A Life In Narrative

My feelings frequently tangle as they reach towards the light, looking for the nourishment of expression, aching for water to quench the drying instrument of connection. In so many ways keeping this blog has been the best life preserver, the best sanity preserver. For two years I have spewed here. Let go here. Risked a great deal here. Let myself bleed freely and mostly honestly. Before I put it here it all had to go somewhere.

It went into notebooks. Fervently written in the night hours just as I sometimes do here. Religiously written in the morning over coffee as I usually do here. Spilling and spilling and spilling as though there was a limitless supply of words and guts. I have no idea where it all comes from or why the flow so rarely stems. Why if I get the slightest bit moved by something I see, hear, read, or touch it must be regurgitated in a thousand thoughts reaching out from the core like little independent branches cutting into the skyline.

I never run dry. I never run out. Though I can be dragging my physical bones through the required actions of life, the brain never sleeps. My brain never sleeps. Never pauses for breath. If I don't write here it must go elsewhere. I have layers of handwritten words. Typewritten pages in which I barely bothered to correct typos because to do so would impede the urgency of the moment.

Coming here is like an anchor. Using a voice that speaks intimately to a person, to you, makes it feel all a little less crazy. Because before I had this blog, I was still writing to you. Yes, YOU. I don't even know who you are.* Wouldn't it be a tremendous bust in the gut if "you" turned out to not exist at all? It doesn't really matter. I'd just go back to writing narratives to myself and to the ethereal others out there who I imagine are waiting to listen. Who are up at night as I am, plying their own version of words, in paint, or food, or photographs, or other words. Wrapping their stamp around the universe to say "hello". And again "hello, you."

Pictures have turned into words too. Tonight I was reading about roses. Then I was watching the last of the first season of The Tudors and it was causing brain collisions. Pageantry. The egotism of monarchy which is only slightly more honest in its egotism than modern government. Roses, blossoms, wedding beds, marriage, castles, castle light, and all the years that have accumulated history around us all. Flowers with names like "maiden's thigh" (Cuisse de Nymphe) speak of our most intimate moments. All of this reminded me that I have touched the thick walls of real castles. That I have felt the sea wind whipping my hair across my eyes where cannons have been fired. I have seen the light changing by the seconds across a parade of minutiae and tasted how gorgeous it is, this spec of remembrance, this fleeting connectedness we all share.

I am never happier than when I'm alone, but only when I have a very secure sense of belonging.

These pictures are what flashed through my head when I was watching the Tudors, feeling something come loose in my heart, it was the heady clear air of these pictures I took on my trip to Scotland that I needed to see because they remind me of feeling good, of feeling sure of who I am, that I have a place in history, that I am part of this world. More than that they remind me of how it feels to walk alone, with family close by, family that seems to love me even though I am not the same as I used to be, even though I have shown myself to be vulnerable and irrational at times, and larger than life really allows. And large.

In these pictures I am alone in body, enjoying the sound of the wind, the crisp sunshine on my cheek, the way the light floods the tiny daisies in the grass in front of the cannons, but I carry with me the weight of the love of my family. My sister and my dad who are hanging out drinking coffee together just a few hundred feet from me. My brother who is several miles away enjoying some time by himself too. My mother who always seems to be with me in spirit, though in actuality she was a few thousand miles away. My father (biological) loves me too and even though we fight and carry on with arguments...I carry his love with me too in these pictures. And of course, no one, no one has ever loved me more than my dear Philip and my acerbic wonderful son.

When I look at these pictures I see what a little freedom feels like to a loved person. I love to be away from my family. I love to wander off, to think alone, to absorb light into my eyes and memorize hillsides. To speak with the flora and fauna in that unlanguage we know from when we first crawled out of the sludge of water from whence we came. I remember what it feels like to do everything not knowing I had any love at all. Feeling completely alone. It's so different then. Empty and slick like cold metal, reflecting-not absorbing-light.

I think Henry VIII was an ass. And an asshole. I think he was a self serving nasty piece of work. In case anyone is concerned that I am being swayed by TELEVISION and its evil lies...I've actually read non-fiction about this time period and Henry the VIII and the fictional book called "Anne Of The Thousand Days". When you behead several wives that's what we modern folk like to call a serial killer. But, whatever. I am caught up in the story.

It makes me think of flowers. Of light on stone walls. It makes me think of how people thought and acted in courts that were, by necessity, lit with candles. It makes me think of the details that set well known history into action. It reminds me that I am happy to be a peasant-type person. It makes me realize how I don't like anyone losing their face. I don't like that anyone has to lose. This reminds me that my Grandfather and my dad (the one I grew up with) saying that I'm too soft. That I will never succeed if I can't handle the hard truth: people lose. Try not to let it be you.

Try not to let it be me.

They're right, of course. And I resent it. My father, I think, would also agree.

Well, my only retaliation is that I was made this way. My shadows and my light were all there the moment I came out looking like a wrinkled old man. Which is what I'm starting to look like again. Ashes to ashes and all that. I hear the dead, I hear the dying, I hear the sorrow, I hear the losing and it all whistles through my own soul like my own voice. There is no separation between me and them. We come from the same source, the same life slurry.

Tonight I am thinking of happy light. The kind of light that goes through your eyes and into your spirit in a pageant of color. These pictures here are punctuation for my words. They reflect a joy in aloneness while leaning on togetherness. Tonight I wish for everyone to have (and to recognize, however flawed) the pool of love that has been reserved for them. Go out into the light and drink it.

See those tangles of stems and flowers reaching for the sky without reserve? Be those flowers and stamens unashamedly flaunting what nature gives. Have your hour of light. Or your minute. Take what you get and treasure it. File it away safely so that in dark hours you can pull it out and relive it, again and again. That's why we take pictures. The clematis climbs itself joyfully into the light.

You must do so too.

Yes, YOU.

I'm speaking to whomever has their ears open tonight.