I prepare for an anniversary. Ten years ago. I was traveling alone, embarking on a three day journey from Kolkata to the southern tip of India, intent on experiencing a multi-day dance festival to honor Lord Shiva in Chidambaram.
Too exhausted to speak in prose.
It is coming.
How fear freezes speech. How even now, in preparation, I understand the weight, and the immense energy of the weight, which guards against looking into the eyes of what terrifies me.
I am revisiting, rereading my old words. Beginning to understand what happened. What is the time is takes? A decade.
A slow unfolding. Understanding in process but not yet in form. Understanding, in fact, that my real understandings these days have very little form, very few words.... and yet, so much needed to be seen. Needs to be seen still. To be held. To be shared.
Melting boulders of shock. This piece? A prelude. A prelude to greater form, greater words. This piece, a beginning. To share and honor the sheer force of sudden death. To bow deeply to shock- to the terror of meeting the emptiness- to being ultimately untethered and utterly unprepared. Nihilism caught in my bones.
Nihilism caught in my bones.
He says, "It takes kindness to see the ultimate truth. We need to be kind to our egos, because they are scared." Those days I went at my ego with a sledgehammer.
Ten years have brought new experiences, new rest. Settling.
The space not as a void
a black hole
the gaping mouth of Yama
the cryptic hand of nosferatu creeping around the door ready to grasp for my throat
slowly, holding my fear every step of the way
driven by fear, to find its own peace
arriving
to the utter lack of myself, in everything
i saw then so clearly, "A web of lies." The projections that made me, seen as deceptions. Imputations. False.
And now....yes. The Web. A Nest. The total lack of graspable self- made manifest only by a beautiful train of interconnections. Utterly dependent, and still alive.
My intention: to unwind, to thaw- in form- the fear that has melted in me. To mark it. To honor.
To re-collect the pieces- the trust, the joy, the innocence. In the process, I discover pieces that are much older- insight not known before this hell, yet somehow remembered. To collect what I saw as a broken web of terror into a nest of potential.
Not because I wish it, nor because I am still in hell and praying for salvation. But because it is already, this web, this beautiful support. It has grown and shown itself. And it has taken time.
There will be more- formalized and fleshed out. But for now, I ooze.
Too exhausted to speak in prose.
It is coming.
How fear freezes speech. How even now, in preparation, I understand the weight, and the immense energy of the weight, which guards against looking into the eyes of what terrifies me.
I am revisiting, rereading my old words. Beginning to understand what happened. What is the time is takes? A decade.
A slow unfolding. Understanding in process but not yet in form. Understanding, in fact, that my real understandings these days have very little form, very few words.... and yet, so much needed to be seen. Needs to be seen still. To be held. To be shared.
Melting boulders of shock. This piece? A prelude. A prelude to greater form, greater words. This piece, a beginning. To share and honor the sheer force of sudden death. To bow deeply to shock- to the terror of meeting the emptiness- to being ultimately untethered and utterly unprepared. Nihilism caught in my bones.
Nihilism caught in my bones.
He says, "It takes kindness to see the ultimate truth. We need to be kind to our egos, because they are scared." Those days I went at my ego with a sledgehammer.
Ten years have brought new experiences, new rest. Settling.
The space not as a void
a black hole
the gaping mouth of Yama
the cryptic hand of nosferatu creeping around the door ready to grasp for my throat
slowly, holding my fear every step of the way
driven by fear, to find its own peace
arriving
to the utter lack of myself, in everything
i saw then so clearly, "A web of lies." The projections that made me, seen as deceptions. Imputations. False.
And now....yes. The Web. A Nest. The total lack of graspable self- made manifest only by a beautiful train of interconnections. Utterly dependent, and still alive.
My intention: to unwind, to thaw- in form- the fear that has melted in me. To mark it. To honor.
To re-collect the pieces- the trust, the joy, the innocence. In the process, I discover pieces that are much older- insight not known before this hell, yet somehow remembered. To collect what I saw as a broken web of terror into a nest of potential.
Not because I wish it, nor because I am still in hell and praying for salvation. But because it is already, this web, this beautiful support. It has grown and shown itself. And it has taken time.
There will be more- formalized and fleshed out. But for now, I ooze.
I opened a watercolor pad and found this, the colors of the web the same colors of my thread. I do not remember creating this image. "Two dimensions are not enough. All your things won't hold you."
Creation.
Recollection Nest, with drill.