fear

progress again

~ extraplorer ~ Leave a comment

One of the deepest joys of writing is to put into language tiny aspects of experience which rarely make it into words. It’s like this with my progress in these summer days. There is such quicksilver uncertainty if something is being made, what exactly?, anything?, and then suddenly there is a recognition, oh yes, there. There is something. It’s the flicker of an inner truth that a perspective has enlarged, that something hitherto hidden has revealed itself, that meaning has, even if almost imperceptibly deepened and strengthened, and most of all, its heralded by the unmistakeable presence of delight, an ancient barometer that is very rarely fooled, and often announces some wonder before the rest of perception has caught anywhere near up.

It’s been a quite peculiar few weeks of arduous struggle, in a friendship, digging deep, into self, into past selves, refreshing in drenched delights and pondering. And this is important: All along I have known that I was also being brewed. Tomorrow I set off for an adventure that I know will be confronting, beautiful, wild, difficult, vulnerable and tender. I am afraid and overjoyed.

And I am thankful for my own persevering in progress making, however uncertain, however unmeasurable, because now as I teeter on the brink of departure and arrival, I know that i have been equipped, and that quite soon I will really be Ready.

feeding and renewing

~ extraplorer ~ Leave a comment

It continues. The discernment of wild forces was strengthening in itself. So too was the realisation that staying in position was the place of hope.

So I stayed while everyone left.

Stayed still. Not rushing hither and thither. Stayed in the small circumference of the garden, the seaside, the station and the park. Dwelling myself into home, to wholeness, to hope and to trust.

I did ordinary things. Tending the flowers, the laundry, the thoughts and the imagination.

It seemed like nothing. But the seeming was not true.

The staying still revealed the rush of everything; long days at work, long calls listening to friends, trains, planes, fretful self-displacements searching for places to hide, be found, regroup, distract.

The more the rush appeared, the more the stillness showed its value.

I’m still not there yet, not there, a somewhere that some part of me knows I am going towards but cannot speed up, or even really know where it is, just that it is. There is a somewhere and part of me knows how to get there.

The rest of me must follow, blind.

constellation

~ extraplorer ~ Leave a comment

While I have been fretting about the presence or absence of the innocent and ancient self, other things have been going on, which I somehow did not connect.

It’s been a time of furious difficulty. And in this difficulty I’ve been unusually lost.

I have chosen a life of particular exposure to the wilds of existence, and yet normally I know where I am. I have an inner stability borne of experience and love.

The last months have been like a battering. Certainly not comparable to other terrible events elsewhere, but for a self that wants to make creative work, crushing.

After every wham of difficulty I have tried to regroup, only to (sometimes) glimpse a moment of arrival before, wham, some other violence to my body, self, relationships, possessions, work…

After months of bravery, suddenly it was too much. I was distressed, tearful, lost. Plus the endless noise disturbance of the sound injury fills every moment of potential rest.

No wonder the delicate self was not keen on showing up.

Today I reflected on various ‘solutions’ that had been proffered in the last week: Get new friends, take a flight, look online, try America.

All of them, I could feel, were like trying to tack a threadbare patch over a crater and hope for the best.

A deeper part of me thanked the offerers and explained, yes, this seems like a sensible option, but it is not enough. I cannot thrash around trying to fix things.

This morning I realised what was really going on. I was being intimidated out of staying in position, by who knows what force, but the one we often concede to.

The recognition summoned a deeper ally: No.

No I will not back down.

No I will not make compromises.

No I will not fritter away truth.

No I will not choose my path based on fear, mockery and pressure.

Nothing much has changed in the circumstances.

But in the inner situation, the clarity is like a protecting force.

Maybe she will come out now that she knows she will not be betrayed.

a rip in the fabric of reality

~ extraplorer ~ Leave a comment

I made it to the second summit.

The second summit was, you may recall, the daring act, a conversation with a friend.

It turned out to be very difficult to carry out, and strange.

First the day was very disrupted. I could not find the right thing to wear, the weather being milder than it looked, and the day holding multiple, contradictory-suitable-outfit events. I managed to leave the house to find that the logistics of the day were totally different to that which I had imagined. I could not conceive of how I would be able to do everything that I was responsible for doing and still carry out the daring act. But I must carry it out, of that I was certain. Also, it was classic that circumstances were seemingly to conspire yet again to obstruct the accomplishment of anything remotely important to me.

Breathe in, breathe out; it’s wild near the summit. This is what I told myself.

And this was indeed the precisely correct approach because the circumstances tamed themselves down into a harmony almost poetic in its perfection.

But still, the daring act remained to be done.

The friend arrived, and to my shock, brought along another set of conspiring circumstances. I was totally shocked, having made clear, I was certain, of the need for some space. The slot I was now allocated was almost offensive in its brevity.

As I took in the new reality, I pondered, do I even go ahead now? Could what I had to do even be carried out in such unprepossessing conditions?

Suddenly total conviction took hold of me. It was the day of the summit; who knew when I would get another attempt.

I completed my daring act of sharing in twenty five minutes. My friend looked utterly startled.

And rushed off to the next item on the days agenda.

But the daring act had been accomplished, and perhaps all the more emphatically for the intensity of the conditions.

Now: descent. Something that also needs care.

I also have keys to a new borrowed piano.

edge, rim, shore

~ extraplorer ~ Leave a comment

I’m teetering
again
on the rim
or edge
threshold,
shore.
I’m not quite

a lure
a calling,
I’m being,
no, not forced
invited
drawn

All at once
the future
arrives to me
here
in this moment
now
shall I?

Will I?

Joy jostles
wildly
with my
wildest fears,
wild dreams
wilder than I know
can possibly know
bewildered
oh afraid oh
enticed oh
enraptured
oh, shall I?
do this
step off into
an unknown future
with you?

will you catch me?
will you?

I’m coming

Note: This poem continues the series of piano painting poems inspired by the music of Ludvico Einaudi’s Divenire, played by myself on the grand piano of my downstairs neighbours. Unlike the other poems in the series it was created before the painting, and was a path into the courage to face a new blank page and enter into the vulnerability of creating in the unknown.