leaving, leaving, everyone's leaving.

last summer, just around the time that everything spun out like whoa.

everyone leaves. no one stays. not you, nor i. nobody. even shakespeare one day, will be forgotten; a shadow of someone passed, memories before memories before memories ago. people won't even ask who was that guy who wrote those famous stories? people won't even ask.

but no matter. it makes no difference that few will ask about you long after you're gone. it makes no difference because you still want to pretend like they will. like your life was not merely a floaty cloud--a caricature of something picture-perfect, or banal enough to forget--but rather a storm that went down in the record books. a force that changed everything, left no house or body untouched. they will call you Storm Rachael. you will become a proper noun.

and still. the people in the houses will pass. the houses will pass, too, eventually. and no one will care that you tattered their rooftops. not eternally. not really. you'll go, too, and then even you won't care that you've been forgotten.

but now, you are here. people are coming and going. waking and dying. being born and falling fast asleep. you will fall in love with one of those people. she will leave. you will fall in love again. he will leave, too. you will fall in love evermore, and you will do the leaving sometimes. you will watch out of the corner of your eye as he watches you drive and drive until you're out of his sight, and he a small dot in the distance of your mind. you will wish that your mind made all the decisions about your feelings. you will ask your heart, why?

you will not have answers. you will fight like a stray cat in the arms of some huge loving force, you will fight and fidget your way out. you will escape back into the alley where silver soaked cement shows you what you're made of: a tired survival that wants to be free. you will wish it could be easier. but you will pay the price it costs to be yourself, independent and alone. there will be friends, even here, even here.

and one day, you may find yourself knowing that the towel that wants to wrap you in warmth and love, bring you in from the streets of solitude, does not intend to strangle your spirit or splinter your heart, but simply warm your soul as you prepare your final going.

so you will let it. you will let yourself be held, even though everything is ending. you will open your heart to a radiating hum. you will swallow the song into your body. it will nurse you like an ancient lullaby. you will sleep soundly with a small smile on your face. you will be sad and also happy. sad you went so long not letting yourself feel love. sad about time, that there is never enough. happy that there is this, now.

and when you wake, only to leave, he will nod as you say thank you. he will know that you really meant it. because he is leaving, too. we are leaving each other. we are leaving each other, only after we have found each other. and to find anything at all always comes with the real-life risk of losing. we will feel the loss, but also the real-life blessing.

and i'm not sure what happens next.

The Magic's in the Music and the Music's in Me

I slide into the wind-chilled LeBaron, my breath whispering secrets--scandals of the night before that I promise myself are more magical left in the dark. It's the coldest night of the year, and also my birthday. An unusual combination on February 17th. Everything has sunken in. Like a pulse that finds its most honest natural rhythm. Like a warm robe wrapping you on a cold winter morning. Like napping on your parents couch.

I sit in the car and think about the scroll SOME SECRETS ARE BETTER NEVER TOLD. I wonder which ones I'll keep between me and that clear bright midnight sky. Which ones will sneak out like a teenager, through the back window, in search of a wild mystery.

The stars are pulsing open wonder, a few lavender clouds are dancing around pretending to be in the way. But there's only cold clear truth. An open faucet of capital L Love. The sense that everything is truly divinely aligned and I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be... In the driveway of soul. Alone. Tired-happy. Quiet. Pooled in comfort of the sweatpants variety. Smiling, face up, watching tiny holes of pure magic light punching their way through the dark, exploding into a pool of irresistible Trust.

There's nothing to say or tell. All those stories really happened. Like, really--I went to the basement of the parking garage of Hell. But nothing lasts forever--no feeling, no moment, no mood. And this is the best and worst news of all.

Because tonight... tonight I feel Love like a quiet breeze. Like I am that breeze. Like the magic's in the music and the music's in me and there's no difference between all this goddamn overflowing glory at all. Or at the very least, no good reason to try to pick it all apart.

And I know it like I know my own face: this will never last. This understanding, this angle, the exact way I slide perfectly into that cool leather seat, the sky that's meditating moonlight like a tender rhythmic toad.

Everything goes. But I'll take what I can get in the moment. I'll take it all, anyway. Impending change, surefire sunrises, one-time-only birthday moonlight meditations. This is what I came for. I didn't know it in words when I came, but this it. This is everything.


 

I'll Say What I Mean Even If I Look Foolish

"Love is so rare that the more you can spread it the better."

"If you are loving in public it is thought to be obscene. How can love be obscene? But love is thought to be obscene! You have to hide it in darkness. You have to make love so nobody knows. You have to make it so silently, so stealthily...naturally you can't enjoy it much. And people don't become aware of what love is. Children, particularly, have no way of knowing what love is...
In a better world, with more understanding, love will be all over. Children will see what caring is. Children will see what joy it brings when you care for somebody.. Love should be accepted more, violence should be rejected more. Love should be available more. Two persons making love should not be worried that one one should know. They should laugh, they should sing, they should scream in joy, so that the whole neighborhood knows that somebody is being loving to somebody--somebody is making love."

"Love knows nothing of duty. Duty is a burden, a formality. Love is a joy, a sharing; love is informal."

--Osho, Love, Freedom, Aloneness

rhythm and stumbling and refreshing and riding

I believe in the rhythm. Perhaps more than anything else in the world. Breath. Day and night. Seasons. Birth and death. Flowering and rotting. The flow of time. 

I've been thinking lately how lucky we are that the sun sets and rises each day. That we get to reset our internal clocks. Cycle through. Refresh.

This morning I watched a man on a bicycle ride up 13th street. It was foggy and warm, like the Oregon Coast in September; always on the brink of rain. I thought about Ambiya; her declaration that she rides her bike 365 days a year as a way to show herself that she can do anything. So if we see her crying or grunting or making angry-as-fuck faces on her bike, no matter, she's just doing what she's got to do to get through.

Being a warrior isn't always graceful. And maybe I just couldn't get over that. The part of the story that included losing some battles. Losing arms. Losing legs. Losing the way it was. Losing faith. 

No matter, now. Now, I'm re-reading my old journals. The pages on which I wrote, I want to give it all away. Do I even know what that means? I'm sure I'll find out. I'm re-reading those pages and sinking into my humility, with gratitude, with the sense that I found out more than I ever thought I would about the beauty of loss. 

About the rhythm of rebirth. The flow of time. Learning how to dance, awkward beginning steps, and all.