remembering

I remember happier times, times when I was sure, times when I could discriminate between right and wrong, left and right, up and down. Now I simply see not knowing and when I do not know I do not do. I sit paralyzed like an animal about to fall to its predator, ready to be devoured by life with no hope for redemption or rebirth, obliteration my destination, my destiny. Yet where there is desperation there may also be hope. For hope exists even in the darkness. It only takes a point of light to shatter the darkness, to illuminate in glory and majesty the beauty not only of life, but of the very darkness itself.

I remember being a child and playing, careless, no worries. I long for that long lost innocence where the very essence of life was being lost in the moment, transforming time through imagination, knowledge of the body and its simple mode of existence - being. I long for simpler times, times of loving and unconditional acceptance; I long to live my life in serenity and peace, to be, to exist, to touch the lives of others in gentle yet significant ways. For all I know, I know nothing, am nothing, merely a piece of something larger, a thread of a larger fabric woven into the journey of life. I long to sit in the glory of a sunrise, to know the promise of another day, to hold my children and feel their love radiate through their limbs and know that they are content and happy in the life I have bequeathed to them. I long to touch my granddaughter and have her know that she is loved and accepted for whom she is and who she will always be; I long to let go of those things which no longer hold purpose in my life. And I struggle. Yet this is appropriate for we all struggle. We all try to break through the bonds of our delusions, to touch upon a greater truth than the one we know. Yet we are often defeated and submit to the truths of the market.  Happiness cannot be bought; the longing of spirit cannot be placated.

I sit here writing, tired, my bones ache and my mind exhausted. My eyes hardly able to keep open and yet in my tiredness I remember. I remember that which makes life worth living - a gentle touch, a sunrise, a kind gesture. No one knows how to be kind. I feel lost, lost in an age I do not belong, stuck in a time that is not my time but the time of others. Yet I do not know when my time is, or when it was, for I only have this moment - right here and right now - the only truth I know, a truth that evaporates and disappears in giving birth to a new truth. And yet life is like that, the age old cycle of birth-death-rebirth. And what was a truth become a falsity and then a fable, a myth, irrational, something for the ignorant. Yet we are all ignorant for truth evaporates in the moment. Yet we cling to it, our truth. We cling to it until we are no longer, only were. We live in a jail imprisoned by the delusions we have come to see. Yet the prison is a fiction, existing only in our mind and if we truly wished to escape then all we would have to do is open our eyes. For when we look there is nothing there, only what we create, construct, a constructed truth, an oxymoron, an untruth. And I live my life as you live your life in untruth and delusion.

 

the tapestry,

majestic in its wholeness,

slowly unwinds, each thread loosened,

untied,

unconnected threads

blowing in the wind,

no longer part of anything.
 

 And so I sit here at the lake, cold, unaware, watching families comb the beach in search of something, but nothing. Treasures buried among the ruins of that which once breathed life. And so I grieve; memories fading like all things in life, striving to keep something alive, breathing. Yet life has its own rhythm, ebbing and flowing like the sea, giving life only to take life so that new life can flourish. And so we mourn death, yet in death room is made for life, and room in life makes space for remembering, so we remember. And like the sea we ebb and flow in our grief. But grief too fades and so what was once will come again as we remember. Now I sit. I am cold and I am in awe of a young boy collecting driftwood. No reason, just doing it for the sheer joy of what might be.