13 years go by...

I didn't see this coming. Not until it was already staring me in the eyes. By the time I felt the truth of the matter stirring in my gut, I was too enthralled to look away, to deny it. As simple as it should be, this truth refuses to be easy. It has no mercy for the feelings of others. It has already trampled on some. Now here I am, here we are, but my time is brief before I'll be where I would rather not, where you are not. But the truth can still reach me there. And that is where we must find our suffering together.

Musings on the root of personal beliefs

You are a thirteen-year-old girl. You don't believe in God, but you believe in music. You believe in it because it soothes your pain. Your little teenage heart was broken because you were abandoned, stranded in emotional exile by those who professed nothing but love for you.

**

How can I explain to you that all of the pain and beauty of existence begins and ends in every moment?

*

I am a woman and I am a man.
Divinity exists within me and could not exist without me.

*

My own path to spiritual awakening

*

I found my spirit in the blanketing glow of moonlight in my middle school bedroom
In the rustling of leaves in the trees at a state park
In the warm flickering of a single votive

*

I am a solitary practitioner

*

Crying to the moon.
Listening to the leaves.
Reading the streaks of shooting stars under the skies of Napa Valley
Dwarfed by the fairy tale fjords of Norway

*

When I think of my spirituality I think of tears and blood, moonlight and crashing waves, fjords and mountains and luminescent clouds in Norway, eating mushrooms and asking for rain to play in and getting it, synchronicity, dreams with foresight, shooting stars and the beating of bats wings, LSD on Long Island and the sky filling my mind, transcending space and time and life and death and worry, visions of a past life in the sediment of my cup of tea, chaos and freedom and purposeful puposelessness, no coincidences, understanding, compassion, silence, chemistry, wordless prayer.

*

Lots and lots of tears have aroused the divine in me.

**

Nothing has to be perfect but sometimes it is.

waking nightmare

perhaps it was precipitated by reading my old journal before bed. entries about how much i resented the people i once went to college with for their failures to acknowledge my potential and their own. is that why i dreamt of them as heartless, cruel, violent predators? ready to cut my eyes out to spite my face, to cut my arms off to spite my body.

"you need knew eyes" she said in a low, raspy tone, sharp with malice and hatred.

"uh, maybe later, i'm going to bed now."

in the dream i closed my eyes, only for the thought to occur to me i hope she doesn't do anything to me in my sleep. and armless from an earlier attack of the familiar, how would i defend myself from another? i opened them again, and she lingered over me, a vile smile on her sharp face, her yellow eyes thirsty for my pain. that was when i awoke, shaken. the near-attack was as real as any near-attack could have been. the fear of being brutally assaulted in my sleep. the heartlessness and cruelty suddenly painted on a familiar face, for no reason, with no warning, like a person possessed by a demon, disfigured, somehow changed and yet for all appearances still the same.

i rested in bed for a few brief minutes, feeling the darkness closing in on me. i was chilly, so i drew a blanket across my shoulders. it was too heavy. the darkness was too heavy, weighing on me, the nightmare too immanent. i was not yet ready to resubmerge in the pool of subconsciousness. i was rattled, so i rose, leaving my new room and my new bed and the cache of new dreams that have been flooding in from behind the veil these past few days.

i sit down before this computer. there is a message from one of those disappointing friends whom i had recently ceased communicating with, one with whom i had a long, disappointing affair. the time stamp reveals that the message was sent at the very time i was reading about our long, disappointing affair. strange how these synchronicities arise.

"soph, quick question."
but he never asked.

i will return to bed soon, and will perhaps take comfort in a fiction before i let the fog of sleep settle across my eyelids. i have things to do this coming day. a job interview, a friend's farewell, cementing my own travel plans. this was an unfortunate night for these demons to haunt me. is there anything worse than to wish for the immersion of sleep only to fear one's own powerless against the illusions that await one there? the terror of helplessness? all waiting in the comfort of a cool pillow, a soft mattress.