Tomorrow is here, and now it's today, and here I am. I'll expand on my thoughts from yesterday. I was talking about growing up and seeing faeries and losing that connection. Which led into a long song and dance about me feeling alone most of the time.
Here is the rest of that story:
My best friend and I often talked of running away. We never knew to where and I wouldn’t understand until I grew older that she was running away from problems not dissimilar to mine. Back then I thought her problems were mine. I don’t know, maybe she thought mine were hers. Years later when she confessed her family’s secrets to me she told me mine as if I’d confided in her which I’d never done so to anyone. She said she knew my story because she saw in me what she was going through. I felt ashamed that I didn't see it in her. Perhaps I could have helped her. If I was aware I would have made a greater effort to run away. Maybe. But children are self-important and back then all I ever wanted was to be an adult; able to make decisions about my life and my body. I wanted to go far away from all that I knew, all that I was, all that I was sure I was going to turn into ... although I don't think I knew at all what that was.
As I grew older I longed for what had left me. I wanted to see that part of the universe that only as an adult I realized empowered me. Through the faerie’s cynical chit chat and ramblings I found myself to be a whole person. I wasn’t only a concrete material body with hurt feelings. There was more. The 'faeries' were more. In being an intrinsic yet distinctly distant part of the world that I could comprehend they made me more. I could see them with my eyes, hear them with my ears and touch them with my fingers. They were the male psyche come to visit through a hole I'd created in the space around me or one that was there waiting for someone to see into it. And the essence of the faeries made me whole.
I was well into my twenties when I truly began to understand how I suffered without them. How seeing through a crack in the veil made me different than most people. That I could see those faeries no matter how irritating they were meant that I was unique and wonderful. A feeling I lost until I was much older and saddened by loss.
In my teens I’d acted in plays at a local playhouse. I wrote short stories; journal type stuff, nothing wonderful, but it satisfied my internal nature. Being involved with art and artists even on an ingénue level helped my soul to breathe as only creative works can. Still, I denied college or thoughts of joining the inspired world full time. I discontinued expressing myself in that way after I graduated. My social network became a higher priority. Life took over. Finding work that sustained time and also kept me happy was near impossible. And without being able to put a name to the face I longed for the connection creativity sparks with the Otherworld. Because there is no doubt that it does.
When you create, be it with paints, words, photographs, ritual or the body you are allowing access to the dimensions that seem to fall so distant to this reality but in fact lay close in the mind. That is the frustration of writer’s block, the painter unable to communicate to her canvas, the actor unable to feel the depth of a particular character. It’s maddening to have been to the other place then become unable to get back there. Stress and the demands of everyday life are not kind to the multiple dimensions we live in as we create.
Yet I don’t believe the answer is to go back to childhood. The popular notion that children understand the wobbly boundaries of the universe only to lose that ability with age has little merit to me. Maybe it’s that children don’t allow their physical body’s needs to have higher influence over what their minds find fascinating. As a child you simply live. You watch the world around you with open allure. If you see a faerie you don’t wonder if it’s real because they can’t be real in this dimension, you just believe it is. If you're fortunate enough to have, if not a memorable childhood at least one without physical trauma, you won’t spend all your time thinking on the needs of the body. No extra time is spent wondering when you will do personal things; when is the best opportunity for your body’s functions. It’s as you age that your grooming and outward appeal become the most important factors of the day.
There is a harsh need to find my way back to that place I dwelled before so many tangible things entered my life; before the feelings of the flesh became easier to focus on than the feelings of the mind. Perhaps the trick is to rely on intuition. To believe what you see without analyzing it into oblivion. I want to understand these boundaries again; see this alternate universe with my adult eyes and comprehension.
When I turned twenty eight I gave birth to my second son. It had been too long since I’d written a word in a journal, acted in a play or tried unsuccessfully to draw; I'm still confounded as to how my father passed that gene onto my older brothers and not to me. Over much mental deliberation I decided I would write. Something. Anything. I needed to feel that part of the universe open my mind and touch my soul. So I set out to write a book. And though my body was in my living room each night with my computer I wasn’t truly there. I traipsed in those other dimensions for years before the book was finished. And it was awesome.
From experience I now know both the spiritual and the physical worlds must be nourished to become a whole person. Though no doubt I will need to remind myself that being a complete entity is what I most want out of this life even as the pressures of daily routines continuously threaten to overwhelm the spirit. I will never give up seeking the wholeness I had in self and mind before I knew the two were separate. Knowing others made the clime gives great inspiration to what seems at most times a singular up-hill cause.
Tomorrow: about a book.
Here is the rest of that story:
My best friend and I often talked of running away. We never knew to where and I wouldn’t understand until I grew older that she was running away from problems not dissimilar to mine. Back then I thought her problems were mine. I don’t know, maybe she thought mine were hers. Years later when she confessed her family’s secrets to me she told me mine as if I’d confided in her which I’d never done so to anyone. She said she knew my story because she saw in me what she was going through. I felt ashamed that I didn't see it in her. Perhaps I could have helped her. If I was aware I would have made a greater effort to run away. Maybe. But children are self-important and back then all I ever wanted was to be an adult; able to make decisions about my life and my body. I wanted to go far away from all that I knew, all that I was, all that I was sure I was going to turn into ... although I don't think I knew at all what that was.
As I grew older I longed for what had left me. I wanted to see that part of the universe that only as an adult I realized empowered me. Through the faerie’s cynical chit chat and ramblings I found myself to be a whole person. I wasn’t only a concrete material body with hurt feelings. There was more. The 'faeries' were more. In being an intrinsic yet distinctly distant part of the world that I could comprehend they made me more. I could see them with my eyes, hear them with my ears and touch them with my fingers. They were the male psyche come to visit through a hole I'd created in the space around me or one that was there waiting for someone to see into it. And the essence of the faeries made me whole.
I was well into my twenties when I truly began to understand how I suffered without them. How seeing through a crack in the veil made me different than most people. That I could see those faeries no matter how irritating they were meant that I was unique and wonderful. A feeling I lost until I was much older and saddened by loss.
In my teens I’d acted in plays at a local playhouse. I wrote short stories; journal type stuff, nothing wonderful, but it satisfied my internal nature. Being involved with art and artists even on an ingénue level helped my soul to breathe as only creative works can. Still, I denied college or thoughts of joining the inspired world full time. I discontinued expressing myself in that way after I graduated. My social network became a higher priority. Life took over. Finding work that sustained time and also kept me happy was near impossible. And without being able to put a name to the face I longed for the connection creativity sparks with the Otherworld. Because there is no doubt that it does.
When you create, be it with paints, words, photographs, ritual or the body you are allowing access to the dimensions that seem to fall so distant to this reality but in fact lay close in the mind. That is the frustration of writer’s block, the painter unable to communicate to her canvas, the actor unable to feel the depth of a particular character. It’s maddening to have been to the other place then become unable to get back there. Stress and the demands of everyday life are not kind to the multiple dimensions we live in as we create.
Yet I don’t believe the answer is to go back to childhood. The popular notion that children understand the wobbly boundaries of the universe only to lose that ability with age has little merit to me. Maybe it’s that children don’t allow their physical body’s needs to have higher influence over what their minds find fascinating. As a child you simply live. You watch the world around you with open allure. If you see a faerie you don’t wonder if it’s real because they can’t be real in this dimension, you just believe it is. If you're fortunate enough to have, if not a memorable childhood at least one without physical trauma, you won’t spend all your time thinking on the needs of the body. No extra time is spent wondering when you will do personal things; when is the best opportunity for your body’s functions. It’s as you age that your grooming and outward appeal become the most important factors of the day.
There is a harsh need to find my way back to that place I dwelled before so many tangible things entered my life; before the feelings of the flesh became easier to focus on than the feelings of the mind. Perhaps the trick is to rely on intuition. To believe what you see without analyzing it into oblivion. I want to understand these boundaries again; see this alternate universe with my adult eyes and comprehension.
When I turned twenty eight I gave birth to my second son. It had been too long since I’d written a word in a journal, acted in a play or tried unsuccessfully to draw; I'm still confounded as to how my father passed that gene onto my older brothers and not to me. Over much mental deliberation I decided I would write. Something. Anything. I needed to feel that part of the universe open my mind and touch my soul. So I set out to write a book. And though my body was in my living room each night with my computer I wasn’t truly there. I traipsed in those other dimensions for years before the book was finished. And it was awesome.
From experience I now know both the spiritual and the physical worlds must be nourished to become a whole person. Though no doubt I will need to remind myself that being a complete entity is what I most want out of this life even as the pressures of daily routines continuously threaten to overwhelm the spirit. I will never give up seeking the wholeness I had in self and mind before I knew the two were separate. Knowing others made the clime gives great inspiration to what seems at most times a singular up-hill cause.
Tomorrow: about a book.
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