Shorts

Begins the last few days in this fairy house in the misty, magical, redwood mountains. The redwood tattoo couldn't be more meaningful, couldn't be more inked deep in my mind. Out of all the places I could have gotten a tattoo, I got it carved into my Achilles heel. I've written so much about what I was looking for in California. But boy! did she have other plans! Here I am, after all that, sitting on this living room floor, dying. This life I dreamed of, I've created with my own hands and lived, decided to leave behind, like most of my paintings.  Sitting in the epicenter of this storm that has been brewing for years, sitting still while the world breaks apart a piece at a time, swirls up in the wind, and dances around me; until I join them and spiral my way out of all this. The pain(t) melts and drips down; the canvas getting empty, again, once again.

When I saw the Chernobyl-sized mess I'd made, it shocked me. But 'my' shock wasn't the only impact. He was already involved. He was burning in the painful, forced leaking of the truth with me.  The understanding of why I did what I did wasn't lying on the floor, bold, italicized, and underlined. It took an excavation deep into my psyche, and the exhuming could not be done peacefully, mindfully, because I had to attend to the external casualty. I made the humane mistake. He offered me the godly forgiveness. I couldn't ask for anything more. So, I wrapped myself in a warm heavy blanket of guilt and sat at his feet. I became quiet, outward and inward. I stopped conversing with the world; my mind stopped conversing with me. Unwrapped, out by the doorstep, laid my passions, my desires, my voice, my authenticity, my dignity, all exposed to the elements, to burn, to soak, to blow away, and to finally get buried.

What is your greatest obsession? Is it too narcissistic that mine is me? But can you blame me just because you don't see anything worth exploring here. I am riveted.  Everyone around me is obsessed with what can do for the world, but I am too much in my head. Maybe the obsession of exploring who I am is my way of serving the world. Oh, what a bragging narcissist? We are back to that word, aren't we? All these years of running away from it, and now we are sitting at my kitchen table, sipping tea! Well, fuck it. If diving into the deep waters of my mind is called that, then yes, I am.

Finding love in its rawest, most authentic, natural, heart-pounding form touched the deepest point of my heart and soul. No matter what, that feeling of the heart, that responsiveness of the body could not be denied. I do not regret a single second of meeting that love and bathing in it with all my heart.  It lives with me still, warm in a chamber of my heart. It is what puts a smile on my face and hugs me dearly in the darkest times. It is my universal kiss. But it wasn't meant to stay with me forever. So, I had to move on, and I did. But by then, I had decided to 'tame' my wild self and found someone who could house that taming. After four long years of traveling, adventure, and taming my wild self, I was feeling suicidal. I could not live in that cage anymore.  So, I broke off free and fled to the misty mountains of California. I was swimming in my freedom, blind with the joy of that freedom and hungry for all the soul-starving I had done before. I felt paralyzed in the ...