Dallas to Jerusalem

Blinded by love, we love blindly

As fully as one blind can sense the world
with passion and the intensity of sensation,
absorbed in the purity of it all.

The ever-present darkness gives imagination color
with different shades that only one blind can perceive.
Textures, tastes and sounds are conceived in new ways.

There is both fulfillment and emptiness in such awareness
which are only parts of a fuller Truth
Yet we love. Overwhelmed by it all, we still love.

Blinded by love, we love blindly.

The Medieval feel of this picture is striking to me–dark, intimidating, a hint of mystery–something disturbing is happening, no doubt.  Fear must have filled that room with a sickly, cold, metallic taste, like an old penny on your tongue.  Alright, alright, I’m dramatizing.  In truth, it was a very happy moment, and that room was filled with laughter and jokes during a quick procedure in which a friend of mine got a dermal anchor inserted in her neck.

Willingly taking a foreign object into your flesh, scarring your skin, injuring it over and over in the same spot, just to make a permanent mark, something we will carry with us and remember always.  Yet when we are changed so drastically against our wills, things fall apart.  We resent it.  Sometimes, we wish we could permanently remove it from our lives.  However, as with many forms of body modification, this is easier said than done.

The picture was taken in Austin for the ritual.   A city like Austin is a good compliment to Dallas…it serves as a kind of respite from the speed and the urgency by providing opportunities for connections to the natural world, and what I can only describe (from my own experiences, of course) as ’spirit walking’–following your spirit to wherever it leads you, and gaining invaluable insight from the journey.  Don’t worry…I’m going to stop now, before I get too pretentious…in any event, one of my close companions made it along for the trip, days after going through a horrible, agonizing break-up that was the result of a horrible, agonizing relationship.  The relief was palpable, but the damage done, the scars?  They will always be with her.  Going to Austin offered the chance for a salve.

We spent the evening downtown, stopping off at a favorite little bar/coffee house of mine for chips and salsa as well as a few Lonestar beers.  After drinking in the great atmosphere and art, we headed to a sushi restaurant and met up with old friends and made some new ones.  It was a nice dinner, filled with great food and great conversation.

Lately Austin has evoked mixed feelings in me; it reminds me of fun times, great music, beautiful friendships sparked.  But it also reminds me of personal loss, relationships that couldn’t bear the strain of what?  Life, I suppose.  I carry that with me everywhere I go, but I suppose some days it’s more obvious to me than others.  Like fingering a cold, metal stud on the back of your neck, almost unaware of it the entire day and then suddenly so intensely aware of its presence.

The dermal anchor procedure took place after dinner; the decision to get it that night was mostly spur of the moment, and more time was spent waiting than anything else.  It was the artist who did the work that was the most intriguing part to me.  He was a walking canvass.  Whatever each piercing on his face meant, each tribal symbol on his arms, all of it–it was immortalized on him.  Every moment physically etched on the canvass of his flesh.  He was the tangible manifestation of my psyche: a road map, everything laid out in patterns and there staring back at me when I turn the mirror on myself.  Some of those things, I cherish.  Some, I regret with all my heart.

We all left Austin essentially the same as how we were when we went there, all arms and legs and digits safely in their original places.  One of us had a piece of metal in her neck, though.  We all knew it, but halfway through the drive home, we’d grown accustomed to it; it would always be there and that was that.  Does the same holds true for the emotional scars we bear, though?  I often wonder, when we catch a glimpse in the mirror and spot that brand, that agonizing moment that has been burned into us for the past three years, should there be silent resignation?  Or should we run to the nearest solution, whatever extreme measure we think my remove the pain from us like a laser on a tattoo?  Or finally, should we embrace each scar and mark as a part of us; we came into this world a blank canvass, but the marks over the years are what shaped us into who we are.  Why not celebrate our survival, and use the memory as a reminder?

What do you think?

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 5:00pm

I woke up this morning exhausted but with a smile.

Time flies by so quickly that I find it hard to place myself firmly in this churning river of stories and undercurrents, pulling me every which way. I wonder sometimes about the stories that make up our sense of self.. the images in our minds that combine to give us a sense of identity, presence, and being.

…I ask “why?”

Every story takes me into a newly created reality, a new step; but then i inevitably remember that there is nothing new under the sun.. matter is neither created nor destroyed.. energy recycles itself into images, tastes, and sounds that mesh together into some sort of massive conglomerate of endless buzzing stories.

I feel them left and right.
Up and down. Multidimensional. Zooming past me..

I look into the faces of friends and strangers and it’s as if i can hear all their emotions gathered up behind them, in the air around them, talking a million miles per second in a chaotic frenzy. Even the voices that are silent weigh heavily and bludgeon a dark, powerful path.

Sometimes i awake and question everything i know with my own silent voice..
A choking pain seizes my chest, grips my body, and holds me forcefully still.

In that moment, that terrifying moment of Existence fragmenting in my mind, a deep knowing rises from my gut and spills forth into my body.. arms and legs, slowly making its way up until it reaches my eyes.

The buzzing quiets..

And I am reminded to love.

There is no reason in this world. We have to cleanse ourselves somehow in the madness.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007 at 4:21am

So I don’t know

So I don’t know what to make of her anymore;
she’s the one who I’ve known for so long.
The one who I could tell anything to
but didn’t
because she already knew it all.

It happened many years ago
when I began to lose track of her–
We stood together in her living room
and hugged goodbye on the German soil,
the home we both knew as well as any.

She went off to her holy land of deserts and
temples and ancient texts, and
I went back to my holy land of deserts and
strip malls and red-dirt poetry
and felt just as glowy and full of light as any
disciple.

The years went by and there was the army,
men, women, baptists, jews, muslims, drugs, depression
wars, car bombs, classes, Hebrew, Spanish
Quebec and North Carolina between our lives
and in no particular order.

I wonder if she doesn’t know what to make of
me either,
if the look in my eyes reminds her of the desert now
when maybe it used to remind her of the forest
Or if she wonders why I speak more softly,
and seem more pulpy and malleable,
wonders how I let the years beat me down
so badly.

I will ask her when we meet soon,
and we will listen to music and smoke
and talk about what we can make
of each other.