A Space

There's a very difficult space within relationships-
      A dark, unnavigatable expanse between the boundaries of two individual beings.
It's a space where future aims give way to present realities-
     A Place where fears give way to freedoms,
     Only to melt back into uncertainty.
It's a room,
     Housed within a hallway-
     In an obscure, abandoned building.
Where we sit-
     And Listen,
     And absorb,
The intangibility of a shared love.


And in this darkness,
      You feel both confined and limitless.
Bound, but only by your freedom.
And so you sit and breath and feel your insides pour out in front of you.
Your past and future souls move fluidly outside of you-
     To rest exposed and raw at the feet of your partner.
You slip upwards, towards the ceiling
And look down on the shell of yourself-
      Sitting there, limp and empty but brimming with the overpowering energy
Still flowing through it.


And I meet you here-
      Up in the sky above ourselves.
I hold your hand and feel your barriers,
      Melt into me.
Our bodies touch-
      You pull mine into yours,
      And the junction of the two, begin to breed a warmth that swells into the rest of us,
      Inflating every crevice of our beings.
I ask you, "why?"
     You simply smile, and fall back.
But your energy doesn't exit with you,
It stays with me forever,
     This moment, is ours always
Despite that I no longer hold it.


There's a very difficult space within a relationship
Where both prejudice and promise dance together before you,
      In a challenge for your attention-
      In a crusade for your sanity.
Ultimately, you lean right into the battle.
You accept that love and pain-
     Freedom and sacrifice-
     Union and abandonment-
They're ALL bound to each other as inseparable dichotomies of this existence.
They all dwell inside,
      Outside,
      And all around each other,
In a coexistence that can't be avoided, or feared, or denied.
You shut your eyes and accept that as you grab for one,
     You will invite them all.
And so you smile.
You respect the reality of this range of feelings.
And you release the notion,
      That you can control the insatiable appetite of life's energy,
      To let these emotions rage.
They will always flow forward
Filling the void of our difficult space
Sweeping you onward-
      As a piece of drift wood stuck in the current,
      With the promise of peace that can only come,
From your complete surrender into it.
You trust in a light,
      That can only be found after complete darkness.
You let go, submerge yourself -
      And let life carry you on.

Mental Meanderings; Soul Searching Through the "Twenty Somethings" : Re-examing, "Plight"

Mental Meanderings; Soul Searching Through the "Twenty Somethings" : Re-examing, "Plight": And Sisyphus pushed his rock Uphill, in the toil and the draaaag-   Drag- Drudge With tears in his flesh ...

Re-examing, "Plight"

And Sisyphus pushed his rock

Uphill, in the toil and the draaaag-

  Drag-

Drudge

With tears in his flesh

screaming out their miseries

begging to be heard, to be healed, to be patched

in blood-

in sweat-

With the wine of a nation 

reamed of rotten grapes,

picked and stomped from the unripened vine 

molested by the beaks of 10 million savage crows

Seeping out his pores

And in mission, his body ached on

An eternity long

With gnarled bare feet

Twisted, tied, tangled

In sharp remnants of wilderness, that cut-

cut- 

carve -

into the crevices of feet and flesh and toes and soles

In passionless motions, meaningless in their sheer multitude 

With cold, fruitless efforts 

Of mundane nature

Devoid of significance, blank

Blank-

And Kafka portrayed you as a bachelor-

With freedom at your foreword,

but shackles at your feet

Trapped-

in the limitlessness of your "boundaries" ,

in the nonexistence of your "borders"

A self imagined incarceration 

Imprisoned-

in these,

 our beautiful  days of "us"

Bound, in a heaping hurt

your discontent, gnaws 

like glutinous rats trolling the streets of insatiable hedonism

Poor, glorious struggle of Sisyphus

       such painful contradiction

       such stifled restlessness

All bound up, wrapped tightly in the package
Of one

      "cursed" human being.

In a Jar Where we Keep It

Living in a moment,

Best illustrated in pieces.

Pieces of sounds, of movements, of touch, of memories-

             Just being born

Instances nesting on a line,

Punctuated at the junction

Of where, "who i am"

            Meets, "who i was"

            Meets, "who I'm becoming"

            Meets, "Who I will be"- While "who I will be",

Is just taking shape.

In the gray apartment

Illuminated dimly, with lights of rust

And beams of sun, fighting valiantly

To break through the shutters.

Waves and wind pound at the gate,

And you're here- Holding me

Tightly against the rain

Providing and protecting,

             Holding quiet my head-

             Holding open my heart-

             Holding in my breath.

And then, we danced

Like nobody was watching

And who cares if they are?

After all,

That's what you taught me.

And cuddled up in cashmere,

The soundtrack plays on.

Every ounce of me, swaying to internal melodies,

             Shifting-

            Evolving-

Slowly becoming aware of the self, developing.

Listening, eyes closed

To the songs change, the beat becoming more and more familiar-

The sound of coming home

The sound of coming to

In that proverbial sense of, "coming to"-

Because what does that mean any ways?

Coming to you?

Coming to me?

Coming to a place-

          A space-

          A second, housed within a minute, housed within a lifetime-

Where a "you" and a "me", blend into each other

Where an "us" becomes an entity

Breathing quietly, peacefully, contentedly-

Within the jar where we keep it.

So here I sit safely

Within the jar, the snow-globed world

Enclosed, with you

In a dome with raindrops-

Whisking down on all sides of us

         Small Petals-

         Creating large puddles-

         Gorging out pools-

So large, we jump right in.

Because after all,

No sense in running-

From a raindrop.

No sense sidestepping-

An adventure.

No sense in questioning

The creation -

          Of the room-

          with the floor-

          with the crack, at the corner-

Which became the ravine-

          So big, we crawled right in and claimed it as our own.

No sense wondering why it is we can know for certain,

That this is where we were brought-

That this is where we were born-

That this is- gauged against all other notions of birth, and rebirth-

Of growth, and change-

This is, exactly where we belong.  

Hindsight Is Always 20/20

The following is an excerpt from my fledgling attempt at a novel. Luckily, it's from a time that now seems a million miles from where I am today.  It's about the painful fallout of a lame relationship, the regaining of sanity, and the support of friends who help you remember that all shit will pass! So, I include this mostly because I think a lot of us have been here in some way or another. Wading through the bad in order to get to the good, Is a staple of the "20-something" experience and so I felt it was fit for sharing....

He had chiseled away at me and somewhere along the way, I had decided to let him. There was nothing left inside me. No energy to fight or call names. I was speechless and breathless, stripped completely bare and utterly alone. I curled up, shivering with fear, but sweating with anxiety. An anger I had never felt towards anything or anyone, rose inside me and created an unsettling ache that encompassed so many varying emotions. I could not pinpoint how to react to it. So instead, I just sat with it. I sat, and let my body quiver as it absorbed the full agony, want, desire, and pure hatred that was swirling around my mind and pulsing through every muscle of my torn, weakened body. The only energy I could muster, came and went in spurts of sudden fury. I would scream- a high pitched wail that gave way to a low groaning mumble as the rising crescendo of emotion exited my body like an exorcism, then calmed back into a numb lull of emptiness.

Moments of clarity came and went. They shifted in between and all around the whirlpool of other emotions, all of them contending for the minimal focus available in my war weary mind. But I was incapable of mentally or emotionally landing on one spot for too long. I had fallen deeply into a broken state of undirected and untamable emotion. It was an ebb and flow of extreme opposites, in which I knew I would be rocking back and forth for quite some time. The thought alone made me sea- sick...

A few years after this part of my life, a good friend of mine found herself in her own  breakup. She eventually told me  that she was able to get through it by letting herself hit her bottom. She revealed that it was only when she had finally gotten to the point of sitting in a state of acceptance, within the immense hurt she felt rising up inside her, that she was able to grasp at an inner strength buried amongst it all. Ultimately, delving head first into the deep pool of love, loss, regret, and sorrow, made her feel free in a way she hadn't expected. 

Listening to her years after my own experience, I couldn't have put it better myself. Even in the midst of everything I had been going through, a faint glowing flame of self worth flickered persistently- refusing to extinguish against my best efforts to completely destroy it. Instead, this hidden reserve of durability sat waiting patiently in the unexplored caverns of my self. It readied itself for a time to spark back into a roaring inferno. As the eloquent advice of my friend stated, this comes when you hit the full expanse of hurt and have nothing left to grasp except your own hardiness. It is the will to survive ingrained in every human being- you grab your backbone, and climb right back up it inch by inch.