Wednesday, April 11, 2012

tender days of youth

And it becomes something that happens more and more often, the things that populate the dusty parts of my vision are from realms whose access is more or less constant enough, they can be verified in return visits, and there are those around me who can see them, and tell me things about them that I might not be able to see or hear, because they are too close.  And while I might be seeing the things from the bottom of the sea in their mermaid forms, they're coming more often in forms that carry more of the weeds and wreckages, and they carry things that make them heavier than the others, and much too heavy to sing.  And it's fitting enough because I am not hearing songs so much any more, and I'm finding myself not wanting to hear them, because they come too close to the things that I sing when the world is green and covered with water, and I don't know if I can trust them.  It's lonelier here now that the songs are far enough away that I can hear other songs, but the world is starting to smell of the deep and dark sea.  And I get the feeling that when the rain comes through, something will be left that I had not noticed before, but it's been trying to get born for a lot longer than I could have suspected, but buried so deep that I couldn't hope for it in the dusty part of my vision, the one that speaks after the mirror. 

It's always a question of endurance when it's time to give birth again, and it's a question of absolute resignation, because the thing that wants to get born will make its way into the world somehow, and it will be much much worse if I'm fighting it.  But, oh, I did not count on leaves falling like veils this time of year, and so much shedding along with it, and the deep and strange pain in the muscles of my stomach keep playing on the frets of my belly like they were trying to play a scale, something like a scale from my time before and after the ocean, when I learned to turn into that thing that breathes under water, when I learned that I also had to make the decision to keep walking on the dry parts of the places where we live now.  And I don't know what this is, because it's too new, or not quite yet born, but I know that in a few days I will be made godfather again, and there are things that go with that, but I also know that there are too many things about this that I can't trust, and in truth I can't really hear any more.  Or maybe it's better to say that I hear and read the words, but I don't know what they mean. 

I can't see myself inscribed in those patterns on my stomach, even though they inscribe me, and on most mornings I wake up and feel the thin layer of fur and the words start to make impressions on my finger tips, and they tell a story that I don't understand, because I don't recognize myself in it.  There is nothing that anchors me to anything that resembles an agency, and I keep getting glimpses of roles that I am not willing or suitable to play.  I am supposed to avoid threes, unless I am willing to go to war.

But I'm told that in this pattern, the wars I enter into are wars that I am fully equipped to win, but the definitions of winning keep shifting, and they shift too often lately for me to make up my mind in any certain direction, except I have the sense that in any war, sometimes the best way to win is not a recognizable win, but one where the figure leaves the battle field and finds something else somewhere else to fight for.  I am not decided, because I am not yet fighting, because no one is giving me anything to fight for.  Until that much is clear, I think I have to leave here, I think I have to go.

So while the air continues to get darker and thicker, I keep seeing those sea monsters that populated the world that opens in the darkest chambers of my heart, but instead of falling into the lyrical poetry of loss and magic, I am falling into classrooms where I am talking about things that are useful for changing the way we have always done things.  The space where coalitions take the place of surface relationships, and representations are negotiations that allow for multiple possibilities of identity, and even though the price of subversioning these things is to take away soundness of mind (in certain uncertain terms), it's worth the admission to begin learning how to see things in a new way, and learn how to play with the new alliances in ways that don't do violence to the ones who are playing, because this is a coalition and not a battle, not on this side of that terrible dividing line.

It's a new role, and one that takes over the easy uneasy longings of the morning, and the nights are filled with abstract sea monsters that are lulling me to sleep.  Learning metaphorical languages keeps opening me to learn these other languages that fill my head, the Romanian, Polish, French, and Yoruba sounds that are starting to fill up the waiting room where the next thing gets born.  And I am sometimes struck dumb in the language I learned when I was young.  And I see the shadows of things I have invited here, and I don't know how to read their movements, not for a lack of light, but for the lack of darkness.  It will come.

There is a terrible storm coming, and it's one that wants to break me into pieces so I can get to decide which ones are useful, and which ones will help in the battles I need to keep fighting, and which ones I have to leave behind because they have been undecided for a little bit too long, and my hands are tired and cracked and pulsing with too much travel.  These mountain passes and stretches to the ocean always bring the past and the present close to me, like they were my favorite children, and sometimes they come to me like lovers on a very stormy afternoon.  These places where our skin is covered with sweat that we can't differentiate, with humidity from atmospheres that don't care to announce themselves in an orderly fashion, wake me up to streets where it is too cold for release, and too pregnant with waiting for rain.  But the storm will come.  I am afraid that the storm that is on its way will take the smallest things and make them grow, and take the largest things and make them disappear into a locked room that waits for another day.

And I'm old enough to know that there are some rainy days that will never come.

And there are enough nights that glow with equal measures of dark and light to see the marks that were made on my skin in the dark, and they keep me hungry, but in this place I am very much alone, and I have to reflect.  If I keep reflecting forwards and backwards at once, it's because I see things as they are and were, and see how things could be, and I don't think I'd agree with any of the roles, or consent to any of the options, because tonight I'm in a waiting room between realms, mermaids on one side and mystic scholars on the other, and all I know for sure is that this next terrible storm has something, or everything, to do with birth. 

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