At the very edge of the world

At the very edge of the world where the sunlight and the ocean and the horizon fuse into a blinding hot warm wall of light there is a curtain, a veil, and opening, and behind the big blue curtains there is impenetrable blackness, darkness, a void, an eternity, and….

when I am sailing I know God and there are dolphins around me and I scream when they leap like dancers out of the water and I clap as the ocean spray hits my face and I reach, unable to touch them and there is so much beauty, more than I could ever put into words and…

will I be forgiven? Will I be forgiven if I do not put it all into words? If its gone? If I don’t capture it? if I let it go and I do not put it into words, will I be able to forgive myself? Will the world love me if I don’t write about the dolphins and the ocean and the bright light and the way that everything in the world is just a reflection of something so perfect, so passionate, so beautiful beyond words?

I was walking through the forest and there was incense, the forest was incense, and the light broke through the canopy of trees and it was as if God himself was standing in a spotlight in the forest and I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve to see so much beauty and know so much beauty and feel so much beauty and be so alone with it and my heart is breaking…

He falls through the sky with his parachute wide open, his life wide open, his love wide open and his mother calls me and she says its been so long and I haven’t received it. where is it? he doesn’t respond to me and I look for it. I call for it. I ask for it and I tell her I will find it because she deserves it because she’s lost him and he’s gone. And I’m broken and I’m broken and I’m broken…

and then the sun comes out again the sun comes out again and the birds speak to me and I remember them in the Celtic garden and I remember them on my sailboat and I remember the black crow that used to talk to me in college and the flowers – their smell like food, like sex, like wine, I love the smell of flowers and their colors! my God, their colors! God, the artist – I’m so jealous of him in the sky painting the world not a care in the world. My life, my art could never compare to him and I’m jealous….

I’m a jealous person and you don’t know me, don’t know the way I sit and stare. The way I wish I were somebody else and you don’t know regret and why does regret come after the fact, as youth wears off and you look back and you go, what was I thinking?! And how can I look at them, work with them, guide them, knowing that they won’t know until they know and I can’t really teach them because that’s just the way life goes…

Mandalay bay. The sun the sun the sun. I am only happy when I am moving. I am only happy in the sun. I am only happy forgetting who I am, and you said something. You said something during the meditation that stuck with me. Something that makes my hand shake and my soul rattle. You said, gather the parts that are disconnected and lost, disconnected and lost, disconnected and lost. You said gather the parts of you that are disconnected and lost, disconnected and lost, disconnected and lost. And that’s what I want….

I see a ghost in the window. I hear murmurs in the wind. I feel spirits around me. I want to gather the parts of me that are disconnected and lost. Lost, the TV show, what a concept, right? Does anyone really find themselves on the show? Life, what a concept, right? Does anyone really find themselves in life? Slow down. Breathe. Relax. Slow down. Breathe. Relax….

Ya know how I got through my dissertation? With endless relentless day and night, night and day, mantra. I had to draw pictures of myself getting through the dissertation and I had to dream myself through the dissertation and I had to kick and scream through the dissertation and now I face my story, my life story. What is the story I really want to tell? What is the truth in my story? What was lost and disconnected? Where did I find myself in the story? How did the wind and the birds and the boat and the flowers find me in my story?

Once upon a time there was the most beautiful little girl filled with light and love and laughter. She had golden locks and the brightest smile and danced every where she went and I can see her on her roller-skates in her pigtails holding sparklers and I can feel the little stabbing pinches, like bug bites, on my wrist as the fire jumps off the stick and lands on my arm and I can feel the vortex that the little stabbing pain opens in my mind and I can feel myself tumbling like Alice in wonderland down the pain tunnel to the very bottom where I am abandoned like a beached whale on the sand many years later and everything that happened in between is a mystery to me and I am still digging and I am still putting the pieces together and…

Am I supposed to spend the whole remaining length of my life trying to figure out the first 30 years of my life? What about living the life that I have now? When am I supposed to do that? And the inner critic has something to say: you suck at writing. You don’t know how to write. You’re stuck in your head. You don’t have a voice. You have nothing to say, and I listen and I wonder, who invited him here?

And the potted plants sit in turquoise boxes and the twig spins 360 on the spider web and the clouds play hide and seek with the sun and I turn another page and I am here with my reflection, hovering buzzing investigating, like the bee visiting the lilac and I wish writing were like painting because painting is easier and the one image, the last image that I would paint is the dandelion growing up through the crack in the bricks, laying side by side in the ground, growing crooked with her face towards the sun, not quite out of the shadows yet, but hoping to get there.