the view from the basement.
exactly who am i telling my story to? & why? it smells damp down here, an earwig just walked out of the down comforter behind me. i have to admit that i'm fundamentally confused about the trajectory of my existence - one life glistens with a path of service with a tenuous link to the self below its surface. i can make beautiful spaces that facilitate healing. i know this. it pours all my energy out of me & then i start to lose the sandstone core of who i am. in minnesota, i serve, mostly. right now i am tired from it, a year or so of giving out in some way where i am not adequately allowing myself to receive energy back...
and the other path, the road path, the west coast path, the wilderness path, says: you matter. your own depths are worth mapping of their own accord, you can retreat into a tree-trunked world of your own making & if there is joy there, that is enough. i have no idea how to separate what may be genuine & spiritually inborn in me as healer from what is undifferentiated passion to please a mother who is un-pleaseable, to take care of her, to make her whole so that i may, in turn, become whole. i feel like if i healed that small child who is doing everything, everything in her humble powers to make mama happy & therefore available to be genuinely present, i don't even know who i would be after her funeral. i might walk out of it a movie star, or a contented drifter, or someone's wife, or a newborn baby blinking at the night. i don't know how i can develop my truest gifts when i'm living under the lead blanket of this sense of responsibility for the creation of others' well-being that i've shifted from my mother to the world. i feel compelled to help things come back into balance. & i feel my own survival is at stake if i don't. & i have this sneaking suspicion, a splinter in my mind that says: there may be a simpler joy beyond it. this bodhisattva crap is the voice of a world where everyone would fix their mama if they could.' i just want to slide down the meadowed mountain onto a soft bed of bodies. i've kissed three, almost four, of my immediate friends in the last two days. hungry for skin & thrusting. i want to fuck & eat & scream the poetry i can barely whisper now, form the chants that are seeds buried in my fascia. the ones my mama tucked in that she never could feed. i want to sing & not feel fear eat away my throat like a tightening fist. i want to drum, badly, & hope that rhythm returns to my bones. & i want to do this all not in a fury of temporary TV dissociation from the heavy, heavy sense of responsibility, but because, cleanly, IT'S OKAY TO DO THAT. i want to learn to do it because i believe, actually believe, that the most pure & unselfconscious acts of passion & joy are the exact ones that heal the world the most. & because i most truly believe that presence & the possibility of inspiration are the only two things i really have to offer anyone else. anything else is a gift i better really have the energy to give. i feel like a white blood cell.
and the other path, the road path, the west coast path, the wilderness path, says: you matter. your own depths are worth mapping of their own accord, you can retreat into a tree-trunked world of your own making & if there is joy there, that is enough. i have no idea how to separate what may be genuine & spiritually inborn in me as healer from what is undifferentiated passion to please a mother who is un-pleaseable, to take care of her, to make her whole so that i may, in turn, become whole. i feel like if i healed that small child who is doing everything, everything in her humble powers to make mama happy & therefore available to be genuinely present, i don't even know who i would be after her funeral. i might walk out of it a movie star, or a contented drifter, or someone's wife, or a newborn baby blinking at the night. i don't know how i can develop my truest gifts when i'm living under the lead blanket of this sense of responsibility for the creation of others' well-being that i've shifted from my mother to the world. i feel compelled to help things come back into balance. & i feel my own survival is at stake if i don't. & i have this sneaking suspicion, a splinter in my mind that says: there may be a simpler joy beyond it. this bodhisattva crap is the voice of a world where everyone would fix their mama if they could.' i just want to slide down the meadowed mountain onto a soft bed of bodies. i've kissed three, almost four, of my immediate friends in the last two days. hungry for skin & thrusting. i want to fuck & eat & scream the poetry i can barely whisper now, form the chants that are seeds buried in my fascia. the ones my mama tucked in that she never could feed. i want to sing & not feel fear eat away my throat like a tightening fist. i want to drum, badly, & hope that rhythm returns to my bones. & i want to do this all not in a fury of temporary TV dissociation from the heavy, heavy sense of responsibility, but because, cleanly, IT'S OKAY TO DO THAT. i want to learn to do it because i believe, actually believe, that the most pure & unselfconscious acts of passion & joy are the exact ones that heal the world the most. & because i most truly believe that presence & the possibility of inspiration are the only two things i really have to offer anyone else. anything else is a gift i better really have the energy to give. i feel like a white blood cell.