part 1 - suspended letter

here's one story: i've known you, for a long time - most (all?) of this life - beyond. you chose me and your father. you chose us when we were small, like you were small and watched us - and bided your time. i felt you - i've felt you and sensed what you were like - palpably - since I was in my early twenties. i felt you walking beside me, a little boy, and i reached in a gesture strangers wouldn't notice, to take your hand; our laced fingers swung between us down dark city blocks and shadows while i walked - displaced in time. i was a little drunk, i think, and if i might have felt a bit silly, this was overridden by how right it felt.

i never thought much about wanting children but there you were. this did occur. and when you were inside me - when i was pregnant - then too - i sensed you - your humor and imagination and light - i felt your wings and energies and thoughtfulness - i recognized your face in the crowd of unknowing and through your infancy when you cried and yowled - so much - i knew - i knew you behind and above and through the petty details. i was still scared though - i doubted myself - especially when i was pregnant. during my first trimester, standing in my little apartment, i told your dad that i was so much a kite without a string and he said he thought that was ok - you would be my tail. i've remembered this - often - prophetic and such a valuable thing he said to me, though in no way does it suggest that i am your kite. of course.

my first blog posts - i tried to clarify reasons for having a blog. but 'reasons' skim a surface i don't want much time on. we look for sense, reason, when in fear of the unknown or uncertainty, and do find what will comfort us - the human mind wants to explain and is good at it - the human heart, to wonder and experience awe. but - if I put into words for myself, as I sometimes do, a reason to continue - to not scrap this sporadic blog effort entirely, you are there at the thick of it. there are other pieces to my calling too - but - it has become a place that i am building for you to visit me when i am no longer here - after i die. euphamisms are easier but also so awkward. i don't know how to say it.

my posts are not nearly as consistent as i'd thought they'd be - wish that weren't so, but it's difficult. sometimes i tell myself, "just pick a notebook, open it, and transcribe." sometimes this works. other times, it is not so easy. i get lost in language that flowed through me and seems not even to be mine. it's all one verse begun decades ago - my uni verse - my part of it will be done when i am. so, breaking it into pieces that stand of themselves, can be daunting. sometimes, it ... evokes ... too much emotion. for the same reason, i don't listen to music that i love more often. i get overwhelmed - if i'm trying to listen while doing other things, i end up dancing instead or writing (even more into notebooks i'll not likely get around to posting) - or otherwise immobilized and 'unproductive' towards the chosen (multi) task.

when i write, usually it is not with forethought or a subject in mind - through retrospect, i can infer a meaning but that meaning shifts with where i happen to be planted at the time. the last piece i posted, it is a new piece and i felt the energy of you in it from the beginning - that is unusual. it made me extra thoughtful and is what compelled me to do this - this post here. it is a letter, something like that, i think. i won't give it to you properly; it's written - here - because i need to - for me. and here, it will wait beyond time's convention, broken off moment, suspended and unstuck to history.

time, to me, is ... not what we say it is. we are silly in our clocks and calendars, i can 'feel' they are not 'right.' i understand they serve a purpose but question even that - it might have been otherwise. it often is for me and so, find myself subtley resistent to this convention (and quite a number of others). humans can be so arrogant - ahh - but that comment could turn into a rant - arrogant in its own right - and you know already my feelings about this subject. it's a grace to have that - that you know - already and that we finish each other's sentences - or could - but don't so often, as we still want to hear - as if it is all always new - and it is.

i say all this for myself. you have it already, in one way or another it has been expressed and grasped. i say it here - now - for me - whether or not your read it - or anything here, is not in my hands. it is just here - suspended and free from time's convention - a moment unstuck to history, just as you have been for me and now, are - for yourself. on some level, i imagine you feel it here - all of it - these words waiting - and that is enough.

part 2

for some souls there is a place, deep in ... 'athleticism' (?) ah, but i lack a word ... body/mind spirit ... ? limitlessness - movement's alchemy - breath's bridge - exhertion as a form of prayer.

this Place - we've talked about it; the place of build up, discomfort/suffering/pain - a threshhold, and at some point within it, people stop. it is technically physiological - lactic acid/aerobic threshold, VO2 max - supposedly - it gets called all kinds of things. and it scared you, at first, arriving there during a game or workout - your mind noticed the 'pain' and said panicky things about the burning in your legs and lungs: i can't breathe, this is not safe or good for me it hurts - too much. ohmygod i can't keep going i have to stop - too much - those sorts of things.

i have, in vague, loose ways - talked to people before about my experience with that place and how it is not a stopping point, but a place to begin.

'in the beginning ... the word.' i don't know - in writing, in humanness, i recognize a certain necessity or bondage to this belief, but this leaves off. i listen and hear 'god' listening to me (Mother Theresa unplugged) and that is all. i put god in quotes because i'm not sure one can use that word, free from connected ideas, definitions, which make it too small. maybe most words do this and so, past language, there's more room for .... beginnings. silence can be visited in seated meditation - it is and is absolutely not the same thing for me, though. i've gone into more detail sharing this with you than anyone else because it was relevant to your passion and i wanted to share my discovery that there is nothing to fear. Re-fashioned and related to training for stamina i explained how it is for me, something i seek - or make myself available to; i've learned that my mind comments are best dismissed and they will rattle, then pass. somewhere, past that snagging point is an opening.

we've talked about how sensation, when left unlabeled as 'pain' by thought and association, isn't - it isn't pain at all. you've found your own way to explore this and the discussion has continued. to me, it is just intense experience comprised of temperature, color, a bright but soft light. i think of descriptions i've heard involving near death experience and wonder. i close my eyes at those peak 'crisis' moments and look - my body is there in the effort elsewhere; my consciousness, my spirit hold in pure focus and calm. physical form transcends itself. the strength does not run out - the breath, the power does not come from me - it comes through me - from the Light - and is limitless - past the 'excruciating' point. i have grown disinterested regarding my thought's revolts that might pull me into panicked complaints after so many years of exploring this - beginning when i was around your age or a bit younger. i don't know how i stumbled upon this. it isn't something i sought or tried or worked for. it chose me. just like you. a willingness to 'go there' on most days has grown through understanding that it makes me 'better' in the rest of my life - and for you - than i might have been otherwise. the last words i say, inside myself, before leaving language behind involve gratitude and the inherent vision within blind faith.

'it' is different for you of course, and has changed for me a great deal since i was in my teens. you find your own way - your own experiences through/of spirit - they inform the rest of your life and vise versa - i don't understand your 'details,' but when we are training sometimes, i see it in your eyes - your face - you are there - you get it - and will continue this journey into places within that are the mark and grounding for your unique power.

and so, the symbol of flight and wings. that just became so impoortant to me over the past few weeks - ridiculously so - thinking about it much of the time - and for the blog post with images of wings - i looked for a pair for you - there were quite a few beautiful drawings and i could not decide. that's why i asked you; i pulled up the page and asked that you pick your wings - i showed you the ones i had considered. you didn't think this a strange question or ask why - you ultimately chose a very simple line drawing of smallish wings and i was ... disappointed (?). when i posted later that night, i almost inserted a more elaborate, different pair - the ones (i thought) you'd need to suit you. then - a bit later - i had to go back - i can be slow sometimes - and change them to the pair you chose. this is the pair i almost included for you:

not for you - of course. they look powerful, but - heavy. you chose a pair without baggage - simple streamlined light - economical (boorish word, but they are). you do not need the weight or size for power - you will supply it - the wings i chose suggest a bondage to them in themselves and you don't need to ever struggle with an ache to be free - of your wings. those you have now, suit you now and if they need to grow in any way - like your heart - they just will.

i've continued thinking about wings and your athleticism and ... birds - their flight experience. walking skyler in the 'blue time (as you call it)' - watching them in the coldish wind, i thought of this: do their wings reach that point in flight? burn hurt ache? i choose to imagine that yes/no. they are always 'in the beginning'; - and beyond - wordless pure experience. if those sensations are there, they are inseparable from the joy of being and flight and bird-ness. they purposefully choose to be in the sky when the wind is violent so they can find the angles to ride upslopes and currents and the invisible paths or air - flapping their wings for hours when they travel - against the wind. the burning in their wings - their spirit does not pick apart the experience to fret a sensation as painful or difficult or even intense. a fusion - intrinsically atoned to their being. they ARE flight and the ache isn't distinct from joy - ecstacy - openness (even these - more useless words - that fail in approaching the ineffable). you too, are flight and internal music- the earth falls away and the wind, regardless of mph force or direction, will never be against you; your wings will only understand its power as an ally.

i project a gob of hummanness onto the birds in this - i know - but it's what i've been thinking about and will probably mention in a sentence or two (believe it) before your next conditioning workout.

and finally, because of all this, i am again brought home to reconsider my own spirit. i cannot know that my own wings are always trapped. maybe, just in moments, during workouts (or work ins) - during long talks of listening with you - they unfold - i am not looking - i cannot see - and perhaps it is largely none of my business.

pen soul

{20 years ago, a friend gave me this excerpt from a Rilke poem:

WHO, IF I CRIED OUT WOULD HEAR ME AMONG THE ANGEL'S
HIERARCHIES? AND EVEN IF ONE OF THEM PRESSED ME SUDDENLY AGAINST
HIS HEART: I WOULD BE CONSUMED IN THAT OVERWHELMING EXISTENCE.
FOR BEAUTY IS NOTHING BUT THE BEGINNING OF TERROR, WHICH WE ARE
STILL JUST ABLE TO ENDURE, AND WE ARE SO AWED BECAUSE IT SERENELY
DISDAINS TO ANNIHILATE US.}

................................................

small pieces loosely joined:
the space between breath,
differing lengths -
rooms to retreat, hold,
to wait.


it's as if the words are already there;
my pen scrapes away the white
invisible absence - a substance
in itself,
a letter at
a time.

already there.
my hand moves: a needle on a seismograph or the one i watched respond to
my labor contractions. vital signs - my pen describes convexity, deep
shadow pooling like green waters against skin. places i once believed were
black, just too much blue spilled in one place - layers of it.
in the right light, time on space,
crows turn over backstroke bellyup the sky.
purple pulling out a length of flight
and songs of old men scraped from overgrown gardens
that fight back winter like frightened cats.

it's wings that i want to give you -
i measure with my own arms
a wingspan, then repeat,
mirror reversed, for the second,
comparing symmetry
like the barber that cut your hair when you were small in my lap.

measuring by eye for weight and texture - i think
how to hinge the wings together,
then reconsider - you are their hinge. i will climb a ladder,
hang them from the ceiling by the door
to wait for you to meet them
when you leave.




roots and wings - courage to honor one, drives the other deep.

and mine?
mine too - i feel them in place;
i've always felt them
cramped behind scapula, crowding my shoulder muscles.
deep red - sunset colored - death and birth
colored. Colorless secret. jagged - raked by the light
into weightless columns.

huge.

and impinged.

hidden darker than darkness, threatening,
but also redolent with longing rushing
through space and i wake wet with
sweat from dreams of hovering -
gravity rescinded, allowing removal from
earth, from thought, a safe distance.

wings silent.

still, they inform my every movement.

one can grow used to
annihilation
through beauty.
sometimes, i fear

... Nothing.
in its multitude
of meaning,
i scrape away the white and
feel my wings burn through the spider brambled lines
that open an unlikely horizon.