Gravity

Nothing like 6:00am morning rain to get the juices flowing.

I'm sitting under a tree--its branches like arms arching over me, its trunk--my beloved offering support and a platform from which to dream.

I don't know where I'm going. I'm sinking way down, down, down. What if I got on that train? What if not knowing where I'm going is finally me catching up to where I need to be? What if hanging on is a form of letting go?

I've noticed references to trains these past few days, the most recent the last song off an album Dark as The North Atlantic called A Beautiful Train that sits like a temptress under another track called St.Theresa. How convenient for me. I'm full of synchronicities. In my post Wind & Waves I realize I never reveal who I'm having a conversation with. Just so you know, it's St.Theresa. I would have never thought to mention her if this album hadn't crossed my path, my atmosphere, my personal space. I'll leave it at that.

Back to the tree. I feel things. I feel too much. My mind wanders and then comes back to a point in the ground. Now I find myself sitting on the edge of a cliff cross legged looking ahead but eyes moving down, settling on insects in the grass--ants and ladybugs--and purple flowers. I take a deep breath, the deepest breath I've ever inhaled in this realm. And then slowly, I exhale the greatest heart pang I've ever felt--a wound so deep, so sweet, I find it difficult to part with.

I sob like I've never sobbed before, and the rain finally comes down, drops blending with tears, my hair all about me. My heart centre opens up in ways I had not imagined, had not thought possible and out of it pours every dream, every useless pain, every unfulfilled want, every stained river. I can't tell you how sore I am, the distances I've traveled to get here, the trains I've missed. And the breaths move deeper, filling spaces I didn't even know were there. My sounds become ancient. I'm the flute the Universe chooses to play, altering my pitch by blowing and fingering.

I'm not a warrior today. I don't even know where my sword is but I know where it's been. I feel like Lady of Shalott, like Ophelia, the same two women I keep running back to, the same two ladies I need to run away from. But I can't change what I see, what I feel, how I move especially in this dress which is too long, too heavy, too painfully beautiful. As my hands rest on my belly, I hear the first roar of the skies like a child being scolded by her mother, her father, her teacher. But I don't care. It adds to the pangs, the breaths, the beats, the highs and the lows of my spirit. I'll create an opening for it all so that I may release...And I hear two verses from Alfred Lord Tennyson's haunting poem.

There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.

But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often through the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot;
Or when the Moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed.
"I am half sick of shadows," said
The Lady of Shalott.

There is a beauty here I would not have known unless I allowed myself to be carried through these kind of mental and emotional storms.

Lucky me...