Soul Humming

all of my days

i wrote this post quite some time ago and then put it aside. i found it again and thought it was relevant. today i do not feel this way. the emotions have subsided. i still struggle with the questions but i am not currently being abraded by them. so there is peace. but there is always the urgent seeking of balance that is so necessary to reside there...

there are so many days that i feel i am in the wrong place. i am surrounded by people, faced with a question, see the absolute answer, yet am the only one who feels that i have made the correct choice. always questioning, always weighing, always wanting to know why. i feel like the boy on the side of the street as the emperor walks by clad only in a smile. He's Naked!!! Can't you see he has no clothes? But everyone continues to applaud and revel in the vision for fear of being embarrassed or standing alone. today it just feels heavy. i feel sad and tired and frustrated. and there is no where to store these feelings. they hang on me like a ragged shirt. and my biggest fear is that they will be swept aside and never remedied. joy wasted. happiness lost. 

it is all the more painful because i am not one to hide how i feel. and right now this makes me excruciatingly vulnerable. i don't want help. i don't want someone to fix it or even to listen and discuss. i just need to put it down as part of a way to move beyond. otherwise it feels so heavy that i cannot escape. i am intentionally vague. my skin is whisper thin and you can easily see right through to the pain inside. i am much better to pull the deep darkness around myself until i grow solid again.

i will paint. it is my therapy. i will turn my music up. i will tie my apron around my neck. i will seek the solitary comfort of creating what is hurting me in order to set it free. it is not the answer but it is the way to begin to find the answer. it is the journey. it is my journey. it is always about something. it is not elegant. it is not meant to entertain you. it is mine.

All of my Days
Lyrics by Alexci Murdoch

Well I have been searching all of my days
All of my days
Many a road, you know
I’ve been walking on
All of my days
And I’ve been trying to find
What’s been in my mind
As the days keep turning into night

Well I have been quietly standing in the shade
All of my days
Watch the sky breaking on the promise that we made
All of this rain
And I’ve been trying to find
What’s been in my mind
As the days keep turning into night

Well many a night I found myself with no friends standing near
All of my days
I cried aloud
I shook my hands
What am I doing here
All of these days
For I look around me
And my eyes confound me
And it’s just too bright
As the days keep turning into night

Now I see clearly
It’s you I’m looking for
All of my days
Soon I’ll smile
I know I’ll feel this loneliness no more
All of my days
For I look around me
And it seems He found me
And it’s coming into sight
As the days keep turning into night
As the days keep turning into night
And even breathing feels all right
Yes, even breathing feels all right
Now even breathing feels all right
It’s even breathing
Feels all right

SPW - Too Much

What is it that moves you to action? What is it that causes you to grab up your brush or your camera or your pencil?

 

And how much of yourself are you willing to show? What kind of risk are you willing to take to put it out there? can you stand to be vulnerable? Will you open your heart all across your canvas or continue to hide and play it safe?

 

and if you put it out there and find your risk was too high, or your heart gets broken, or your friendships cut you under the weight of it, how will you bear it?

 

will you wear it?

 

or cast it off?

 

in the end, shake the dust from your feet, grow new wings, love yourself.

SPW - A/C

having the air conditioning go kaput on the first day back from vacation is a stinker. and it is much worse when the city is experiencing a heat wave.

 

but there is much joy when the magical cool air is blowing freely again. today i am celebrating the little things i take for granted, like air conditioning, good coffee, country ham and biscuits, clean sheets, and laughter with my friends. celebrate the little things today because they all add up to this glorious life.

SPW - Rust

do you remember when you could sit with your legs folded underneath you on the hard floor for hours and then get up and actually walk around in a normal fashion? in my mind, i am capable of this. in my 45-year-old body, i am not.

i think that my bones are starting to rust. i am not one who is prone to running or exercising. so when i hurl myself up rocks and mountains, i feel it the next day. still, i know my spirit is five years old. it's my body that reminds me when i do this...

that it is slightly older than i imagined.

 

these days, most often i prefer to be stripped of artifice. i am trying to embrace all these spots i garnered by tanning too much in my youth. but secretly, they suck. i wish they were gone. while my friends may get botox and peels, i am still here with my newly forming jowls finding bigger sunglasses and more in life to laugh about. maybe, because i am in the town in which i was born, i am reminded more of my childhood. which, in turn, reminds me of how old i physically am.

i wonder how much of us is made where we were born. the person i am now recognizes the girl who lived here. but there is very little resemblance to her any more. i have stepped so far away and through so many evolutions of myself that it is curious to look back at her. it makes me wonder. and i will wonder minus mascara with a layer of aspercreme. go ahead and snicker. i am.

celebrate your five-year-old spirit today. forget your aches and find time to skip. it does a body good.

SPW - Under the Trees

LAST NIGHT THE RAIN SPOKE TO ME

by Mary Oliver

Last night
the rain
spoke to me
slowly, saying

what joy
to come falling
out of the brisk cloud,
to be happy again

in a new way
on the earth!
That's what it said
as it dropped,

smelling of iron,
and vanished
like a dream of the ocean
into the branches

and the grass below.
Then it was over.
The sky cleared.
I was standing

under a tree.
The tree was a tree
with happy leaves,
and I was myself,

and there were stars in the sky
that were also themselves
at the moment,
at which moment

my right hand
was holding my left hand
which was holding the tree
which was filled with stars

and the soft rain—
imagine! imagine!
the long and wondrous journeys
still to be ours.

SPW - Jump

Jump rope rhymes for a hot July Self-Portrait Wednesday.

She jumped so high, high, high

She touched the sky, sky, sky

And she never came back, back, back

Till the fourth of July, July, July!