Thursday, October 29, 2009
thursday morning dribbles
When I was a small boy, I had one recurrent dream, a vivid dream, almost a waking dream such embedded in my memory the cold sweat I experienced in remembrance, less then ten years of age, haunted as if I had transgressed in some past life. Each time the same. I was in an army. Sometimes a modern one, sometimes not. Always I was away from the battle, sometimes alone, sometimes with one or two others. I had, in every case, run away. I had, in the waking, a dread, from the dreaming, that the enemy was coming, marching, that they might or might not find me, the war ongoing, and that I could not face them, that I must run. And even to this day, I feel the shame I felt then, the roots of a coward within me as I did as a child, as I do today. So don't befriend me. I will only disappoint you and when you most need me, I won't be there. I'm telling you now. This is how it is. This is how it will be. And nothing you can say or do can change what is, what was, what is wired to be. To run away, to be alone, to know only of the trees and birds and blue sky, to be somewhere, some place untouchable, uncomplicated, unencumbered of the web of expectation, to float upon the imagination all things ethereal, ephemeral, to lie in pace, requiescat, only the song of the long blade dancing in my ear and the cold stone of heads come stop upon this ground, laden never more with should's baggage, that thin vizard of the ignorant, the bovine of life, feeding upon the living as they shat not flowers.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
You can run, but you can't hide... There is no shame in running from your fears, especially the one ones you can't see. I don't let my friends get away that easily.
I see so much happening here: a reaching, a searching, a finding, a holding, a looking for that place of peace where one can be, can just be one. Where one can find whatever it is they're looking for, and get away from whatever it is they are running from. It seems nature to run from the enemy and look for a place to just be. People speak of "the circle of life", is it not inbred that we just wish to exist in peace.
I see a little boy searching for his place in a big world.
Just sayin'
Sounds like you have a very high degree of self-awareness. If you know all of these things to be true about yourself then I say you know yourself best. But, would you really rely on your feeling of cowardice in a a recurring dream to define you forever as a coward? Trust me, I'm a big dream fanatic, but still. Maybe you're not a coward, but just a loner who finds himself not with people, but with nature. But then again, who am I to tell you what your heart will always tell you best? I came here to comment on your writing and ended up trying to analyze the writing's content versus its style. So, I'll put myself back in my place and say that it is beautifully written, and I think it is so because it is saturated with that high level of self-awareness.
Are there people made who see more, feel more, desire more, but who will never allow the sating to occur?
Huh.
And when you run to your socks fall? Mine do. Work their way down into my sticky shoes, loose mouthed at my calves, damned things. Nobody makes good socks any more.
(I'm away from here because I'm falling from blog. I'm still thinking best thoughts for you.)
xo
erin
There are real reasons one becomes a runner. A friend once said, "You don't have much compassion for your abused teenager, do you." A deeper remembering (with help, I must emphasize) of blacked-out years has put away shame, self-blame and gargantuan efforts at trying to make a straight line of a squiggly one. I could have become alcoholic, or a busy-person, or become sick physically. Instead I became sick romantically, and relationally. Fortunately, in California. The first requirement for healing was to come out of isolation -- on my own terms. Doable. With no money. Doable. And other ongoing miracles.
But I digress.
As a runner, I have recently considered what will happen when this daily DT cycle shifts, reading and writing here with you, and tangentally with other sensitive persons. Because I know myself, and how life flows, and suddenly veers. I have no answer for this, except that there is a courtesy and consideration in taking leave of a real connection. Simply disappearing is no longer an option, unless I get mowed down by a truck.
Where there is running, there is staying, too.
Five years of the most consistent and extraordinary soul-streaming personal and cosmic prose, verse
image, sound. Five years, and counting! You show exactly what kind of friend you are, honestly and clearly. You do not disappoint, very much the opposite. You are here in your expression. In a way that takes more courage than standing naked in the courtroom.
In a medium where people touch, or fake-touch, and drop out at a whim, leaving you as vulnerable to disappointment as we. And even if you are speaking to the 'you's of another dimension of your life, the principles of relating are the same.
I love the wise and tender comments to this post.
Constance, thank you for this comment. Means more than you know. I've been blogging consistently for five years and over those years have seen many blogging friends come and go--and many, as you have pointed out, slip away in the night, not a word of leaving, just gone. And every one one of them who leaves, as if they never existed, as if they were never a part of your life, every one of those leavings brings hurt and anguish, a wound that never heals in that you never know what happened. In some cases, you never know even if they are still alive (in five years I've seen a handful of my blogging friends die--some naturally, some not); and in other cases you are left to wonder if it is you, if you did something wrong, offended in some way. And through it all, the silence is deafening. Sigh.
LotL, no worries. Not going anywhere. That I know of. :-D
Nevine, sometimes too much awareness and too little wisdom. A dangerous combination. :-D
Erin, sigh.
Post a Comment