reality

reality

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Yesterday I collided with two deep forms of reality (amongst the swooshings of everything around me). Firstly, I felt lost. Writing this down in the middle of the day made me somewhat comically feel immediately found. Secondly I wanted to rest, but it was not the moment to rest. This did not have quite the same impact but it softened the fretfulness that I was experiencing between my longing to collapse and not being able to.

Earlier this summer I found myself staring at two stark truths; unavoidable and uncontrollable they were. Two things I long for but cannot simply procure.

There is something about deep reality (I make a distinction between that and the confusions of everyday life, a kind of reality of their own, but often too entangled with delusions to easily pick out the truth from the fictions) which is mysteriously comforting, even when unwelcome. It is freeing in a certain kind of sense because it will not suffer manipulation and is immune to control-strategies.

I am not sure exactly what I am doing with this insight, but in a way I somehow stay close to it, and it is strengthening me for the demands of the moment.

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.

la vie suspendue – time

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In la vie suspendue, time is running through me, or to be more precise times. I can feel them, some of them streaming through with no thought of clinging on, some ferociously disputing ownership, claiming my desires, my thoughts, my imaginations, my frailties.

Perhaps it takes this enforced slowness to truly notice the other forms of speed swirling. I am poised in some kind of eternal time, and despite the continuous risks I feel of slipping off its axis, this eternal time, now that I have returned to it, is steady, more steady than I realise, and I don’t seem to slip off as much as I fear.

And so then the other times are making themselves felt, the slow slipping time of summer tempo days punctuated occasionally by the panic of the end time, when I will have to return to the demands of work. So then business time and the seasons of my clients – holidaying for July or holidaying for August or holidaying for a two week scrap of childcare before swapping with the other partner to return to work, according to culture.

His time, how long will it take him, what is he thinking, does he have a time with me in it, should I reach out time, no probably not, patience, time.

Biological time, googling statistics, pondering depleting likelihoods.

Ageing, in a way the same, but felt differently, eyes, hair, skin just a little bit different from last year’s summer photos.

Divenire time, Andante, one dotted crochet = 60 beats per minute.

Ontological time, such a very very long time it takes to manoeuvre the human psyche into new orders to wholeness, always a shock.

Capitalist time, now, immediately, preferably yesterday although then you didn’t actually knew the offer existed, or the deadline.

Poor pitiful modern time, no depth, no heart, no soul, no allowance for grieving, passion, healing, compassion, renewing, also known as ‘according to my personal convenience time’, and ‘validate me! validate me! Entertain me! Feed me! before I pre-emptively reject you’ time.

Nature time, everything in its season, can’t be cheated, nature of reality time.

Sometimes when my younger friends are fretting about how Long everything is taking, I remind them; remember, you were raised in a culture of timescales for the insubstantial. It is a hard lesson, and I have to learn it again.

The eternal time is helping soothe the pains of this emancipation.

new terrain

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stumbling, almost certainly,
dazed and blinded by
new light
the exposure
vast expanse of space
foreboding
joy

steady myself
‘we’re here now’
tend to immediate needs
gentleness, cool water
supplies, details of
beauty

orientate
or fail to
unfamiliarity blurs
vistas to a mist

stay still stay still
come home to yourself
sense on high alert
senses
sensations
sense? sense
stillness reaps,
something moves beneath
the surface
knowing something
knowing nothing

still, longer
tend yourself
attend, wait, let it
grow substance with you
test it
strengthen beyond
an impulse to a
passion

presence of the giants
of fear
ancient guardians
fomenting fury
don’t let go
hold your position
sense
stay still, you are the giant here
let them run
let them hide

a certain
confidence of motion
trust a bedrock
we have been here before
never, often

straighten up, let
your burdens
stabilise your steps
move in