Dirty Little Secrets

Eventually, the journey becomes one of leaving behind the shell… developing confidence… to live in the moment, escaping my own neediness. Yet I find I’m not quite yet ready to stop clinging to the layers and levels of “i”, and slip out of my safe harbor… or to allow others into the process I’m undergoing, even those I am closest to… but it’s not a matter of trust. I feel as if I am aspiring to the letting go and towards transcendence of materialism and all views of self-ness. Where this leads is unknown… it’s like giving up your point of reference.

At times, when I am alone, I become truly in touch with the depth of love I have… but I seldom show those intense feelings… imagined fears of ridicule or rejection… or worse, apathy. And yet, here I have all these poems… it’s kind of a paradox that words, even those poetic words, are so limiting and somehow never fully convey that depth.

I try to imagine that I’m just like everybody else… even while wearing layers of masks, pretending to be normal, whatever that is… but the pretense doesn’t ever fool me, and I never really feel as if I fit in with this world. I think I am a mystery to people, and I allow them to make their assumptions… they seldom really understand me, (some are more insightful than others)… and part of me enjoys that… more often, though, I just long to be understood and accepted as I am, cared for, perhaps (although I know there are people that care for me, currently, at least)… even while I never feel that I quite measure up to my own high standards for myself, standards which I don’t hold anyone else to, btw. Quite the Catch 22.

Living people are soft and tender.
Corpses are hard and stiff.
The ten thousand things,
the living grass, the trees,
are soft, pliant.
Dead, they’re dry and brittle.

So hardness and stiffness
go with death;
tenderness, softness,
go with life.

And the hard sword fails,
the stiff tree’s felled.
The hard and great go under.
The soft and weak stay up.

- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, English version by Ursula K. LeGuin

I am reminded in this age, that tanks and tombstones are not very adequate role models… to be alive… to be woman… to care… is to be vulnerable. Being in love, being unafraid to speak your mind, living your life with nothing to hide… is to be vulnerable. People see vulnerability as some sort of weakness… but really, it is strength and freedom. It doesn’t take much courage to go along with social conventions, to be politically correct… to go along with the culture of “professionalism” in business (”Ewww, she’s not being professional!”), even though it makes human beings feel like slaves and valued by how much Stuff they own… but it takes a lot of courage to reject those ways, and to voice our true feelings… to open up to vulnerability, to face the possibility of rejection by friends and family, or to lose a job because you chose to speak your mind rather than hold your tongue. Choosing to be vulnerable is not a coward’s choice.
Read on…

Waiting for the rain to come. The earth smells of it. Once there was that one perfect moment, precious, now vanished, yet remembered. They say i should be grateful to have had that once, yet i find myself ever-chasing… each year, a little less real, not much more than fragments, embellished by time. Dawn breaks red on the horizon. The breeze crawls in through an open window, tracing it’s way across skin. I close my eyes and remember. Cherishing the moment. Crossing the chasm of time. The rain begins to fall.