Saturday, January 24, 2009

Elementals, Shooting for the Moon

I have found a place. Actually, it may have found me, but it is inviting me to dwell in it; inviting me to dwell here. It is different than you think. It has no walls, no floor, no sky, no ground. It is a place that is just here. And I am just here. She just is, here when she can be, yet always here. I have dreamed of this place often, but could never really find it. No directions will lead you here. No vehicle will bear you. It's like the place where elephants go to die. You know it's there, but you can't go there until the time is right. It is not a place you live in, like a house or a yurt, but it is a place you want to be. In fact, be is all you can do here. I am here.

While I am here, she is asking me to stay, and to go back there at the same time. Going back there is the hard part, because it feels so right here. But I am free here, so going back doesn't feel like a job; it feels more like homework you want to do, like building Nemo's submarine from papier mache. So I go back there, trying to find my first choice, chocolate or vanilla; or rather trying to find that 'back there' when it mattered which I chose, when it really mattered--before I drizzled my chocolate on my orange sherbet--before I mixed all the choices up. Back there, I made the choice. Me, the original me, before the me I became. And it really did matter back there, because if I hadn't made that original choice for the original reasons, I would never have found the here to go back there from.

You can't stay here, or rather, there's no reason to stay here, if you haven't gone back there. Because until you know why it mattered back there, and who it was that it mattered to, there's really no way to know what matters here, or, at least, become the person who knows what matters here. That original choice is the launching pad of your life, before it got carbon-ed and crispified in the exhaust gasses of your life.

So, I went back there, and then, I came back here, and she asked me why I wanted to stay here. She insisted on reminding me that she could not always be here, that we could not always be here; I could always be here, or try, but here only lasts a moment, and the forever of a moment is fleeting. Sometimes, when you're really here, you can come back here the next moment, and the moment after that. Most times, you have to find here again, but it can be hard to step in the same river twice. You can never be in the same here twice, but, as she listed some of them, I knew that there are an infinite number of heres to live in.

So, I sat in that question awhile, and found my answer.

In here is where love swirls. Only in here does love swirl, does love tumble, does love dance. In fact, here is the only place love exists; at least the kind I want, the original kind. Whether or not I can be here all the time, or whether or not we can be here all the time, or at all, here is where I want to be, swirling and tumbling and dancing.

2 comments:

Gail said...

Just one question?

What the hell is a yurt?

love
gae

p.s. it was more than good to hear your voice. I miss you.

Gail said...

I looked up 'yurt'. It is a tent-like dwelling of Asian and Turkish familiarity made with poles and lattice.
I figured you weren't going to tell me. :-)
thanks for the lesson.

love
gae