vanilla raindrops

Monday, February 21, 2005

from my journal, february 21, 2005; 8:00 pm

Because it's so empty and silent in me -- because something has been withdrawn. Because I'm on the verge of a new life and I realize that but don't feel it; what I feel is numb again, and I'm hoping this new life will change that. Because I'm playing a game with vulnerability -- reveal, connect; pull back, wait. Don't hope, don't hope. "What we're doing is not what we think we're doing."

. . . Sometimes, at night, when there was no moon, you could see the forest fires. You were sitting on the edge of the world, the language silent in you, the world silent, and beyond the edge was darkness and fire. And more.

. . . Everything. Everything had been so real. And more.

But now it was a dream; something I did while I selpt -- somewhere else -- where I went when I'd gone inside . . .

But I had lived to tell the story.

Standing on the rock, looking out, I understood what the story was.

Here's the story: life is a dream.

It's all a story we're telling ourselves. Things are dreams, just dreams, when they're not in front of your eyes. What is in front of your eyes now, what you can reach out and touch, now, will become a dream.

The only thing that keeps us from floating off with the wind is our stories. They give us a name and put is in a place, allow us to keep on touching . . .

. . . Knowledge became understanding: all that was left in front of me was looking at what was in front of me. All I could do was laugh.

-- The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon, by Tom Spanbauer

I'm trying to find the sister/mother/friend/lover inside myself. I don't know if she's there; all I hear are echoes when I call for her. Could I believe in a Goddess, or would that be kidding myself?

Is anything allowed? Is everything allowed?

How can we live when it's all going to be gone, a dream, someday? I think that's what makes me numb -- resignation. I lived so passionately, I loved so passionately, I fought so hard for it -- but if I wouldn't let it be torn away from me, it just melted down instead, burned out, evaporated.

Is that always what happens? Nothing is forever, and we just come out of it with life lessons, added dimensions to our personalities -- with more stories to keep us from floating away?

But what does it matter if I stay put or float away if I'm all alone and with this echoing silence inside?

I've been told that to believe in "true love," in "forever," is something of youth -- an idealistic fairytale that you get over as you grow up. "Learn to marry yourself before you marry someone else."

I've been told by someone else that that doesn't have to be true -- he said he really believes in human beings filling each other, completing each other.

Maybe it doesn't matter which one I believe. Maybe beliefs are just another set of labes: "I'm black/white/brown, I'm homo-/hetero-/bi-/trans-/pan-sexual, I believe this or that set of beliefs about love, about forever."

Maybe the thing is just to live, and find out for myself. The ultimate goal of every human being is to be happy, right? All those labels are supposed to supplement that, provide that, achieve that.

It's hard and unsettling, though -- to be resigned to not knowing, to not slapping labels onto things and throwing them into neat boxes.

The best feeling in the world, to me, is to be surrounded by crazy-weird people and to just . . . be. In that environment, not so serious, not working or homeworking -- just to be.

Today I claimed the bellydance music CD in the promo box at work.

I feel like I've been too vulnerable here. But I always believed in vulnerability, in being real with people. They say it's dangerous -- I know. I could get hurt -- I know. But it's who I am, and to stifle it would be . . .

Unnatural?

So I make my choice tonight, to put down truth in words, an opening, a wound.

Maybe being real will draw other real people to me.

"Your lack of ego," she said. Is that what this is?

"(Stories) give us a name and put us in a place, allow us to keep on touching."

8:37 pm