Oh my darling
I can understand why the rich man
Sends the poor man to die in a foreign land
What is it worth? (What is it worth?)
Oh my baby
The man on high says I gotta fight
It’s the cost to be free, am I really free
When I come home? (When I come home?)
It’s a dark, dark day.
Ironically, outside my window the sky is a perfect powder blue. There’s some strong mid-winter wind clearing the sky. I’ve kept the blinds open 24 hours the past week. I’m none too sure these winds are wayward; they seem persistent, they have a purpose. Things are perhaps clearer than ever. Something is so real that it stings. I find myself unlike every weekend previously this January having to sit watching a lot unfold.
I’m overwhelmed. I wonder if you are too. How could you not be? I feel torn to pieces in the wholeness of everything going on. All the intense feelings make me feel extremely present. Maybe I should open the window and scream, maybe a wolves howl in the middle of the day. I want to stop you in your tracks while at the same time, I want to keep my pain private.
Another victim of the foul stain on existence that is ICE is rippling through the smattering of media I’m encountering this morning. Someone that has a name I don’t know yet has been murdered in cold blood. I was afraid of how commonplace this was to become. I feel this wound rippling through the fabric of life of I think all of those I care about. My own disabilities forcing me to sit out this round of the fight this weekend. My body is not complying with what I want to do. I want to rip apart every foul thing about this society until my knuckles bleed in relief.
Yet my ankle is stiff with a gout flare. Today I can at least put both feet on the ground without wincing. I perhaps riled myself up too much trying to be real instead of the ghost I am last weekend. Maybe I care too much to put my hand in the cauldron that has continually burned me for the last few years. I’m trying to recoup from the stress of managing my own chaos against the chaos of the world. I’m angry that the lifeline to my health, my survival so my ability to indulge in the divinity of this existence is a Rube Goldberg device of feel horrible non-profit administration.
Give the people what they want, what they need is what my heart says. To survive this reality myself, I gotta justify means testing access to abundance. Some of the medications I take to manage my unruly heart bump up against the reality that my body is a full system that needs to be kept in check. If I hold onto too much water, my heart suffocates. If I let too much of that water go, my muscles can’t get rid of the spent proteins and acids that continually rebuild the chassis that holds my soul. God bless yet god curse having 4 Libra placements. I try so hard to be in balance in an extremely unbalanced world.
As Granny Love says: Free me from these shackles called ‘work.’
I try not to worry about all those dreams I had. They were more like nightmares when they started appearing in November of 2023. I never wanted the burden of potentially seeing the road ahead. Nonetheless, it’s probably the best to know of the detours ahead of where I want to go. Things I may have mapped out are starting to materialize as very harsh realities. I’ve told a few select few my cannabis intake via edibles increased not long after the increased violence against Palestinians became way too real in October, 2023. We all know chickens come home to roost. I don’t think we’re really ready to pluck, roast and fry. We’re gonna be taken over.
I had weeks of seeing in my rest the dismembered bodies of those that dared to maintain their love of the land they found themselves on. I’m hoping that by releasing my attachment to the land I love that I shed the threat of trying to stay. I’m not sure the land loves me back anyways. Yet, it has been showing off how beautiful it is as soon as I made the decision to flee. I can feel the beauty of it, but it’s not attaching to my soul. None of what Turtle Island is belongs to me.
I can only exist on it where loves exists between me and others. The tears flow as its the first time in 3 days I’ve had enough mobility to make it to the mailbox. Josh sent a loving postcard, dreaming as much as I am for the best ahead. There’s the cruel internal desire that everyone that takes a moment to make me feel alive was just down the street, not 15 miles up the street. Maybe I wouldn’t feel the force of needing to move on if I were a little bit closer, we all a little less distracted by the insanity, the death. We’re stuck in a cult, so how do we break free?
Oh my darlin’
I can almost feel your arms around me
Your voice in my ear
But I’m far from home
Wish you were near (wish you were near)
Oh my baby
I can almost feel your lips against mine
Your kiss in my mind but I’m dreaming
So far from home (So far from home)
I struggled too often in all of my life to see the point of trying to live myself. I might as well say it now; I’ve probably been considered a little bit too insane to function as normal in this world. I couldn’t escape the horrors committed in my name no matter if I were awake or asleep. I’ve done my great deal over the last 2.5 years to drown out the curse of still participating day to day in the machine that kills. I ignore my love of my fossil fueled conveyance that allows me to see the beauty of the world.
I still try, to myself, with some hope that my dreaming has a valiant undertone. That it is honorable. That it is necessary. I don’t know if I’ll live if I don’t dream. I live with the lack of cost the dreaming provides. I’m forced to be economical with the limits foisted upon me while I sit on this couch, trying to numb the pain of existing in this body, in this world that I watch in horror that seems determined to destroy everything that’s beautiful about it.
They say drеamin’, dreaming’s for free
So I’m dreaming, you are with mе
Dreaming, dreaming’s for free
So I’m dreaming, you are with me
I’ve spent this whole morning, as the ache of the flare starts to subside, singing. I shift from the shaky baritone, unsure of its place in contrast to my confident, if nasally falsetto. There’s a rattle of a saucy tenor in between the polarities. I open my mouth fully, hoping the swirl of air pouring out of my lungs are as sweet as my kisses. I think back to when Drew would wonder why I wouldn’t sing louder as I restocked books in the bookstore some 23 years ago. It’s my form of prayer. He was lucky that he was one of the few that got to overhear how sacred I try to make my dreams. Chances are he was overhearing me singing “Spellbound.” That’s what the memory prefers to denote.
I’ve guzzled the witches tonic of tumeric, cayenne and honey, hoping it soothes beyond my throat. I hope it grounds me in some earthiness that allows my body to feel how good it feels to rebound, to heal, to get on with it. There’s still more beauty to show. I’ve gotta be more preachy. I’ve started to shift through the images I’ve gotten this month. Majority of January in Northern California has been that eerie, if typical dry that makes this one of the weirdest pockets of beauty in this part of the world. It’s the irony that we have to worry about wildfires here when the coldest nights occur.
I look back at the beauty that I can’t help but chase in the photos I’ve taken over the last few weekends with a bit of confusion.
I don’t understand, very very much don’t.
As beautiful as the world is, why would anyone choose to prioritize killing another person for a few dollars? I say his to myself without opening my mouth. My heart twists in pain at how horrible the thought is. The tears start again. At my core I can’t stand this pain. The only thing I know how to do, so I have some faith that this is worth it, is to say this quite honestly. I have to keep asking why until it IS better. I don’t care how that might be interpreted as cruel, but there is better. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. It’s where I find myself willing to pay the price of all this pain for another day that counteracts it.
The confusion deepens in the contrast between what I see. In full irony, I feel better because all I truly feel is the beauty. The sky always will be glorious no matter where I find myself. There’s such profound heartache that so many don’t see this existence the way that I do.
Today I feel honored that I won’t stop crying.
I feel more human that I have to sit with how hard this feels. There’s a paradox in having to feel so bad to the point it twists itself into feeling good. Possibility will do that to you. It motivates the resting, the dreaming, for I’ve clearly got fighting to do when my body feels a little bit better.
