journey

Lava tables and jumbled sleep

/ autumncircles / 1 Comment

My soul slid through the narrow breach like molten lava whilst my trunk got stuck on its junk. I pulled and pried until my soul hardened, sealing the crevice only to break up into jagged rubble once cooled. Only my heart remained warm. It grew and grew until it took flight and left the trunk covered in ashes to rot on the ground.

My soul soars higher without a weighty pen. As a proclaimed artist, so many times I focus on what the pen is doing that I forget what the pen can see.

Look here…

The table is enormous and yet extremely crowded with a boisterous, extended family of lives. There is a woman desperately looking for a place to fit. To sit down. No one moves to let her in. Nor should they. They all belong equally. She sees a space on the corner with a wobbly chair and broken plate. Enough space, enough. She sits, she fills her plate. Her body straightens, her smile broadens, her shoulders even out.

Just trying to sit down…

I am up in the middle of the night scribbling dream induced words on the back of an old prescription paper. I believe myself to be desperate to find my place to sit down, hungry for my chance to eat at a table filled with food that won’t harm me. I fight with words on a page, slam the delete key too many times, contort simple phrases into jumbled consonants and question every inspiration, doubt each opportunity, long for any free moment.

Images of strength are vivid in my sleep, they fade closer to awakening.

I fight to stay there, awaken I always do.

I have been absent. Here is my written excuse.

/ autumncircles / 1 Comment

Not sure if anyone noticed.

Including myself.

I have been absent.

From this blog.

From my writing.

I am not sure where I have been.

Or where I am going.

I am not sure if my journey is creating me.

Or if I am creating a journey for myself.

I could list out all of the many things I have been doing instead of writing.

It wouldn’t change the fact that I haven’t been writing.

It’s not that I haven’t felt like writing.

It’s that I haven’t felt like writing.

I haven’t felt like I had anything comprehendible to write about.

Like now.

“Too much information running through my brain
Too much information driving me insane
Too much information running through my brain
Too much information driving me insane”

I am brain-full.

In fact, it is in overload it is so full.

I am learning so very much.

About who I am.

What I like.

What I don’t like.

What I can do that I always thought I couldn’t.

What I don’t have to do that I always thought I should.

What I want to do and have been reluctant to believe I would.

What I don’t want to do and have been hard pressed to quit.

I’ve discovered musical artists new to me, muscles I didn’t believe I had, endorphins I wasn’t sure worked anymore, new friends, old friends and the wonder and assistance of pharmacology along with downsides I am not willing to accept.

I have also discovered that don’t have a clue how deep my lack of knowledge about myself goes.

“Overkill, overview
Over my dead body
Over me, over you
Over everybody”

Beauty inhales me, beauty escapes me. I live my moments in alternating abject confusion and comfortable understanding. My soul tugs at my body to keep moving in this direction and my body subtly tries to get me to turn back, go another way and lay down. I have a thirst for knowing, learning and being. My eyes well to the brim with baptismal tears more often out of youthful joy yet spill over in aged sorrow.

Love surrounds me, enfolds me and holds my hands securely until the blood flow shuts down to my extremities. There is so much, so varied, so important and none of it mine. Love belongs to the universe and I try with every breath to let it flow through me – I want to experience it, I want to share it, I want to love it.

Some breaths succeed.

Some breaths fail.

And I go missing…

An Old Letter – I like letters…

/ autumncircles / 5 Comments

P.S.  I’ll add the pre-script at the front since the letter below was written five years ago and never mailed to Mr. Damon. I mentioned it in my 25 facts and got a comment to post – so, what the hell?

In the interim, I have, of course, seen The Bourne Ultimatum and loved it! The way the end Supremacy overlaps in the beginning is so much like life to me. Before I am through passing through one emotion, another one appears on the horizon that I must also deal with. Plus, I find Matt Damon to be quite an impressive talent. He can brood with honesty like nobody’s business for one piece of work and be hysterically self deprecating in another. (check them out, but please come back…)

I tend to find messages in the oddest of places anyway. Like the other night, I heard this quote and it was exactly what I needed to hear to jump start me out of my self-induced, hormone laden funk:

“You can chose to live in a place of fear or you can believe in the best version of yourself.”

Guess where? It was Mac (Gary Sinise – whom I also totally respect as an actor) from CSI: NY.

Music also plays a big role and I love it for both the Bourne series and CSI: NY – but that’s another post. So, without further ado, here is my letter to Matt Damon that I never sent.

August 19, 2004

Dear Matt:

This may or may not seem odd to you, but that does not matter to me today. I have an intuition to write to you, and, for today, I am listening to that voice.

Over the last couple of years I’ve been struggling to find out more about my own inner truth. It has not been easy and I have had many days where I want to give up and let the person inside of me I don’t like rule my head and heart. Two years ago, I saw you in the The Bourne Identity and (here comes the whacko part) – your sincerity of performance truly spoke to me. When you looked the mean agent-man in the eye and chose not to be “that man” anymore, it was like an epiphany for me. I took that as my motto for the last two years that I don’t have to be the woman I once was – I can be my true self, the one originally intended at my birth. (Please note that I was already on an inner journey when I saw your movie – I don’t want to come across as if I am not in touch with reality or belong in a padded room. I was formally seeking answers regarding my personal identity and your movie happened to be released at that time.)

Today I saw The Bourne Supremacy. Again, I come away with such an awareness of my own search that I want to thank you. The humility you embrace in letting your inner energy display the emotion and grief your character suffers without resorting to trickery or overt machinations is inspiring. The line at the end when speaking to the daughter of the couple Bourne murdered (I’ll paraphrase, for regardless of what you actually said – this is what I heard) – “when the truth gets taken from you, you find a new one.” Without going into too much detail about my own sob story, that is basically what happened to me – my truth about being a whole person who could thrive in this world was taken from me when I was very young. I found a new one immersed in fear that I lived by for way too many years. I have seen glimpses of my original truth throughout my recent journey and try to live it each day.

I realize that you did not write the words or direct the film and that you are simply doing your job by portraying the character that Robert Ludlum wrote so many years ago. However, it is that portrayal that brings these words and film alive, and it has reached deep into at least one person far below the surface level of a great action film. It has touched my humanity and search for my own past truths in order to live a more full life today.

Thanks again and I look forward to The Bourne Ultimatum.

Sincerely,

Kathleen

P.S. See, I’m not so wacky. Just a woman searching and finding answers in any and all possible locations. Where do you find your answers?

Peace.