My intention was to travel to Colorado over the break to take care of my mother's estate. At the last minute I decided with everything going on: recovering from the workshops, moving the School, still grieving my mother's death, and preparing myself and the School for my 2 month break this summer, I needed rest more than I needed more emotional stress. I changed my direction completely and took a week for myself in California that included long beach walks, spas, great food and a lot of sleep. I spent this past week continuing lots of sleeping and time in nature. I will have to still deal with everything, but now at least I'm rested, my mind is more quite and I feel grounded.
One of the feelings I became aware of is that I am pointing myself in a new direction. One that is wholly unfamiliar. It is as though my magnetic core has been shifted. One of the images that moved me was of the many fisherfolk lining the beach at dawn and dusk, casting their lines and waiting. As I watched I realized they were really waiting for nothing at all. I woke up one morning from a dream and wrote this down.
Compass
You never see it coming:
The lightening that
Strikes you down to the ground
And buries you.
And turns you into ashes
And leaves you waiting to become
The Condor
Rising. Will you?
Maybe.
Or perhaps you will stay buried, you will remain
Ash and be washed over by the tide
Perhaps you will smolder just under the sand until
The fisherman notices you out of the corner of his eye
as he baits his hook
And stands there with a long line of others
waiting.
No matter what, that sharp pierce to your core
shifted your magnetic center
Pointed your compass in a new direction.
What direction?
Physics only gives you so many choices.
And yet, here they all are. Struck down.
You could not have seen it coming.
Who sees lightening coming?
You hear thunder rumbling, after,
a rapid expansion of air, an inhale.
You learned to count when you were a child.
They taught you.
But they never taught you how to exhale
So no matter how much you count,
You can never really know how far away the storm is
It shocks you unawares
Only in hindsight you see
you were too close
and now you are buried in the sand
and conventions of Physics and Lightening and Love and Grief
Can never hold your ashes.
The needle spins in a new direction
Pointing somewhere
You wait to be oriented again.
But all the landmarks are unrecognizable.
You try to find yourself
searching the old direction,
looking to the compass you once knew
Looking to the place you learned to exhale
before the storm,
But the laws of physics only carry you so far
And you feel there are so many more lightening strikes ahead
Get ready.
Count.
Go the ocean
See the glimmer of the sun
Search inside the shroud of the mist
Taste the salt
Feel the wind
Breathe
Stop asking
Questions