Screaming into the hollows of me. Screaming emanating from my bones. And the moans ooze from my blood, wispy as they hit the air like smoke trails like forgetting oneself. And the pain is Jonah’s whale, but it swallows me, too. And I refuse to blow out my altar’s candle inside her gurgling belly.
Figured, this way, I can keep praying. This way, I’ll fall into that flame and this is no longer a whale’s belly but the most beautiful chapel. You see blubber walls, but my heart sees Venetian plaster.
Cathedral ceiling lets my mantras out among the stars, where my future self lives pain-free, and smiling. But this current me cannot help but cry out as the blows get harder, as the screaming intensifies, as no words are suited to give justice to the hell that lurks inside of me except, Help me, I’m dying.
Except, this is too strong too wrong to be going on. Except, something is trying to rip me into two. Do I allow the undoing, and is it even a choice of mine? So much energy lost on the continuation of breath, on swallowing narcotics as if they were superglue, wishing for an internal revolution to fight this dictatorship of suffering.
Every once in a while the pain is a newborn, and it just wants to be held. I say its name again and again and sing it nursery rhymes in the middle of the night. Sometimes it falls into a gentle place, head to my chest, and I can lay it down in the crib, and get it to sleep through till the grace of the morning sun. A miracle to behold. Deep peace of the running waves washing over us both.
But sometimes it screams, throwing tantrum and fit. Cheeks rosy with exhaustion. Throat raw from crying. It has so much to say, and it throws things at me: books, CDs, crayons, the occasional cup of water, and the untouched vegetables from dinner. In certain moments I break down, succumbing to the screaming, throwing my own version of a tantrum, demanding corner-time and an apology, forgetting to be a good listener, forgetting that all of this is communication and that the human body does not suffer from lack, but rather from lack of attention.
So I gather the weeping tantrummer in my arms, pull close for an embrace, and just stay there. Us both breathing, sobbing, sorry, scared and vulnerable. Us both loving, living, longing and wondering. My survivorship has already begun. And I’m not sure that one can separate the Survivor from that which one is surviving. It is dancing itself into my Creatorship, entwining limbs and vines, a fierce cuddlebug of joy, finding laughter despite the altogether silent echoes of Jonah’s church. This is the undoing, and at its root there is a beginning being planted.
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Cait
8 months ago
Hallelujah.
Glory Goddess.
SO HUM.
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Khandroma
8 months ago
I cherish you, my darling friend. Together we sing the praises of the Goddess and call down hailstorms from the Heavens to cleanse our body-temples. All this Transformation is meant for rejoicing. Yes, you are that. And I am. SO HUM. And we twirl and pray and let the delight sing from our pores!
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Dreamwalker
8 months ago
And into the fiery crucible she was thrust, bending, screaming, melting. Molecular bonds weakening, lattice structure crumbling, exposing her amorphous and yielding nature as she was melting. Flowing. Glowing.
Glowing.
Is distance an illusion? Perhaps. Is pain an illusion? Maybe. But who has time with the existential when your very existence is stomped on and ground into dust? Does it matter which direction you turn if you can’t turn? Does it matter if the falling tree makes a sound when nobody is around to hear it, because it will still hit the ground?
Before I was enlightened, a mountain was just a mountain. When I was enlightened, a mountain wasn’t a mountain anymore. After I was enlightened, a mountain’s just a mountain again.
–Zen adage
Everything is relative. Everything is subjective. Even truth. Here is my truth: it is all about relevancy. Is the pain relevant? This is not a dull headache or a stubbed toe; this is life-impacting and consciousness-altering, so, yes, it is relevant. It is relevant on a deep level for you.
It is an earthquake that is shaking loose your roots in the past, in what was, in what is. It is what it is. Nope. It isn’t. It’s new. It’s different. The undoing is the becoming, the undoing is the leaving behind, the undoing is getting on the wrong train and not knowing where you will wind up.
Did the marble block suffer while Michelangelo carved Venus de Milo out of it? I don’t know. Maybe. But it is still there, and he released immense beauty from it and few marble blocks are as admired. Would the marble block do it all over again if it got the chance? I think so.
Pain is a pain. But by its very nature it is in the present. It can’t move backwards or forwards in time. And the human mind is notoriously bad about remembering pain. The pain is fleeting but the beauty it is birthing will stay with you forever.
Your heart is growing bigger and warmer day by day, my dear Khandroma. You are growing more and more beautiful. The crucible is melting you and transforming you, and you are glowing.
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Khandroma
8 months ago
I am growing and growing day by day? Really! Oh blessed dance of moth to flame. Oh sacred journey, fountain of pain, prayers lit on fire and floating up to Heaven. Thank you, Dreamwalker, for mirroring. Thank you for Being. And I kiss the sky, before plunging back into the crucible.
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