Tag Archives: time

sheer

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I never expected life to be this…odd. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, and I knew it wouldn’t all be very fun from time to time, but I didn’t expect it to be this odd. And no, I don’t really know what constitutes “odd”. A collection of things, I suppose: the way it feels, the people involved, the things they say, the preeminence of “new,” the exigency to understand my own past. At times, it still feels artificial, and yet it’s so very real, so very mine.

Time for me typically moves quite quickly, and that’s why the past fifteen months or so have been so odd, as I felt stalled here at a crossroads in the road of my life. I’ve maundered for more than a year on which direction to take, or how to correct my course, or how to do whatever thing would be required in whatever metaphor I might conjure. And I’ve ultimately gone nowhere.

It was time, and it was past time, and I was truly about to lose all hope.

To that end, some decisions are made, not in haste, but after significant consideration, then delivered quickly. The motivations for the speed of delivery can be myriad, but they typically have at least something to do with a lack of desire to prolong the obvious. It is unfortunate when such decisions countermand previous ones, but life is about survival, and sometimes survival is a harsh sentence. I was been drowning, and I had been trying to rescue myself from the flood with nothing but a collection of memories, a misplaced sense of duty, and talking too much.

Yes, I lacked even a real desire to get out of the water, or step back out onto the road, or anything. I’m brilliant like that, sometimes.

It was time, and it was past time, and the flood was carrying me away.

I could have done things differently, but I actually tried all the options I perceived over the past year, and kept coming back around to that status quo out of weakness. The necessary action was painfully obvious to me over a year ago, and that it’s taken that long to drive it home, and in such a furious fashion, is simply unfortunate. And now, as I move past those moments, I see there was never even a true crossroads: a side-alley into something quite unlike whomever I am becoming, is all there really was.

Of course, I realize that’s hindsight, but by the same token, it is what it is. That cliché has been haunting me all too much, recently.

Last year, the parting from that other one was so ragged it never really let go. So this year, the breaking had to be sheer, her contempt for me complete, and the enforced distance between us void of any real possibility of repair. I am neither pleased or proud with the darkness under which it had to be enacted, but my heart (my soul, if I have one), is lighter, and freer, for having finally done so. I have done the right thing (unfortunately, in some regards, I do not doubt), for I am no longer breathing a water tainted by inaction, insecurity, and distrust. And my own two feet are carrying me forward again: forward, past this “whatever” and into a future in which I have not forgotten myself.

There is time, and there is more time, and the clock is now wound by my own hand.

I am loved, deeply, immeasurably, by someone who sees me for what I am, who appreciates my talents and accepts my deficiencies, and doesn’t want or need me to change or redefine myself in order for her to be comfortable with me. A someone who is so remarkable as to have stood beside me through these recent upheavals, fought for me through them, and who holds to me now, rightfully expecting the deepest reciprocation.

And I shall hold to this someone, this one who helped me pull myself from those tainted waters, who chooses to walk beside me on this road, with everything that I am and hope to become, for as long as she allows me.

And the only oddity now is that it took me this long. Although that, for me, really isn’t all that odd at all.

in days to come

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there is time, and there are dreams.

there is light, and there are questions.

there is hope, and there are discoveries.

and there are things to come: the timing of dreams, the light of doubt, and the discovery of hope.

if we are not alive to ourselves within the confines of our own minds, we live for nothing, dream for nothing, and hope for nothing. and i have become most tired with living this way, for if we are not alive to each other within the confines of our respective realities, we remake ourselves in the images of failure.

and for how long was my life like that?

in the past few months, i have been more alive than i ever was. i awoke this morning in the light of all my life, and it was no longer grey. would that i could awake every day, having fulfilled a promise made to myself long ago. would that i could go to sleep each night, confident in the fact that i have contributed the most possible.

and would that every moment could be spent in the light of you.

in days to come, i am tasked with the duty of realization. and in nights to come, certain demons must be banished.

collide

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the days have collided into one long, interminable scream: so much so that i’ve forgotten what i’m screaming for or about or to or why or wherefore. and i don’t even scream aloud.

so same, the days
in essence
so governed by extremity
and the levity of change
          that dream
     undisclosed
we grieve that none may know
the inner joy
engendered by the storms

that was jotted down during some work meeting in which i had only a bit part, if any. i don’t know exactly when. and the entire sentiment of not knowing that is exactly how things have been.

shit. that rhymed. you can shoot me now.

i am actually doing well. things change rapidly, which always seems to be the case with me. i don’t try to make things difficult, but that could well be simply another way of saying that i don’t have to try.

happiness approaches, which is not to say i’m entirely displeased with the here-and-now.

ugh. i’m gonna stop now. too many caveats, and i barely just started.

(on a completely unrelated subject: i don’t know what the hell “melon berry” skittles are supposed to taste like, but they taste like the smell of an old man’s farts contained with decades-old wet flannel. don’t ask.)

The following is at least tangentially relevant to my mental state of late. Which really isn’t saying much for me.

Sigh. I did it again.

(from “Porcupine”, Echo and the Bunnymen, on “Porcupine”, 1983)

There is no comparison
Between things about to have been.
Missing the point of our mission
Will we become misshapen?

A change of heart
Will force the nail,
Nailed to the door
To all avail.

There are no divisions
Between things about to collide.
Hitting the floor with our vision,
A focus at some point arrives.

changes within the ever-changing unchangeable

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stasis is not a thing i do well, and moments of unclarity like this do not range far from my definition of stasis. i feel that i’m at a crossroads, taking a moment’s pause before choosing which direction to turn, or not to turn, but in truth, there are no divergent paths before me, no turns to the left or right, no forks in the road ahead. i’m just pulled to the side for a bit; maybe to gather my strength, or maybe i should get out and walk. at least that would constitute some sort of decision to make….something to do.

okay, i’m no longer terribly thrilled with this metaphor. let me try another.

did i ever mention i’m not terribly adept at waiting? yeah, i probably did. when that for which you wait is unwelcome, the waiting for it bleeds.

once upon a time, this is what waiting felt like for me:

Tempered Impatience © 2004 (photo), 2005 (comp) Dawnne

Tempered Impatience © 2004 (photo), 2005 (comp) Dawnne

it may convey something different to you, and to be honest, you’ll never hear me say anything like “this is the perfect image to describe ‘waiting’, in my opinion.” this was just what waiting felt like to me at a certain time: a waiting of a certain form, when all the things being waited upon were undefined, unknowable, hidden, mysterious, unresolved. but i do keep coming back to this image at moments like this, remembering the “then”, and comparing it to the “now.” sometimes, it’s even beneficial. and at other times, it might even feel that way.

there is a sense of acuity that comes with experience: a knowledge that the things to come will be better than the things that have been, at least in retrospect, for in later years we enjoy the privilege of coloring the things that were with the knowledge we have gained from them.

on days like this, the shadows fade, and on days like this, reminiscence is a muted scream.

inconsequentially yours

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words do not begin…

it recycles, and that annoys. but, it’s never the same.

the problem with me is that i remember. i don’t have the type of brain that memorizes every word that is spoken or written, whether outbound or inbound, but i remember so much else, so many other details, usually visual or aural, that will haunt me all of my days.

just this past week, unbidden, came sounds from the night of my high school graduation dinner, an event that hasn’t entered my mind again in over twenty years. that’s what i mean by haunting. i remember, but i can’t always call things up at will. instead, the memories come almost randomly, and leave me cold.

and so, words do not begin…

sometimes, i catch myself about to do something that i’ve done before, and if it’s that type of thing that doesn’t really need to be done in the first place, well, that irks. recycling is good for the environment, but this kind of recycling makes me worry about my brain. i don’t like redundancy, even if those who were to receive what i’ve had done or said would never have had a way to know i was being redundant.

maybe even especially then, when i know it’s only me that i annoy.

and words do not even remotely begin…

i was chatting with a friend last night, and something came out of my mouth that surprised me: that within the short span of less-than-three (pardon the pun) months, i have learned to love without being selfish about it. that’s a bigger accomplishment than you might think. and more than that, i’ve learned to keep myself above the age-old tendency to lose myself in the emotion, in her. it is a different thing: one that took far longer than it should have, to accomplish.

and while the words fail to suffice to describe it all, neither do they prevent the enjoyment anymore.

i started writing this in late august, and got sidetracked with life, living, and the pursuit of not being borne down by the music i listen to (the things that remind me of where i’ve been, what i’ve done, and whom i’ve known, in other words), into the depths of remorse and might-have-beens. the vectors of certain tangents in my life are helical: not quite recursive, but they come back around, time and time again, and the where-i-was is in view for long, painful moments until i move up and away and around and back again.

i had to make a break with the one who haunted me all those years. it’s not a clean break, and if i think about it (or her) too much, it’s the one thing that can actually bring me to tears. it’s a regret, true and thorough. i had intended never to have such a thing, but there it is. i’ve cried more for her than i have for the mother of my children, but the tears, now, lack the power to sway me.

the more things change

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….the more they are changed.

life walks forward down a path of its own choosing, on its own mission, at its own pace, within its own time, and i’ve known for decades the baseless futility of attempting to steer it solely for my own purposes. sometimes you have roll with what you’re given, and you otherwise work within the gaps to make it your own thing.

and i am somewhere in the gaps, or at least i try to be.

the rains of late have been a fitting backdrop for these days. my life, changing once again, gets redefined, and the world weeps. no, i don’t really think that, but it’s sometimes comforting to think that way, at least until you think about all the people affected by the flooding. so i only think about it that way when the rain is actually coming down, and i’m out in it, getting soaked.

but it’s finally getting cool enough where that’s no longer a comfortable venture.

old habits like this, they die hard. but they are dying, and not just for her. they pass away for lack of my attention, and the lack of their ability to capture it away from her.

it hasn’t been so painful as i feared.

traded

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i live in a moment of barter which makes no sense, for nothing has been tangibly exchanged. yet it seeped through me, runs over me, and the only word that comes to mind as description is barter: i have traded something away and gained something very much more. describing it, defining it: these things are beyond me today.

there are no storms, as if August came and swept them all away so that my center would lie elsewhere. i do not grieve for them, and yet, for a while, they reconnected me with my past in their warm, wet, intimate way. and that, of all things, was the healing i needed. i am not groundless in this. i do not waver constantly without my center. i know where it is, and what it awaits, and that, today, is centering enough.

it is a different time now, a different place, a different measure. all the might-have-beens were washed away this summer—all the could-have-beens, the in-betweens, and the waiting for them that bled and bled and bled my life away. even alone, i live more fully now than over the past decade.

and that word. that rarely-seen, unfamiliar word that has come to me infrequently over time, came up again in my last writing. and it has interpolated itself into something more than it ever was before. recalescence: that ever-ephemeral glow of molten iron as it cools. somehow, over the years, i’ve managed to keep my own core malleable, workable, changeable, adaptable, and to keep that recalescence alive. i thought i’d lost it, yet it burns within me still, though it seems like something close to forever since i last saw it shine.

i thought i’d traded it away for stability—for that constant, inconsequential insistence that all is well. if i’ve failed at anything in life, i’m pleased to have failed at that, then.

and she—she only begins to know, to understand. she hasn’t been a part of all of this, and she didn’t know she could be burned by my recalescence. i try to shelter her from it, yet having failed at least once (at least partially), she remains, voluntarily, and pulls it—pulls me—closer to her heart. i cannot fathom why, or even pretend to. i simply cherish it, and cherish her, and walk alongside her, hoping neither of us burn.

for i’ve traded the insularity for brightness, and that brightness came with the death of the all which never was.

for a reason

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Sometimes, I wonder why I do the things I do. I don’t refer to myself in the third person very much at all, but I do quite often stand outside myself and become at a loss for what’s going on inside. Perhaps my communicative problems from the past really are grounded within me. I think I sometimes fail at giving myself the fuller insight as to what’s going on internally.

As a result of that, when people ask me what something I’ve published up here means, I don’t necessarily have an answer. While I’m not saying that not asking is the better course, just be advised I may not have what fits your definition of “clear answer.” I work a lot from the subconscious; it’s nothing mystical, it’s just unplanned. I feel no real need when it comes to the creative process (and my life definitely fits under that order of precedence) to direct every action, every movement, every response.

Only this, perhaps: The majority of my life is spent in waiting for things to come. And the waiting for it bleeds. I am somehow both too active to wait indefinitely, and too pensive to force my own hand.

Time is the sort of thing that can beat you coming and going. I try not to chase it too hard, but that rarely means I’m doing it right. Peace and closure are unattainables: meaningful ideals that have little true function in the world.

I’m alone right now for a reason. I only hope it’s a good one.

within the realms of former things

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part of my self-definition after i left home involved mnemonic devices in my writing: word-symbols which correlated to certain thought-forms more fluidly than i could say outright in English. one of these devices was the black moon.

over time, the black moon came to mean several things to me, but it started as being directly representative of an eclipse, and therefore for eclipsed thoughts: forms of creation which existed internally but never made it to the light of day. had blogging been around (read: common) back then (the mid-to-late 1980′s), i’d have been one of the most prolific bloggers on the planet, but even then, there still would have been creations that fell beneath the black moon. poems in particular had a peculiar tendency to creep up on me when i had no way to write them down, and songs seemed to always wait until i was either out of music paper or far away from any musical instrument.

but, at least those melodies would often stay in that mental playlist of mine, and would often be rendered sometime in the future, at least in some way. and especially after i enlisted in the Army, the most common way for a song to be written down was as a “poem”. these poems were actually mnemonic sequences, crafted for the sole purpose of capturing the song they actually represented. call me crazy, but the methodology works. i can still hear the song represented by the poem below (the title of which was an intentional double-entendre), despite a series of edits which, for me at least, lifted it from its role as mnemonic device and into something which might just stand on its own.

i’ll have to record the song itself someday. it is the melody that underlies the entire process of my departure from my unrevivable marriage.

this was written at a time when i still considered the possibility of reincarnation, multiple lifetimes, and all that other tomfoolery which is ultimately just as unprovable as religious dogma. for that, i must beg your indulgence.

within the realm of the black moon rising
~ October 2, 1989 in Lubbock, TX

called in and deeply hidden:
something more grand on this large scale
than wisdom;
and the changing patterns on the ceiling
mark the windfall
of the endless colors on the Wheel;
and for all that it seems,
something deeper hidden than the nightfall
is colored by the days it has failed to express.
so much, then ~
so futile ~ is the star-gazing wonder
of a few pale expressions of our doom.

so lying alone, i remain in wonder,
pondering for a while
the termination of the colder hand;
and gazing now beyond these wayward turmoils,
i symbolize the Law of Universal Doom.
it all shall end.
it shall.
and creaking like the back door of our memories,
slowly it opens,
and slowly, i begin to understand.
there is something more here than what is waiting ~
something more full of despair
and empty sadness;
and i search again the long streets of our wanderings,
and my memories fly the pathways
of so many lifetimes.
and so my question, unanswered still,
begs unasked upon my lips:
“when shall i be with you again?”

within the realm of the black moon rising
(and the planets all are melting),
i turn to see the stars,
and you are there again.
i lay my eyes upon thee, my love,
and thou art full of light.

there

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Of all the unknown things, unbidden yet undenied, there there is a hidden sentience to the way that life comes among us here between the cold stones. We are simpler here, and thus more complicated and complex. But, unknown to us, all the things we dreamed of, have relevance only within the dreams which contain them.

And life comes among us. It comes between us and rides the waves of seeming, which we say nothing should have a right to ride, since we, continually within our constancy, refuse those waves a life of their own. We demand a precedence undeserved: to be ridden by us, as if the riding would be a gift. And we call ourselves, Sacred.

Our dreams collide like the greyest swells beneath the midnight moon, arching over each other in intricate tangles of common essences and mutual desires. And we, wetly waiting upon the shore, shrouded in the fog of our presumptions, can only yearn to ride those swells.

The stones are cold, not warming beneath our misted hands, but numbing us all the more as we are supported by them, not of them (not yet!), but less somehow without them. For they live where we come to watch, and from where, as the cold sun faintly rises, we must ultimately depart.

And in the meanwhile, life comes among us, between us, through us, and over us, surrounding us with the mysteries of never, always, and now. We live between its gusts, among the shadows of the cold stones, much as we live within the wind, the mist, and the rain. It is less frightening here, less immediate, less uncertain. It is dream-stuff, but its pertinence is without dimension, and thus a part of all.

And of all the unknown things, that hidden sentience by which we define ourselves moves on slowly inland, free of us, leaving us staring at the sea, and yearning to ride the swells.