“When desolation surrounded you, blessed be those who looked for you and found you, their kind hands urgent to open a blue window in the gray wall formed around you.” ― John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings
she came to the end of herself the very, very end, where words failed her and she unknowingly fell, into a deep hollowness, a colorless place an emptiness of being she could not escape… and she wallowed in the greyness of melancholy wear, overwhelmed by disharmony everywhere. She had allowed the chaos to discolor her life, dulled into believing only with her eyes…
now color is returning and presence is found, she’s kneeling again, on imperishable grounds…
“It is better for the heart to break, than not to break.” ― Mary Oliver
I buried a scream once, behind my brave face, but there is always a reckoning, a sliding out of unbearable pain, like a dark thing that ambushes me when I least expect it.
It comes quickly with full force and drenches me to the bone in sadness, the ache is like a thunder-clap to my chest, my throat becomes clogged and choked in despair. This monster entangles me in self-pity, it is a living thing, it worms its way into my flesh, crawling over my skin, burning me alive, tormenting me. For a time I am lost to its will. I sink into the graphic rawness of grief, no longer able to float above the heartbreak. I’m weighed down, leaden and gloomy.
A force greater than me allows this hurt to burst its banks, enabling my broken-heart to be exsanguinated…
I’m learning that it’s best to let it run its course, until I am rescued again by butterflies…
In June of this year, my Dad aka Douglas-Henry would have been 100 years old. He was born after the Spanish flue in a place called Mvuma in Zimbabwe. I don’t think he would have taken kindly to the present lockdowns or booze ban (yes they have banned alcohol for the third time). He did however make his own mulberry wine and beer, which was quite lethal if I remember correctly, it could knock your socks off.
He was a futurist and predicted the landing on the moon when he was a child. People laughed at him and said it was impossible. He rode to school on a donkey and when he got there it was time to go home. He made his own radio and grew up to be an electrical engineer. He taught me the inner workings of washing machines and he could fix any electrical crisis in two ticks. He was still climbing electricity pylons at 70 and had a portfolio of all the electrical installations and substations he had been involved in through the years. He loved technology and was always keen to learn new things, however, he couldn’t boil an egg or make a cup of tea.
He was a member of a club in every city and he frequently played at the 19th hole. In his 20s he drove from Bulawayo to Nairobi in a Morris minor where he met my English Mother..
I don’t really miss him because I have dreams about him riding a skateboard with my son, Stevie. He is in a much better place and he gets to hang out with some really cool post-material people.
He was a crazy brilliant dude who didn’t have much emotional intelligence, but hey, he lived in an era when you didn’t talk about your feelings. I think I got my love for science fiction from him and a taste for the exotic.
He used to say to me “your best isn’t good enough and sorry is too late”, which I think is absolute BS! He expected far too much of me, which didn’t bode well for me or him because I’m a rebel at heart. He liked me quite a lot though, and on good days I would call him “Daddykins”. I think I taught him more than he taught me in the end, the loving part didn’t always come easy to him. Believe it, your kids are your greatest teachers, I know mine are!
However, unknowingly he did teach me to be curious, to think for myself and question everything, even him!!
“Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky.” ― Khalil Gibran, Sand and Foam
Enrobed in crimson her verse touched the skies, and all around her was a chorus of butterflies… In the bleakest moment when my sorrow exhaled, I stood in her shadow and imbibed the details, of her hallowed presence as her blossoms overflowed, in songs of kindness I was saved by her prose…
Dear Coronavirus We only have halcyon memories of the summer before you came swimming to our shores, maybe more like flying in from the north. At first, some thought you were just a traveler’s disease and for a time we rested on our laurels. But you woke us early one morning with your virulent temper and locked us up in our homes for weeks on end, hurriedly shutting-down our lives. You broke all news channels with your apocalyptic utterances, leaving devastation in your wake, as you made your way into our Cities, then from town to town and village to village. You finally spread yourself out along our deserted beaches, and we watched helplessly from a distance as bird-life returned, but humankind stayed away. This year there were no squeals of happy children splashing in the surf, no families with overflowing picnic baskets and umbrellas traipsing across the hot sands… Only fishermen were able to wade into warm waters and feel the heat of summer on their backs. Holiday makers journeyed home with no snapshots of beach parties or the magic of summer, still pale from indoor celebrations. New year festivities were just a sprinkle of distant laughter and restaurants felt a heave of emptiness as they closed their doors at 9pm. Sadness is all around us now, you have imprinted us with fear and we will never forget how you tried to steal our joy!! From a Seaside dweller. P.S. Please go away and let us get back to being human again.
“Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”― Rumi
Meet me at a place of love, a reunion, where hearts need no words to speak and grace is measureless…
meet me where symphonies revive us from our dark obsessions. where flower beds are gentle and lands grow fertile with joy…
meet me where dance is everlasting and our anthems are heard among the constellations and time is just the word we use to capture the images we can’t forget…
let us become the now moment of this celebration and even when emotions are strained and merged with pain and terrible longing meet me there even in the desolate landscapes of sorrow and I will bring my offerings as human as I am deeply flawed yet illuminated by the radiance of star-dust…
these Long stories that require presence, these unfinished confessions call for a meeting place where we put the world on hold and remember who we were before the foundation of the earth!
Where the shores of tomorrow are unafraid and we only see through a butterfly’s eyes…
“Beyond the known, beyond the sung, beyond the tone, there is only one thing, the Absolute that is always present, the nameless that exists beyond the known as infinity.” ― Paul Selig, Beyond the Known: Realization: A Channeled Texts
It was so far from love that we had fallen, into oceans of collective fear, drowning in foreboding, faith would not adhere, and the light of love outshines, even the darkest of nights in prayerful contemplation, a reclamation of our sight, transcendent beings arisen, holding back the tides one in perfect union, existing beyond time…
“Love says ‘I am everything.’ Wisdom says ‘I am nothing.’ Between the two, my life flows.”― Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That
I always wanted to be someone-etched out in beauty and intelligence, written in stars. To be noticed in the hallowed-hallways of time… instead I wore the garments of suffering, eaten alive by failure, I stumbled forward on an invisible journey, hemorrhaging fear, awakening in shadowlands, yet constantly occupied by mystical light, guided into atmospheres of imagination, soul symphonies, high octaves of love…
It was a gradual letting go, fingers finally unclenched, surrendering to the life that desired to play itself out, the slow-release of delinquent narrations. I recognized the small-self, not in condemnatory overtones, but with love and forgiveness. I learned to observe the ravenous ego, that feasted on compliments, needing approval, craving to be known…requiring flattery to breathe!
Though I have spoken penance to my failures, rewriting the script, I think I may always suffer the voices of disapproval, as they rasp in the silence, their off-key rhetoric catching my breath, bringing me to a momentary halt…they are curves of learning!
On looking deeply into my reflection, the little girl appeared more balanced than the one I became…so I put aside any narration I had made up, or was told, and reminded myself that I have always been the breath of the Divine and my only requirement is love…
I have attempted this balancing act between being nothing and being everything, and I am gently learning to flow in each direction… and yet I am still in need of further instructions!
