One Comparison Only

I had a conversation with someone not too long ago about "love"--the feeling, the definition, the degree, the seeming lack of understanding surrounding the concept. This discussion has been ongoing, I'm sure, since the (purest coral/apricot) dawn of time. Like all meaningful conversations Reality has with itself, there is no clear resolution or conclusion...in words. 

Such a powerful non-thing is Love, however, that we all continue to howl inwardly with agony or joy or both, being primal artists, poets and musicians deep inside over the seeming loss or gain of this elixir and all our garbled memories thereof. It is, indeed, the fountain of youth, the home we long for, the deepest bedrock we could ever chain ourselves to in a storm. It sometimes appears to me that my task, my storyline, has me following the glimmers and shadows of Love all the way down, from the shallowest desires and ego-strokes to the suffocating depths and ultimate deliverance of the universal sea...a worthy quest, in any tale. All such stories, though, must end. 

Love is so engaging that we forget ourselves as the source of all the enchantment and pain. It is so close to us that we can't find it, usually, except in the form of a reaction. The original "action" is still a mystery, like God...did I just compare Love to God? Oh, I did, I did--like billions before me, who hit the end of the rope and found the voice, breath and patterned brain cut off; who somehow brought a wounded, unworthy self to the feet of some Presence and realized the complete and utter acceptance under-standing this...and then...

Yesterday, I was on the beach before the sun, walking, waiting for a certain light, camera at the ready. There was a blank space with nothing to do but sit and be. Luxury. That was the word that arose. Acceptance was the second word that arose, closely followed by love. They are all related, only in that they share the same root--me. In truth, there is no acceptance of love or by love, god, or whatever the word, since it is obviously all right here, always has been, always will be, no exceptions. Acceptance of any condition is so profound as to be __________. No gain, no loss, and boundless. Love and all its manifesting is mere icing, bittersweet and completely allowed, in any form, in any shadow of any form. There is no expressing this...and the fact that we keep trying is the only evidence of the degree of our actual intimacy. 

I think of diving into the sea, because it is one of my favorite symbolic images. Diving into love would be like diving into my own bloodstream. Impossible, unnecessary, but beautiful in itself...like life. Did I just compare love to life...?

Make It A Good One

Stillness is complimented by motion, and silence supports a narrative in the same way the vast sky is noted for its heavenly bodies. Back and forth, inline and outline. My love is pure and unsullied by the marks I make from moment to moment, by the stories I tell day to day. I am very, very clear on that.

I have never been more free to explore the possibilities, plot lines and characters that form the subtle texture of this living, multidimensional canvas. The more I look, the more things appear, and the more a "solid" sense of self becomes unnecessary. I was born in Earthquake Land, and had to develop sea legs for future oceans. I see this now, and my nerves turn toward drinking in rather than running from. It just feels better, that way.

I'm a languaging being, even when I wish I was dead quiet. My dreams are stories that sometimes astound me. I can take any given day and make a story out of it; I can notice any appearance and give it a history, a present-feeling, and possibly a future. It's how humans are wired, leveled, terraced and tiered. It's how we are rooted, branched and tapped. I can deal with it, these days, because none of it amounts to anything important. I am not important, and neither are my stories. They can cozy right up to what's common, what's fascinating, what's not even known yet, because they are no longer stuck in the superglue of egolust. I don't believe in the stuff anymore. God, Spirit, S/He-It doesn't need glue to keep it all together, because nothing is really broken. I was certainly never as shattered as I felt! It was a story that I thought was true, for a while, until it wasn't.

Now, the opposite seems truer than broken ever did...no matter how things slide, wiggle or crash, I am whole. I feel that it makes perfect sense to draw on the surface of a pond, write in the air with my fingertip. It makes as much sense as paying bills, counting pumpkins in my garden, finding the wild animal within. I can be passionately lonely or silly or depressed. Nothing is off the table. I find that arguing with life is perfectly ok, as such idiocy is sweetly accepted by that very same, double-jointed, tongue-in-cheek Master of Irony, who is just as delighted by depression as she is by dancing in the light of the moon. Think about it. 

Excuse me for wandering around in circles, here...my point is, if I'm going to tell myself stories that I am not honor-bound to believe, they might as well be good ones! Here are a few:

Childhood is not lost. 

Sometimes, I am a genius.

No, I don't look as old as I am in Earth-years.

One of these days, I will remember all those t-shirt lines that Rylan and I dreamed up at the Phish show. (Some of them were amazingly funny!)

Everyone is an artist of some kind (no exceptions).

There is a change going on that has nothing to do with any political party. There is a party going on that can do nothing but change. We are all invited.

I know what's wrong with education today. I have lots of ways to fix it!

Deep down inside, we all love something passionately. Maybe several things. Therein lies the juice.

I am not done with kissing, nor is kissing done with me.

Every single dream, no matter how insignificant, grandiose or corny, is a living thing with no beginning or end, and is as vital as water and fertile as loam. Like us.

Fairy-tales, adventure, escapist romance? Yes, yes, and yes. Instruction booklets? Of course. Heavy philosophical tomes? Good for ya, but chew slowly. Non-fiction? Are you sure?!

I know that I don't know; I don't know that I know. I love that story. :)

Drama-Free Drama

Summer is full of it--life is full of it. We are full of it, aren't we? 

I've noticed that if I relax, I can have a front-row seat at the Grand Play without assuming a role in it. There is a certain kind of bliss in this little trick. Nothing happens, I can still think, make judgement calls, feel all kinds of things, but I am not lost. Ever. No matter what longing, avoiding or balancing I may be indulging in the moment, a substrata is clearly evident as the bedrock in which all this is ultimately snuggled. Everything and everyone falls, but is held in an immeasurable embrace. I am by turns happy, touching sadness, and laid out with awe at this fact.

Relaxing is a given, is what we are doing all the time at the bottom, but is much easier conceptualized than allowed. Relaxing into the play, I am not in control, or confined to a particular emotion or response. Anything is possible, nothing is permanent. There is a reason people speak of riding the roller-coaster, the wave, the wind. Not fighting the flow is a kind of cooperation which simply begets more enjoyment--easier currents, allover wisdom. Enjoyment, I think, is what this is all about. Even great loss, experienced fully, adds incredible dimension to this being--right in the face of the thought that subtraction is what's happening. I have no idea how this can be, but it is. 

There is only one word for it...good. 

A very good drama, indeed. :)

Personhood

As far as I can tell, I brought nothing in with me when I came into this world...perhaps because I also came out of this world...so full, lacking nothing.

I opened my eyes, and there were no questions or comments about who or what I was, what being is, why, where, how. I didn't have to take it all for granted, or be grateful...I didn't have to make a life. I was not large or small, significant or insignificant, special or ordinary. 

I learned the power of storytelling, and that in the beginning, was the word. Any word. Entrancing! How could I not love this? I fell in love with stories, all of them--fear stories, love stories, tales of craziness and bliss. I got lost, got found, got lost again. Split myself into many, many storied pieces. What horrifying fun!

I don't know if I just got tired, or...whatever...one day, there I was, without the main character. No personhood, and nothing to say about it. It was just fine. Eventually,  I thought I was insane, but I was just telling myself tales around the fire, as had become my custom. It turns out, I am one of the "sanest" persons I know! I like it that way. It balances out the "insane" aspects of my story...which happen when I believe the plots to be real, and seek the late afternoon sun with my blanket, so I can lie down, give in to an intense pressure, and cry myself empty. 

My mother's crazy dog plops down on my blanket, licks a tear off my face. She sighs for me. I realize it's done, and am so relieved. A soggy laugh comes out. I have no plan, no ending. I don't know who I am anymore. This doesn't seem to affect anything in the slightest. The dog is still being utterly doglike, the porch is falling apart, the sun is making my right arm, and vice versa. 

I can't construct a serious story and believe it. I have tried, a few times, earnestly. By this, I mean that I can't pin myself down, say I am this or that, or that I somehow know the beginning and end of anything in life. When I talk to people and we are busy making up a storyline, attempting to characterize Maria and Whomever in some role, the whole process is glaringly apparent as what it is...fear, attachment, offense, defense. Emotional manipulation is often pulled out as a subtle tool to accomplish a scene. It's like being a stagehand at a magic show. I know how these things are done, as they unfold...I could be very distressed, amused, offended...only if I believe the show is real. Manipulation? Same as the pattern in the palm of my hand, or a leaf blowing down the street, or the calculus I don't speak. It seems there is no harm done if I buy into the play, or if I just watch. Plays are plays.

I have nothing left to do, but there is no boredom. I make deadlines, still, that I try to meet, and function as if, as if, this is very serious business, but it isn't. It never was. I never was. I seek affection and give it for the same reason trees sway. I don't have any reason to feel what I feel. I notice that there is a tremendous amount of spontaneous poetry that comes out of people, any given moment in any situation. Maybe this is as good a reason as any!

When I leave, there will be no baggage...my hands will be empty, and my heart full. That's my story. :)

Free Hugs

It's finally Summer here in the Pacific Northwest. Last weekend I took my open heart to a music festival in the woods, where I dressed it up in a "Free Hugs" t-shirt. A good hug is good medicine; a good hug amongst like-minded revelers and life-lovers is heaven.

Camping for a few days with a few thousand souls can bring out the best and worst in people, and there are a million things to take away from the experience--life lessons, inspiration, a glow, a sadness, a hangover (if you choose!). Maria's life is such that it makes sense to be realistic, to not indulge in Utopian daydreams or runaway longings. However...the older I get and the more human company I experience, the more I run into a vast underground of downright Good People. In order for me to have cynicism as a religion, I think I'd have to lock myself away and barely speak to anyone. It would just be too hard to maintain in the face of the shining love in the core of most of us.

When I talk about this, I still have to use words like "core" or "underground", because the majority of us have been brought up and now hold jobs, identities and some sort of territory in the brittle shell-layer of our culture. Being "too" open, loving, generous and compassionate is seen as weak, stupid, scary or even crazy by many average people out there, living under the rule of fear. But as thick, calloused and controlling as the corporate/military social structure seems to be, it will never be successful at turning everyone into an obedient, unfeeling drone. There are just too many free spirits out there, too many creative galaxy hitchhikers, dharma bums, kids with laser-vision and elders bestowing practical grace. They never went away--have, in fact, always been here, puzzling, infuriating and inspiring us (and each other) since time began. 

In a gathering such as the one I attended, things are boiled down to the basics of human interest--can we stay warm, dry and fed enough, and have a great time while still respecting the rights and privacy of our neighbors? Why yes, yes we can! No refrigerator, nylon walls and virtually no private territory...still, we can live, share and whoop it up without serious injury or offense. It can be done, it is done often, and many people are quite sincere about practicing peaceful conflict resolution and personal response-ability. I witnessed a tribe that likes to walk their talk--they are the core of this beautiful oceanic neighborhood, and are timeless. 

Some might say that a festival is an artificial experience, but it could easily be the other way around. I walked into a dance, a marketplace and a village, as well as a party. Things were bought, sold and bartered. People volunteered their time and energy to clean, pass on information and take care of the "alter-abled". Musicians and artisans were given a place to shine, and people were given room to express their inner clown, bunny, gypsy, child, shaman or healer. Of course there were kids and "plastic" people just looking for the next good checkout...but mostly there were lovers of life, shy or bold, rich and poor, but all cognizant of a certain kind of connection with music, place and each other. There were countless hugs, much singing and playing. Discord of any kind was minimal...not due to the presence of security or police, but because most people really don't want to hurt or fight with each other. It actually takes a lot of abuse to indoctrinate a person into inner or outer war. Given a decent chance, humans are mostly kind, and will trade hot dogs for sunscreen in a heartbeat. :)

All of this creativity and freedom will probably be viewed as a threat for quite some time. A medicine woman told me many years ago of a "rainbow" tribe (many colors, not just natives) that carries traditional wisdom, medicine, and common sense, as well as the ability to open the human heart and eyes to the beauty of the world. These people, she told me, are the ones coming to the rescue of the lost, displaced and wounded when any kind of s**t hits the fan. The members of this tribe are, she insisted, what being is all about. "VERY important," she told me. "Your children and grandchildren will be among them." I am a grandmother now, and I'm paying attention.

I'm quite lucidly opening my arms. It's worth the risk of rejection, because love does not depend on how many good hugs I'm given, but the quality of what I can give. This is it, and I wish you joy.

You Have One Message

Last week, I had a dream that I was hanging out with some kind of "angelic" being in a vast, undifferentiated space. I was invited to play, so I made up two short, vertical lines a small distance apart from each other, with a long, crazy, squiggly line linking the two that looked like an erratic heartbeat glyph on a cosmic monitor. The design appeared as I imagined it, immediately, in my field of vision. After a moment's hesitation, I wrote a descriptive word underneath it: "Monster".

My friend seemed to thoughtfully examine this creation, and reproduced it exactly, a little to the right, with a different caption (in my own writing): "Moving Stillness Being Blessed."

Hmm.

All of this activity took place in a simple, childlike way, from an innocent, intuitive heart. My companion didn't criticize the original design, but made an offer to my offering. I realized that one was not better or more true than the other. One was not more beautiful or ugly. I could feel the dreamlike tug of opinion before it dissolved like fog in the sunshine.

I turned to this being, my friend, being so brightly indistinct, and tried to understand all this in a way that I could carry into the multilayered complexity that life enjoys so much. I knew I was dreaming, all of a sudden. And just in the turning toward, I felt something in a very deep way. Talking about it scatters the impact, but it seems to need expressing.

On the surface is the obvious message that opinions and comparisons are meaningless to reality-in-itself, whatever that is, which accepts absolutely any description or design laid upon Her, like a tattoo birthed in the heart to appear, organically, on the flexing skin of all that is. She doesn't care what you call it, what meaning is ascribed or which logical path was designed to support this whole thing. Whatever's clever, She might say.

Underneath this lovely indifference and impersonality (so that we can be personable) lies a song in a language that appears foreign, until the body and mind let go into the hearing. The song isn't about the design or the path; the song is of the singing, itself, the very act of calling an "object", thought, feeling, wish, tree, dance, breath, birth, death, particle/wave into being by noticing it. Noticing is a miracle. Deeply noticing is blessing.

In ancient days, blessing was done with some kind of sacrificial blood, great ceremony, honor and ritual, people impressing the importance of another person, place or thing upon their minds and hearts for a lifetime. In a way, this was daily life brought into the spotlight of community theater, an attempt to remind ourselves of the sacred realms we are steeped in. Get it, people--we are incarnate, we are temporal, we are fragile, and in this cosmic blink lies tremendous beauty that is missed when we forget to see and feel it, when we deem being alive to be so common and painful that it is beneath our notice (until we realize it is slipping away, perhaps). 

Explaining everything to death intellectually may be necessary--I don't know. What I do know is that I, like every other thing, am full of some kind of sacrificial blood in which the world appears and disappears, like a dream. I look at a fencepost, and it comes startlingly into being out of the Vast Soup, with color, texture, dimension and the scent of peeling paint. It does this just for me, with me, right now, in a moment never to be repeated, in absolute uniqueness. Fencepost Maria has arisen. No other human can ever be this experience in just this way. This is true every second of every day. No one will ever "understand" this, because there is nothing (thank god) to be understood. Just one creative miracle after another, for anyone willing to be this.

It is the act, the silent singing of everything into being that is so spectacular and effortless. I don't know where this song comes from or why it is. I just know when I'm fighting it.

Loneliness

As a busy "caregiver" and "artistic type", I'm familiar with the value of aloneness. Sometimes I just need to be away from the demands and distraction of other people in order to think/feel deeply, to get a clearer sense of whatever is emerging from the crazy sea of worldly data and craving my creative attention. I love these spaces in my life. Arguing with that call is almost impossible, anyway; putting it off too long seems to be hazardous to the health of my psyche.

Loneliness, though, has been quite a demon in my story. At first glance, it is entirely different in quality from voluntary solitude, tending to appear as a hollow portrait of lack and emptiness, with nothing voluntary about it. I've been lonely off and on throughout my time in schools, jobs, marriages and therapies--alone in my head, heart, and in the midst of crowds. I used to think it was just depression or some kind of inherited kink in the energetic hose. I could never figure it out, really, and cycled for a long time through stern lectures from my adult-self to the "needy" child within.  I was too bright, too young, too whatever to be so pathetic...I just wanted to knock it off. If it was biology, then to hell with it. Wasn't about to be jerked around by fluctuating hormones...and so forth.

I learned, over time, to distract myself from the pain of loneliness in many different ways. It was another fine coping skill to add to my repertoire. It worked, too, for a while.

What is it about middle-agelessness that so quickly peels off the illusions? Why is it that the thick buffalo-head, so effective in scaring away the really difficult states of being for so many years, just falls off? Does it get too heavy, too ridiculous, too painful? I don't know. What I do know is that there comes a point when there is no one left to blame--not even oneself--in the vast, empty space of one's own being, in which purposes and distractions rise and fall like the grass, through seasons which pass more and more quickly.

Here I am in the whirling year (oh my god, it's June, already?!), and I wake up in the middle of the night as I turn over into the cold side of the bed. Before the first thought manages to surface, I feel myself, somewhere, to be in pain. I pull a pillow into my stomach and try to go back to the sweet peace of unconsciousness. But the silence is heavy, my heart is heavier, and I'm too tired to think my way out of it.

Now, this is an ideal situation, and deep down, I know it. I recognize this demon as one I've never befriended, that will sit on me until I die if I don't get into where it lives, if I don't accept this invitation.

Oh...the surrender is almost instantaneous. Oh, the pain is intense! It's like a room that dwarfs me, as if I've fallen into a forbidden void...I just breathe, and wait. I find that I want to see what comes, and so, it does...grief, sadness, and fear...not of a final thing, like death, but of more monuments to grief and sadness. There is an ocean of them, built by me, and then built by all of humankind. The pain is too vast to be personal. Everything, as a matter of fact, is too vast to be personal!

I look into this feeling in my heart, in my body, circulating through the local and the universal, and find it rising and falling in a familiar fashion, like notes in a song. The grief and fear are brief and lovely, perfectly formed, only to dissolve in that slippery way that all forms have. It doesn't matter, I realize, how many of these memories and monuments I build. They are already gone, and I can't hang on to them to save my life. Something has unclenched. I find myself in state of gratitude for the impermanence of life, the fullness of it. Not a discreet, objective state of gratitude, but an active explosion of gratitude, an awestruck participant in this throwing up and tearing down of feeling-forms.

Loneliness has naturally transformed into a spontaneous beauty that sadness can't mar in any way. It isn't that some quality has been added to ease the pain--it's that nothing can be added or lost (even the belief in gaining or losing). What sort of being is this that can think, feel, believe, disbelieve, learn, unlearn, so permanent in its flux? An inalienable human, being deeply.

I don't sleep the rest of the night, as the demon has become a sort of muse, whose depths are fascinating. There is no regret over the length of time this complex relationship with "alone" has taken to develop. I realize, also, that voluntary solitude is a rough, uncommitted sketch, a thin layer between here and nowhere, the familiar tip of a giant iceberg barely showing above the waves. Further exploration is always called for. I love it, and I love you.