friendship

a rip in the fabric of reality

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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.

hush again

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It’s very particular to do walk towards another summit so soon after the last one.

In a way I have rarely experienced, the thrill of joy from the first summit is making even the weary days towards the second one more delightful and with less doubt and will-I-make-it hesitation.

I somehow feel that it has been set up this way; that he joy of the first summit was designed all along to propel me to the second, perhaps more complex summit. Pause. Definitely more complex.

Today it’s sunny for the first time in over a week. It’s beautiful in the studio with the pink roses given by a friend dotted around, showing signs of love and support.

I’m waiting for the afternoon to tell me how to live it. Tomorrow is another big day, and it’s the last day in this studio, requiring also dismantling all my work and moving it all, before it will be truly completed.

There is a beautiful kind of hush in the room… it feels like the stillness before something extraordinary occurs.

Which it is.

a glimpse of the summit – quiet

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I am getting nearer.

I have been through the exhilation of glimpsing arrival, ferocious discipline, the last reserves of patience, and now a quiet has fallen into me.

There is still quite a long list, but I can only work my way through it steadily. Some things might not get done. None may assume the right to cause panic.

Yesterday my disintegration met a friends disappointments. It was painful. I needing a bolstering of hope and instead I felt dropped. Forgive, forgive. This work is tiring to one’s friends; all summits bring up unresolved desolations. Continuing on with love is how we touch them with grace, how we heal each other.

If I work gently and steadily, I will arrive.

an act of daring

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What has it all been about, this summer, this piano playing, this renewing of an inner studio?

At the end of a summer holiday in my home country, which contained an inner adventure, I found myself absolutely renewed, expanded, with the kind of glistening clarity I could barely have imagined possible. Derisory concerns and pettinesses of worry had cleared completely away, as if a whirlwind had gone through my life and left only the most beautiful things, hope.

I was effervescing with the delight of it and wild with the power of myself that had been as if launched within the exhilaration. I was ready for projects, expansions, longings, dreams…

And I returned home to endless, continuous difficulty, disruption, demand, discouragement and dread.

Hmmm.

The last few weeks have consisted of repeated attempts to rediscover, retrieve, establish, rediscover, retrieve this substance of myself. I am accustomed to such dynamics but rarely have they been so ferocious. The other day I was despairing with my friend about the endlessness of it and when I saw her yesterday she had had a thought.

There is a situation I had not quite been addressing, something where the difficulty of the dynamics were risking inner collapse, compromise instead of conviction. It was easy to argue the validity of succumbing to the pressure. Any reasonable acquaintance would have commiserated with me and left it, disconsolate but rational.

My friend is not entirely convinced of the life-deciding legitimacy of what currently passes for reason.

This is what you need to do, she declared, and then outlined what felt like, in the circumstances, the most preposterous, vulnerable and socially unconventional way of relating to the circumstances.

And I knew she was right.

Suddenly I knew, this was what my summer was about: And this is how I will complete the work of it.

Now, alongside the sheer endlessness of the weariness, I feel a glimmer of excitement.

(And fear).