writing

Pilgrimage

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Making a pilgrimage in our minds can be one of life’s great journeys. Why do we go on pilgrimage? To find ourselves. To find answers. To find a deeper understanding of the foundation of our life. What is the foundation beneath the foundation? Where better to find those things than within ourselves? Identify your life’s essential journeys, even if the circumstances have been bitter.

Being mindful of the now. Being here in the difficulties of our adult body. Finding the essence of beautify within our soul. Feel which streams have flowed beneath your feet. Be aware of the roads your feet have walked. Notice how you’ve been weathered by what comes into your life. Like stones in the river, you’re made smooth, or the stone cracks and shows its beautiful interior or rings and swirls.

Where have you walked? On our journeys we go away and come back. We walk through joy and celebration. Radical peace and revolutionary upset. Abandonment. Imprisonment. Misery. Enclosure. Shelter. Beauty. Wildness. It’s been said in Ireland there’s a pub at the end of every path. Have you looked for the pub? That warm place to spend some time and recuperate before taking the journey back home again?

When life begins to feel small, find a horizon and gaze into the distance. This brings us into healthy conversation with a reality that can feel as if it’s closing in but is actually wide and open as the sky. What horizons are there in your life? When we seek calm and beauty, we watch sunrises and sunsets. We dedicate ourselves at the beginning of the day, and then remember the day’s journey at the end. We choose these times for horizon gazing just as the landscape is drenched with perfect light. These times are calm and glorious. Celebratory and reflective. Both grieving and rejoicing. Like life, our hearts brimming and then overflowing

Look for the conversation beneath the conversation. Listen for the invisible. The unspoken. Find the hidden underbelly of the epochs of your life, the very core of your personal pilgrimage.

The life you’ve lived is astonishing. The life you’ve lived has shaped you. The life you will live as you journey down future paths and stop in future pubs is in conversation with all that’s gone before.

the fabric of my soul

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inside the fabric of my feelings
in the warp and weave of my existence
you wove yourself into my life and
more than my heart broke that day

you took more than my hopes and dreams
you took more than life itself
as I doubled in agony the tears poured
drowning in the blood-tinged grief

my heart rendered into pieces
unfixable, surrounded in death and pain
did you rejoice in the torment you brought?
were you aware of the devastation?

I lost track of the hours days months years
one empty day weighing as much as another
the days were long the nights were longer

on those days when I gave up on life
were you pleased to have such an effect?
did you feel even the smallest regret?

as my heart kidneys organs failed
did you know you held the power of life?
did you know you held the power of death?

you don’t hold that power now
now I can count the days again
there may be joy missing
but there’s no longer torment

there may still be empty spaces
but there are new loves and joys
I gave you the power of life and death
but I have now taken that power back

I will never again give someone
the power to destroy me
even if you still rejoice in my pain
I refuse to let your joy torment me

I will always miss the you I used to know
the truest love and deepest friend
but I will never miss the you who you’ve become
the you who attempted to murder
the very fabric of my soul

Grandma’s pancakes

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My grandmother cooked pancakes
on a large round griddle

with a spatula that had come through
many meals before

so many hours I spent at her side
begging to flip the pancakes

a large brown ceramic bowl
cold to the touch

stiff peaks of beaten egg whites
folded in carefully

Grandma’s secret weapon
against boring breakfasts

a glimpse into days gone by
only the womenfolk cooked breakfast

only the menfolk got away with
not cooking or cleaning up

these were the years before this budding feminist
shouted it’s not fair to whoever would hear

A Body and Grief

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frayed
afraid
awakening in the wee hours
to commune with wisdom
do we value and teach
connection to grief?
grief is pathologized

make grief a verb
see it as process
with all emotions wrapped up
we are only
the surface of the ocean
weathering the Apocalypse

we are the embodiment of all
that’s come before us
the Body is all that went into making you
the Body of literature, of Church,
of ancestry, of culture, of ecology

we dissociate from the body
label our passions demonic
our ancestral heritage
in our bodies
is closed off
we need to adventure
into the somatic sphere
of self, of body, of ancestry

we live in dissociation
but have the capacity to embody
grief, healing, joy, history
the body is a guide
to wisdom and sanctuary
we have a pantheon of ancestors
will all the wisdom we need

we create sanctuary
rather than find it
we create sanctuary within our body
experiencing sanctuary can bring
inner wisdom
insight
we can soothe the fires
and conflagrations
provide sanctuary with a look
a listen
a touch
a sense of feeling
and we awaken refreshed
napping our way toward wisdom

laughter and grief can connect
in a good cry
we are afraid to sit with the grief
or feel the life force
surging though the body
Eros creates both life and death

developing a grief practice
a meditation practice
a lifelong practice
a grief ritual giving space for
the body’s reactions and wisdoms
poems and strategies
empowered
enlightened
liberated
a Warrior’s tool

A Still Life

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I like a still life, a painting of a pitcher of flowers or pieces of fruit piled high in a ceramic bowl
Sometimes life is so still, the privacy of it bleeds out
I value the stillness, the privacy
but I let it out of myself and then feel disdain for that boisterous part of me, for letting the world into the stillness, into the privacy

I like a still life, a world alone with far-reaching thoughts and dreams, making the stillness seem eternal with hope and nightmares
Sometimes the stillness suffocates, it’s all too close
I hate the suffocation, the endlessness
but who cares? my friend asks, leaving me ashamed of sharing, of opening myself out of the stillness and into a world of remorse

I am showing you my stillness
admitting my shamefulness
revealing the secret of my weakness

I like a still life, of peace and quiet and solitude and dreaming and visions and privacy and bleeding and death and grief
I see the demons of life creeping out into the light in the middle of solitude
not the demons with wings and talons and razor-sharp teeth, whose essence is invisible and imaginary,
but the real demons of memories and regrets, of loss and deception, of betrayal and lies

I like a still life where the battles are silent and the victories are private, where all I smell is hay, all I see is lemon rinds
a still life is not still
the peonies blow away from the pitcher, the apple rolls out of the bowl
the still life is alive
privacy is revealed
the solitude blows away in the wind

It Felt Like Confusion

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He looked like a teacher or someone’s uncle, the man who tried to molest me in the movie theater. They didn’t talk us through scenarios back then of how to respond to creepy old men sitting next to you and slipping their hand into your chair. I felt afraid, and tried to crawl as far away as I could, climbing halfway into the lap of my best friend on the other side. I finally grabbed her hand and whispered, “Come with me, NOW!” I was horrified and frightened and at a loss for how to respond. Tell an adult. Find an employee. Run. Why didn’t I think of any of those responses? I was frozen. I wasn’t even sure what he wanted. A grown man. I was twelve.

They looked like men who would be friends with our dads, the men who tried to pick us up like we were virgin prostitutes. But we were too young to grasp what was happening. Our mothers hadn’t told us not to sit on the grassy corner of a street to talk and giggle. They never told us that men prowled our quiet suburban streets looking for girls like us. Exchange of money for an exchange of innocence. “How much?” they’d ask and we’d respond with, “How much for what?” We didn’t comprehend the adult game these men were playing. They could’ve been our dads. Two girls braiding daisy chains and enjoying the sunshine on a grassy corner on a quiet residential street. We were naive and so close to danger. Grown men. I was thirteen.

He looked like any other preteen boy, gangly and handsome in a little boy way, the boy who grabbed my breasts every day at school. But I was made to feel guilty for developing early. “Girls with big breasts are easy. They’re asking for it,” the boys whispered to each other. I wasn’t the only one being molested every day in the crowded Junior High hallways between classes. Other girls had breasts, too. We told the school officials, they told us he’s a good boy. A good student. They told us we should be ashamed for enticing nice boys. One woman called my friend a slut. We told our mothers. They told us boys will be boys and to stay away from them if we didn’t like it. Like it? We learned to hold our notebooks clutched protectively to our chests. We learned to wear baggy t-shirts that didn’t show our budding figures. We learned that no one would back us up if we sought help. A teenage boy. I was fourteen.

Poem: Free Fall

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free fall night sky

free fall

lying on the lawn
gazing up
at the endless night sky
hanging on tight
to the damp grass
a strange illusion
in the mountains
where the sky is free
from city light

lying side by side
we both sense it
this overwhelming need
to hang onto the Earth

what would happen
if I let go
a free fall
into the eternal night
would the stars
catch me
would the moon
cradle me
would the blackness
comfort me
would I die
would I live
would I fly

that night
I hung onto the grass
beside you
I’ll never know
falling up
into the night sky
but I’ll never forget
that exquisite
strange feeling
of almost falling up
at your side

 

DL Taylor

Unknown Futures

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I’ve been doing a lot of contemplating lately about the paths and journeys we take into unknown futures.  Here are today’s ruminations.  (first draft, very rough)

How do you live best? Being true to yourself is being present in the moment.

We’re all on a pilgrimage. Often overwhelmed by circumstances. Look back to where you came from. Look forward to the horizon. Look up. What is your relationship to the horizon? To the future? Who will benefit from the place where you are? Who needs to receive your song?

The transitions of our lives are like living with storms, weather, rain. We need to shape our lives to meet the demands of the weather. In the presence of something new, we don’t yet know how to be in conversation with the new circumstance. We have to get over ourselves. We have to get out of our own way.

Do the brave thing. Take the path to your future. Begin by not denying any part of yourself. Bring the frightened parts of you along the path. Look at the parts of your life you don’t want to look at. Finding these parts comes out of silence. Listening to our deepest interior voices. Are there wells you don’t want to drink from? Grief? Regrets? Mortality? It’s tempting to give ourselves easy, unsubstantial answers. Speaking to ourselves in trite clichés. Spend time in silence, listening for the wisdom to speak. Then speak out of silence. Tell the story. Make your story.

Don’t run from vulnerability. It’s going to become the foundation for where you’re going. Helplessness comes with great loss. We don’t appreciate what we have, until it—or they—are gone. Helplessness and loss are like medicine leaving a bad taste in your mouth. We turn away from these experiences, not realizing we need to go deeper in. The full depth of the experience of loss brings knowledge, wisdom, and a reshaping of our lives we would’ve never experienced without the loss. Don’t wait until their deathbed to reach out to loved ones with your true self. Do it now. Be present fully in the moment. Be your authentic self.

Be the person your future self will always remember with thanksgiving.

~Debi

34jkie

Poem: be aware

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Short excerpt from the new book-length erasure poem, BAD THINGS HAPPEN.

31m2vqk1gvlthe evil
in this world

troubled
human history

call for help

LISTEN

in confidence ask
begin to understand
discern wisdom

LISTEN

open your eyes

BAD THINGS HAPPEN

be aware

BAD THINGS HAPPEN

they have been
deluded
they bought into
deceit

words
deluded them

LISTEN

you were captive
to traditions

you were buried
you were dead
you were hostile

you judged
defrauded
your mind

BAD THINGS HAPPEN

your freedom
distressed people

LISTEN

you learn
significant truths

BAD THINGS HAPPEN

Ready?

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The First Time at the First Place

But I’m not ready to go home yet.
“But you can’t stay here forever.”
I know. But I’m not ready.

I don’t even know what ready means, or what ready looks like, or how ready feels. I just know that this is not ready. Thoughts of returning to the same circumstances that sent me to the hospital in the first place bring on panic attacks. I don’t think that’s ready. When I can’t stop crying whenever I think of going home, I don’t think that’s ready, either. When I shake so much I can’t eat, I suspect that’s also a sign I’m not ready.

“All, right. You can stay for one more day, but only one more day. That’s the best we can offer. You’ll need to use that day for preparing to go home. Can you do that?”
Yes. Okay. I understand. I will.

I do understand. I do. But even so, I don’t think I’ll be ready. At least they offered me one more day. One more day of safety from myself. One more day to breathe freely without fear that I’ll give up on life again. One more day to think about the thinking that led me to thinking that I needed to be in the hospital. One more day to accept the reality of life on the outside. One more day to steel myself for returning to the grief and loneliness. To return to the reality of pain and rejection. Of never-ending sadness. Of emptiness. Of hopelessness.

The Latest Time at a Different Place

The last time I was in the hospital, they sent me home before I was ready.
“We do things differently here. We won’t send you home until you’re ready.”
But last time I was told I just had to get myself ready and I couldn’t stay any longer, even though I was afraid to go home.
“If you feel afraid to go home, then you’re not ready. We won’t send you home until you’re ready.”
How will I know when I’m ready?
“You’ll know when you’re ready. We’ll know when you’re ready. We won’t kick you out, we promise. You can stay here until you’re ready.”
Oh. Okay. Thank you.

Is it weird to say I cried when the doctors told me I wouldn’t be going home for a while? I cried from happiness. I cried from sadness. I cried from sheer exhaustion. I cried from releasing the fear I’d been carrying. The fear of having to return home too soon. Perhaps this time will be the last time if I’m able to stay for enough time to finally discover what ready looks and feels like. What ready actually means.