The ol' bait and switch

is a lie. Or if I am very forgiving, I'll call it a misunderstanding. But either way, the important thing to realize is that misperceptions are often conducive for creating more comfortable feelings. I know of epistemologies of ignorance and I know their effectiveness. They can create whole worlds, inverted by delusion-a purposeful misinterpretation of reality.

And me.

And unfortunately, they only create distance, bitter rifts, losses of friendships, and a lack of connection. They foreclose the possibility of understanding.

That is why I am grateful for you, one who sees clearly and accurately. Who knows full well the details and the pain that have led me to this day. You understand the causes of my hurting and that it continues to be present, and especially in what way.

And lucky for me, it means that you know I am not switching off to you. I need not worry about protecting myself. I don't need to run away because I've been learning. And trusting. Both have a great deal to do with loving.

How do I know that I love you? I know because I trust myself. And you. So much that I can feel that it is true, that no matter what more I see of you it will only fill out the picture. Any new situation will not present more criteria by which I will evaluate you, or how much I like you. Instead, I trust that I see you as you are, enough to trust myself. In that I can, first of all, love you.

And yes, so far it has been mutually reinforced by your own actions. I trust that you see me. Thus it is not a taking from one, or giving back to the other. This has been, from the beginning, a slow process of equally meeting one another in our being together.

My "I love you" comes with depth, with roots, with thick ground.

I love you.

And all that you are. Even the parts that are yet to be found.

And that, Love, requires trust--in myself.

5.2.10

spring this time

flowers are bravely lining up on branches, waiting for their time to mature before leaving.

i sit near wanting to breathe them in while i can, while the sky remains clear, before the sun fills the horizon and pushes out this beautiful spring.

in nearly twenty-four years i've grown to know and expect that the tilt of the earth brings on the seasons, but it never seems easy to settle into new changes if the summer beats the blossoms in their patient becoming.

it's all a matter of timing.

and lovingly trusting the roots whether they throw up their ends to mimic the branches, spread out to hold on to more ground, or burrow deeper with the hope of tapping into a well.

(un)spoken word

words are just words. they can be sharp, empty, deceptively hope-filled but lacking in their own true sense of gravity. they may not be full enough to attract, to pull their own match in emotional weight.

i put more stake in feeling.

your touch is immediate in translating what you believe our relationship to be.
honest to our fingertips, trusting between our lips, we taste the meaning of our kiss and create new ways of experiencing what it is to be present with another and to feel at ease.

your smile, your hands, your kiss all speak love to me.

2.10

the seed: of potentialities

Reflecting back on the truths of last night, I heard in my voice a wish to be home again.
I've never felt connected without holding on to a future friend of possibilities.
Actualities can be
at least
disappointing.
At worst
they are scary.

Sometime, in a horizon of maybes, I may find myself settling into a warm bed of skin sensations
a kind of opening
a newness of finding place on my body
peace in my being.

There may even be a day when I stop thinking.

For the past month I have been moving.
Yes
still
moving
and growing and learning and progressing
but slowly.
I've felt like this time it's been under ground
under control
There hasn't been a sweeping up and away

I'm feeling mindful of the steps I take
of the way that my body shifts its weight with each passing day
and within a space that remains always open.
Potentialities lay before me and my breathing keeps up
with me
in you
there is a quietude, a sense of ease
a non-questioning
not worried.
not groundless so not afraid

There is only a risk that you will be healthy
a healthy risk that I've never had the opportunity to appreciate.

2.10

remainders and the backbone that stays

I can commit myself to perforated pages with ease for these days can be removed at the seams of indentations.

But for now, so long as I can, I will let them remain intact since the dimples along the inside ridge allow for flexibility. These pages can lay flat and bend. At the same time. I can write.

And then, I will see that the marks, which could appear as wounds, are actually those parts that line up within the inside of this tree-body of thoughts and feelings. They create the backbone that replaces the sewn-in spine of all the other books.

It's also true that perforated pages can be easily removed. Maybe this is where confidence swells because what words may fail me are only temporary. I can remove them from my personal journal and report a different story. Maybe by then I will have forgotten what was even said about the last pages before I lost my patience, my space to write, my room to breathe, my openness to create. I can tear out these thoughts and never remember, except for the fact that there would be the remainder. The part that was already sewn to the cover, the brown outside that is exposed. It would still be there--truncated, amputated, cut from the rest of the story.

But it is also the case that perforated pages are those that can be cleanly separated from the rest of the past, delicately wrested from the words of days, months gone by in redundant incantations. They can be intentionally freed, one vertebrae at a time, with the pace of an old tree's resuscitated heart beat. slowly. deliberately. gracefully with patience. So that the page torn out becomes the one that is carried away in my pocket, or in my hand, or folded and neatly tucked away in my heart so that I will remember how easy it can be to flow when there is security in multiple possibilities.

I remain open to the chance that I might want to hold on to this particular page. Maybe for just fifteen days. But maybe for longer. Maybe there is a chance for even more maybes.

2.13.10

been quiet

but a lack of activity does not necessarily indicate a nothingness. it also reflects dormancy.

a germinating seed.

trees grow with the flow

We move together in rhythm with our lungs, holding the tension of years of misrecognition ready to become undone. Stepping forward as we look back at all of the words we would retract if we only had known the way those seeds would grow into distrust.

With an inhale of faith we take one step before another whose face we almost recollected from our soul's mirror. I recognized in you then the middle of a friendship I had been longing to find home within.

We ran together past the beginning, exasperated but diving into the depths of a sea, hoping our histories would hold enough air for us to breathe in each moment to one another's future.

__________________________

We are bounded by blood, we share DNA, double time rhythm skipping climbing the two of us til we get stranded in the program of our hearts, the coding of our speech, the unfolding of our knowing before we ever knew that together we would sing.

-12.22.09

________________________________________________


We don't trust enough. The weight of our wings keeps us fighting the sky and being tempted by gravity. Let us help each other remember to sing and dance as we fly alone, following the stream of our flow back to a place that we would like to call 'home.'

-12.25.09