I'm carrying three backpacks, and they're all getting overfull with dust and charms and old coins, and I tell myself I can carry them for a lot longer. But the faeries, they come, or they never leave (I thought they'd never leave), and they keep finding more threads to put into the things I'm carrying, and they don't seem overly concerned with keeping them sorted, so everything gets tangled and heavy, and I complain. This is me complaining, this is how I complain, this is what it looks like when I'm complaining.
They send wild black birds to stand in front of the moon, so I stop looking at the moon, and start praying to the birds instead, and it all feels like a gorgeous mistake. I understand in a moment, and it flashes, and I understand, I'm supposed to pray to the bird and not the moon, because the bird can hear me better? Or the bird can take messages up and down? And the mad faeries shake their heads, and tell me, no. It doesn't matter what you pray to as long as you pray, because this is a clear season of more light, and the things that got blurry are unblurred, and everything you see as blurry is only a mistake of the light, or something still in your eyes, you need to get your eyes cleaned again. Call the shaman, the one who unravels these things, and get that looked at so you can see.
Because if you see, then you'll see that all of this is really very perfectly clear. Put down the things that are too heavy and pay attention to seeing, and pay attention to the breath, and the rest of this will all become perfectly reasonable. Because all of this is right outside the door.
I don't understand in at least seven languages.
The maddest of the faeries, my new one true god(dess), stops the calliope every once in awhile, just long enough to point this out:
You are missing something very obvious, and it's so obvious because you are paying attention to it, and if you stopped paying attention to it, then you would know what it is, and then you could maybe learn how to give it the right attention.
I don't know why my god/dess/es/401 or so, are not very kind, but I haven't been very kind, because deep despair is my drug of choice, and that feeling I had when my heart hurt when I was seventeen is the music I play when I want things to go dark again.
It is very dark under the lap of the sea, a dark and vicious hole that is old enough that it doesn't have to justify itself, but I have to explain why I'm here, every time, and state my intentions. And I get the strong suspicion that the same intention, repeated over and over, sounds stupid to the things of the sea, and they are letting me repeat until I can hear in my own head how stupid these intentions sound, and try to forget what I know, and leave behind what I want, and pay more attention to the sounds of the waves in my head, until I can hear that they are the same sounds that play outside my head. Because this is balance. And it's not as mysterious as I thought it would feel, so I don't trust it, and that mistrust puts me into turmoil that I can't blame on anyone but myself.
This is what I hear in the waves:
This is the mystery, it's right outside your door, the mystery happens right outside your door, the mystery happened right outside your door, it is happening right outside your door.
Because I am in some kind of mood, I take this idea of the door, and take this idea of bags, and the things that I carry, and the things that I have to leave before I can cross the threshold, but because they are in a mood, the faeries jump on the unraveling threads from my head and they explain, no, it's not a metaphor, it's a door.
I think I see what's going on. And I would love to explain that this is all so tangled and complex and impossible, but it's not. Because full moons have always been good to me. And they make magic when I am looking away, and paying attention to the thing that I should be focusing on, it has something to do with the breath, it has something to do with the moon, it has something to do with these bags that I carry, and how the things I've been collected have all turned to salt from looking back for too long, and salt is the best thing there is to seal a doorway, sealed with a kiss.
They send wild black birds to stand in front of the moon, so I stop looking at the moon, and start praying to the birds instead, and it all feels like a gorgeous mistake. I understand in a moment, and it flashes, and I understand, I'm supposed to pray to the bird and not the moon, because the bird can hear me better? Or the bird can take messages up and down? And the mad faeries shake their heads, and tell me, no. It doesn't matter what you pray to as long as you pray, because this is a clear season of more light, and the things that got blurry are unblurred, and everything you see as blurry is only a mistake of the light, or something still in your eyes, you need to get your eyes cleaned again. Call the shaman, the one who unravels these things, and get that looked at so you can see.
Because if you see, then you'll see that all of this is really very perfectly clear. Put down the things that are too heavy and pay attention to seeing, and pay attention to the breath, and the rest of this will all become perfectly reasonable. Because all of this is right outside the door.
I don't understand in at least seven languages.
The maddest of the faeries, my new one true god(dess), stops the calliope every once in awhile, just long enough to point this out:
You are missing something very obvious, and it's so obvious because you are paying attention to it, and if you stopped paying attention to it, then you would know what it is, and then you could maybe learn how to give it the right attention.
I don't know why my god/dess/es/401 or so, are not very kind, but I haven't been very kind, because deep despair is my drug of choice, and that feeling I had when my heart hurt when I was seventeen is the music I play when I want things to go dark again.
It is very dark under the lap of the sea, a dark and vicious hole that is old enough that it doesn't have to justify itself, but I have to explain why I'm here, every time, and state my intentions. And I get the strong suspicion that the same intention, repeated over and over, sounds stupid to the things of the sea, and they are letting me repeat until I can hear in my own head how stupid these intentions sound, and try to forget what I know, and leave behind what I want, and pay more attention to the sounds of the waves in my head, until I can hear that they are the same sounds that play outside my head. Because this is balance. And it's not as mysterious as I thought it would feel, so I don't trust it, and that mistrust puts me into turmoil that I can't blame on anyone but myself.
This is what I hear in the waves:
This is the mystery, it's right outside your door, the mystery happens right outside your door, the mystery happened right outside your door, it is happening right outside your door.
Because I am in some kind of mood, I take this idea of the door, and take this idea of bags, and the things that I carry, and the things that I have to leave before I can cross the threshold, but because they are in a mood, the faeries jump on the unraveling threads from my head and they explain, no, it's not a metaphor, it's a door.
I think I see what's going on. And I would love to explain that this is all so tangled and complex and impossible, but it's not. Because full moons have always been good to me. And they make magic when I am looking away, and paying attention to the thing that I should be focusing on, it has something to do with the breath, it has something to do with the moon, it has something to do with these bags that I carry, and how the things I've been collected have all turned to salt from looking back for too long, and salt is the best thing there is to seal a doorway, sealed with a kiss.
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