Jumping Ship
So, finally I'm making the move from Blogger to LiveJournal, which makes this my final post on this blog. I've been tempted for a while but hadn't until now felt I knew enough people in the LJ community to make it worthwhile. I'm feeling the need for the greater flexibility to choose how public or private to make my posts and also looking forward to a much more sophisticated notification system for comments threads. So, tis farewell to Blogger. I think I'm right in saying that you need an invite to join LiveJournal, so if any of you Blogger friends would like to check it out and also be able to comment non-anonymously on my posts, just bung a comment in my comments box or send me an e mail and I'll happily oblige. Can't help thinking of you, Toast & Honey and feeling LJ could be a perfect place for you to write next. You can choose with each post whether it's completely public or only viewable to people in your Friends' List or even a more select portion of your Friends' List, so you could have a blog which caters for all your different needs all in one place............Anyway. A big thank you and goodbye to Blogger where I've been happy for nearly two years now.......... Byeeeeeeeeeeee!My new journal can be found HERE!
I only just realised I missed the anniversary of Dad's death this year. He died on June 7th, not a week after my 32nd birthday. This morning I thought of him as I walked to the Buddhist Centre. I remembered the District Nurse coming into my bedroom where I was hanging clothes in my wardrobe and saying "I think you should come. I think he's dying now."We spent today hearing one incredibly moving story after another of the life of Dhardo Rimpoche. How everyone who met him was just floored by the way he took them in with such absolute presence and a love so intense it felt like that of a father or mother. How even when he'd never met someone before he was seemingly able just to look right into their core and wrap them in a glow of feeling absolutely seen and appreciated for their own unique existence. I felt humbled. I felt his radiance tangibly present. I could see the ways in which I just want the Dharma on my terms, to enhance my life but not to the extent that I really have to change fundamentally. And it was as though my narrow, convenient ideas of what the Dharma is were just cracked open and the immense splendour of Absolute Compassion was revealed, incomprehensible and endless. I spent most of the morning sobbing uncontrollably.Tonight I watched the final episode of Six Feet Under. It wasn't as perfect as I'd hoped but I still cried over and over and was left in that trembling space of seeing everything a few shades more intensely and poignantly. The daylight was fading as the credits rolled and my blackbird sang from the trees across the road. A seagull swooped the length of my window, wings unmoving, perfect.I lay there for fifteen minutes as the copyright notices flashed up one after another in every possible language.I put on Ágætis Byrjun by Sigur Ros and watched the day fade to dark. I listen to this with some wariness since the time I played it four or so years ago in my bedroom back at home and something about Viðrar Vel Til Loftárása catalysed an intense empathic experience of Dad's years of depression, lying on his bed for whole days staring at the ceiling. That was the first time I'd fully opened to the unbearable depth of his despair and I cried and cried. Tonight as I listened, I remembered the night a couple of days before he died. He wasn't long out of hospital and Mum & I had our hands full caring for him at home. He was too weak to go down the stairs, so the last two weeks of his life were spent up in his bedroom, looking out of the window of the house he loved so much. His cough was hard to sleep through and Mum & I were exhausted so we had both resorted to earplugs that night. I couldn't settle though, and around 11.15 I thought I heard a strange thump. I got up and went through to Dad's room where I found him lying on the carpet. He'd tried to get out of bed and had tripped over his catheter tube. When I got closer I could see blood on his forehead where he'd hit the side of the bed as he went down. Somehow I squeezed myself in behind him and held him to me, cradling his head to my chest and stroking his hair. I'd never held him like that before. I remember joking to him that he was lucky to have a nice bosom to rest upon while we waited for the ambulance.No more tears tonight, just the occasional passing car sweeping the room with light before returning it to darkness.
Fade
I am Death
You are birth and I am death. I am death. The dripping tap, the dark sky soaked with rain. The blood running down my leg. The heavy pull, the suck of the earth. And I am tired of being silenced. When you cut out my tongue a fire was lit inside me which licks and crackles in the damp air. Give me back my language. I try to roar but out comes a whimper and a tear. Give me back my tongue. No longer will I be hidden in a drawer where I cannot sully the blossom and the first breath. I AM the blossom and the first breath. Everything ends. Everything ends and I am so crazed with rage that I could snap the sky in two. Rip that car stereo out of the dashboard and smash it through every last window. Hurl my body at the wall over and over just to get some relief. This is what happens when you try to silence death. It gets out of hand. I don't know whether to rage or crumble, to howl or weep and if I were to run screaming down the street, "We're all going to die; we're all dying right now," I'd be locked up for spoiling everyone's day. Well listen up fuckers: death is everywhere.And the worst thing about all this is my own silencing of death. My own attempts to tidy the pain away. The pain is HERE. Everything ends, every moment. Precious precious things fade out like fireflies dropping back into the lake. And it's nobody's fault and I don't want to hurt you with my anger. I just want it to be ok to speak my loss. That's all I want. To speak my loss.
can it really be that a year has passed?
Sitting in my kitchen contemplating the new daffodil plant on the table, remembering last February. Remembering sitting at the same table, howling my grief, rocking my body, letting the sun touch the edges of my spirit and open cracks of possibility. It can be so strong this way the seasons roll around and stir up memories. I can't see April gardens blooming now without remembering the daily walk up to the hospital to see Dad in the months before he died. It seems February daffodils and pale sunlight have taken on their own language of memory for me now. I hadn't quite realised but it was a year ago this weekend that Dan & I spoke of breaking up for the first time, and it felt real. A week passed before we made the final decision. This morning I read some of my writings from that time and I cried, my feelings amplified by the weather and the yellow flowers on my table. But the pain and loss, huge and unthinkable though they were are only part of the memory. The immense hope, the wide-eyed wonder which opened out of the space he left are all swirling around in the mix as well. I think I must have missed the passing of Imbolc last year with all that was going on but this year I feel it and wonder if it was a coincidence that we made the big change we did right around the time we did. Because right now I feel this deep stirring, my creative fires sparking up once again, some sleeping life within me starting to wake. It feels a time for letting go of those things which have had their life, clearing a space for new growth. On Tuesday it will also be a year since I first made contact with Blackwingedboy, a year of growing friendship, deep soul connection, amazing synchronicity and much laughter. So I give thanks for all the turnings, the dying and the new life, the flow, the miraculous dance of it all and I let go into it, release my body to the wind.
