(no subject)
i often feel like i'm trying to find a new spirituality that can sustain my soul while i live in this suburban holdout, this strange and terrible construct of driving, not walking; of sound and noise and respectable expectations…
i can still feel like it's possible. what i'm truly imagining is being back on the islands, where life is simple and there is no such thing as a clock. i went to bed and woke by the rising and the setting of the sun. there was something distinctly spiritual about that place; it's loneliness, its simplicity, and the presence of that cross-over between land and water. water is the thing that carries us in the womb. water is the thing that we drink and floats our minds within our skulls; we are made of water, we are borne in water, we are washed in water.
when i was there, the water was the sound that pervaded my one room cabin. when i was there, water washed my feet as i made my way over the sands after dinner. water was the netherland of the earth in its largest form: the ocean, poseidon's realm, but tempered by the warm air and the calm spirits that rested over the island. when i was there, i lived between the land and the water; between the physical and the spiritual.
here water is in the misty rains and soaking on the ground. it is lost and cradled in the streets, drained down and done away with. i respect it, and the trees hold it in their safekeeping and i can see it seeping upwards in their bosoms, but even then i long to go back to a simpler life. i long to see the unadultered stars there, to hear the silence of one of the few places where humanity has yet to build its empire of commercialism and industry. that was the one place where i could build the artist monastery, if it was the monastery that existed outside of the city. it was a thin place.
now i sit here and try to bring back a semblance of what that place is. my efforts are improving my situation, however slowly… my room is beginning to reembrace the zen and meditative state that it always used to welcome me with. the zen masters said that a person's room reflects their state of mind. for a long time my room was a mess and in a state of dishevelment. i still wrote and i still painted, i still bided my time and built good things. i still lit candles. but too many times i found how i was confounded by the mess that surrounded me-so many things, so many distractions and activities to attend to. at the border between water and land there was so little to do-it was a state of existence and that existence itself was nearly enough.
I know that my destiny lays somewhere in that place. years ago i was ready to go out into the active world, into the city and take on the theological and social constructions that construed our minds and limited our spiritual experience. i was going to build the new church. and i think i still will. i'm a walking new church. the ancients said that our body itself is a temple of god; let mine carry that border between water and land, to be the thing that is in the world but not of it. to live as a spiritual being in a physical world. that is my destiny. that is the journey i must take, and it's the thing i will do after i've lived in the city.
but i know what will happen to me after MICA. i will have lived in baltimore, seen the city and lived in the studio loft. i will have gone to the empty classrooms in the morning and written and drawn for hours and hours, continued painting for theses and proff assignments. but after i have seen the city and after i have lived with the one that i may call my own (the one i may fall in love with, i am looking forward to meet her soon) and whom I may call myself hers; after this has all happened (or, after i have learned that i didn't find her), i will go back to that place where the moon's face was reflected upon waves and made the sand dark blue against black night. i will go back to the place where storm clouds gathered beyond the forests, but were blown away by the seaward winds. i will go back to that semblance of the womb, that plane of ephemeral liquid that shifts every moment, and yet is as old as the earth itself; i will go back to that place where land meets water, and stand at the edge of god's dominion. i will seek him and he will find me; he will find me working and painting in the sands in a concrete studio; i will build an apse looking out to the beach for a lighthouse for the spirits, and there we will congregate. there will be Vespers, and as night brings the onset of following eternity, the color will flow back into our whitewashed faces and my hair will be knotted up by the salty wind. i will burn and become brown as the tree trunk, my skin and hands wrinkled by the salt and my hair growing yellow under the sun's face. i will be that spirit that looks for the others in the sea, and unite them with the ones sitting on the land. and there, god will rest, and we might live out a semblance of what the ancient prophets and seekers sought: a body that has become a temple for the almighty, and that spirit born of ethereal womb.
i can still feel like it's possible. what i'm truly imagining is being back on the islands, where life is simple and there is no such thing as a clock. i went to bed and woke by the rising and the setting of the sun. there was something distinctly spiritual about that place; it's loneliness, its simplicity, and the presence of that cross-over between land and water. water is the thing that carries us in the womb. water is the thing that we drink and floats our minds within our skulls; we are made of water, we are borne in water, we are washed in water.
when i was there, the water was the sound that pervaded my one room cabin. when i was there, water washed my feet as i made my way over the sands after dinner. water was the netherland of the earth in its largest form: the ocean, poseidon's realm, but tempered by the warm air and the calm spirits that rested over the island. when i was there, i lived between the land and the water; between the physical and the spiritual.
here water is in the misty rains and soaking on the ground. it is lost and cradled in the streets, drained down and done away with. i respect it, and the trees hold it in their safekeeping and i can see it seeping upwards in their bosoms, but even then i long to go back to a simpler life. i long to see the unadultered stars there, to hear the silence of one of the few places where humanity has yet to build its empire of commercialism and industry. that was the one place where i could build the artist monastery, if it was the monastery that existed outside of the city. it was a thin place.
now i sit here and try to bring back a semblance of what that place is. my efforts are improving my situation, however slowly… my room is beginning to reembrace the zen and meditative state that it always used to welcome me with. the zen masters said that a person's room reflects their state of mind. for a long time my room was a mess and in a state of dishevelment. i still wrote and i still painted, i still bided my time and built good things. i still lit candles. but too many times i found how i was confounded by the mess that surrounded me-so many things, so many distractions and activities to attend to. at the border between water and land there was so little to do-it was a state of existence and that existence itself was nearly enough.
I know that my destiny lays somewhere in that place. years ago i was ready to go out into the active world, into the city and take on the theological and social constructions that construed our minds and limited our spiritual experience. i was going to build the new church. and i think i still will. i'm a walking new church. the ancients said that our body itself is a temple of god; let mine carry that border between water and land, to be the thing that is in the world but not of it. to live as a spiritual being in a physical world. that is my destiny. that is the journey i must take, and it's the thing i will do after i've lived in the city.
but i know what will happen to me after MICA. i will have lived in baltimore, seen the city and lived in the studio loft. i will have gone to the empty classrooms in the morning and written and drawn for hours and hours, continued painting for theses and proff assignments. but after i have seen the city and after i have lived with the one that i may call my own (the one i may fall in love with, i am looking forward to meet her soon) and whom I may call myself hers; after this has all happened (or, after i have learned that i didn't find her), i will go back to that place where the moon's face was reflected upon waves and made the sand dark blue against black night. i will go back to the place where storm clouds gathered beyond the forests, but were blown away by the seaward winds. i will go back to that semblance of the womb, that plane of ephemeral liquid that shifts every moment, and yet is as old as the earth itself; i will go back to that place where land meets water, and stand at the edge of god's dominion. i will seek him and he will find me; he will find me working and painting in the sands in a concrete studio; i will build an apse looking out to the beach for a lighthouse for the spirits, and there we will congregate. there will be Vespers, and as night brings the onset of following eternity, the color will flow back into our whitewashed faces and my hair will be knotted up by the salty wind. i will burn and become brown as the tree trunk, my skin and hands wrinkled by the salt and my hair growing yellow under the sun's face. i will be that spirit that looks for the others in the sea, and unite them with the ones sitting on the land. and there, god will rest, and we might live out a semblance of what the ancient prophets and seekers sought: a body that has become a temple for the almighty, and that spirit born of ethereal womb.