For schillerium

[vaneramos]

Photo: Eramosa River, yesterday.

I used to know a man who had wounds in his hands, his feet, his side. They matched the holes people had nailed in my soul with words. I asked him to pick me up and he carried me away in a dream where the world was not real and every moment was lived in a shining future. I didn't understand that he was just a man, and people had shaped his teachings about life into fantasies about death. We used to talk, and usually the conversations were one-sided, just me talking. You know what I mean.

Sometimes I thought he put ideas in my head. Really it was just the best part of me, the hidden part, imagining what I thought a good friend would say to me. The kind of friend who knew every rut along my inner road. The kind of friend who could comfort me just by knowing.

The most powerful times were those we spent in the garden at night. I don't know what gardens outside Jerusalem looked like 2,000 years ago. I can only dream. I dreamt a lot, saw pomegranates and cypresses in my head. I tried to imagine how it would be to sit there praying together with the world turned against us. It was so very dark.

One day while we were walking I noticed he had left my side. When I turned I saw him standing behind, that it was I who had walked on. I couldn't understand why he had stopped. Then I realized he was only a man who died long ago, and I had come to the end of his words. The path ended. I was alive and had to go on. It felt lonely and dark as I turned and submitted to the way ahead. I was scared at first, but knew I had to keep going. My life will end someday, too, and then people will pass the end of my words. I'll join the wind and dust like him and everyone else. But that's for later.

For the time being I had these mountains to climb. And I still had these holes in my soul, though the breath had stopped flooding out of them. Then I noticed they were windows into something else, not another world, but another way of looking at the world, of feeling better about myself, realizing that I was not utterly broken but only different from the rest. Different in the way that everyone is unique.

Sometimes I come upon other travellers. We stopped at better and brighter places. It seems like me and that man were always eating plain bread and fish, and walked barefoot. I thought that was the only way to go, now I realize I was living the same way he did 2,000 years ago. The world isn't so poor all the time, and I don't have to be. So I drink good coffee and eat rich food when I can. It's not such a bitter world after all.

And I find these other pilgrims have stories of their own.

Once I sat down at a table and started to talk the way I used to, just opening up my heart. And the man beside me had holes like mine in his soul. We might have thought of them as wounds, but it was better not to cover them. Looking through we could see right into each other, to naked wisdom and tenderness we didn't have to hide.

And this man was not a ghost or a spinner of dreams, he was flesh and blood, and it was good.

~~~~~~~~~~

Happy birthday my friend.

Comments

[quirkstreet.livejournal.com]

This is stunning, dearest.

If this is what happens when you unpack the events of your earlier life and have them further forward in your consciousness (or unconsciousness), then can I just tell you that whatever pain or difficulty you may feel while doing it, it communicates a great deal to me?

Would you be okay with my linking to this from my journal?

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

The process has mostly been a positive one. I've enjoyed writing the novel so far, especially the way the characters come alive and bend my intended plot according to their own motivations. The novel hasn't been as disturbing as I expected. The big surprise this week is the way it seems to be fueling an evolution in my "other" writing, e.g. my LJ posts. It is evident in my handwritten journal, too. Also germinal is the fact that I replaced my lost copy of Writing Down the Bones, which revolutionized my approach to writing a few years ago when I first read it. A lot is happening here. So I'm bound to experience fallout somewhere in the process.

The neat thing about this kind of writing, from the gut, is that it brings my own inner meanings into sharper focus. This post has helped me understand what I believe a little better. Friendship is a cornerstone of my wellbeing.

You are certainly welcome to use a link in your journal. Thanks for your encouragement, Pete.