judged anything correctly. And my eyesight is especially cloudy and fractured lately. And there was some good stuff to balance out the hurtful.
It's true, I'm my biggest bully. And I really don't know how to stop.
It's hard to say stuff to other people out loud, because when you put something in another person, maybe it can't change. But I guess that's operating on the belief that other people are stagnant manikins. I don't know, sometimes I forget that other people are real, but maybe they don't often give me a reason to believe they are. But that's not true either, that's looking at one facet on the stone of life and experience and forgetting all other sides. I can't look at or remember every single side all of the time though, because it feels like I only live one after the other, like there can be no two together.
I don't want to be in my head anymore. I don't really want to exist anymore, but this too should not be taken seriously because I think of it in a transitory sense, I don't consider nonexistence to be a permanent state.
I've got this concept I want to write about, but I really have no idea how to word it, it keeps turning into a list of things in my head, but I really want it to be more articulate and complex than that.
Isn't it weird, that we can know things but not be able to put them into words? That kinda says something about our heads and hearts and the language we've chosen and created. I mean, there's so much more to thought and communication than simple words and letters, so much more behind that. I think in feelings and colors and sounds and images, moving and still, though I also think in the written and spoken word a lot. My head is an interface, a whole other world that I explore.
People communicate in so much more than just what they say, there's body language and touch and tone, and yeah, I think on some level there's this undercurrent of pure heart language, a sort of telepathy.
I don't really know how much of that does or can travel on the written word, especially with digital communication, and maybe that's why I'm having such a hard time articulating this concept I've been carrying around in my head for a week, telling myself all about it. In my head, it's more than words, it's also images and memories and feelings. So when I try to translate it into words, it's like the skeleton of a leaf, none of the color or depth or mass of a whole, growing leaf.
Guess I'll just explore and think about this idea for a little longer before I actually try to write it out.
Life as battle or quest? Or something else entirely?
Life as battle, war; everything is won or lost, everything is a struggle and a fight, an upward climb and tearing of the heart and soul and flesh. You can only ever conquer or fail, pulling yourself up a cliff's edge by your fingernails and teeth, crashing down onto the rocks below when you falter and lose your grip. Life as some great thing you must win, only one pathway, only one right. Inflexible, binding and restrictive.
But life as quest, a wending pathway of discovery, exploration, learning and seeking, is a beautiful living. Then life is stream and pathway and wind about your ears. Then you can shine and love and really see, really understand, and understand that, honey, you're really never going to get it all, and that's perfectly okay. Life as quest; life as play and happiness, life as learning to be with sadness, tears as rain on the ground, nurturing growth and further beauty. Being in emotion, all emotion, acknowledging and allowing it. Life as flowering, a great opening up and unfurling and shedding color and light. Giving, not taking. Creating; not only destroying. Life as pulse, wave, flow; up and down and back and forth.
Rumi;
"Great lions find peace in a cage.
But we should only do that as a last resort.
So those bars I see that restrain your wings,
I guess you won't mind if I pry them open."
And Hafiz;
"How did the rose ever open its heart and
give to the world all of its beauty?
It felt the encouragement of light against
its being, otherwise we all remain too
frightened."
If I let it be, and don't try really hard to fit it all together, it will fall into place in its own structure.
(What I wanted to write but couldn't until I sat on the clean front room floor that clear afternoon while mom was asleep and everyone else was away. The most beautiful things are born in stillness.) You are the brightest piece of gold I've ever found in life.
Shedding stardust everywhere you go.
I follow, starving.
You are one of those things I want to get all over myself and my memory, better than mud or berry-stains or scratches on my arms from collecting and stacking wood for the winter.
You make me burn bright, you're not the only, but you are the best. I guess that's why I run away sometimes, it can be too much for me to handle, and before, I hid it. But now I don't, and maybe you see.
I can feel you (wings) on and between my shoulder blades, and deep in my heart. You make my heart burn low and superheated and dark, then explosive supernova.
I haven't really let myself fall, plunging into the depths of the universe, you, but I'm tottering on the edge, and you're beckoning.
I'm raising my arms, spreading my fingers, feeling the wind.
Cut me open and pour me out
onto the ground,
I will flow into Earth's veins,
and become a single note in a blackbird's song,
a single drop in a misty rainstorm,
a single hair on a new baby's head,
and a single cell in a dog's eye.
