Is Love Enough?
The moon tonight doesn’t bring music that inspires submerging in water; instead, she brings the opposite.
Land, air and fire; no water but the tiny oceans that fall from my eyes — no wind but the one that moves in and out, my chest and belly — rise and fall, rise and fall — and of course, me sitting, heart beating, thinking, feeling, naked and raw, as if all the layers that were there from the start have evaporated and instead my insides are on the outsides.
My work is to strengthen what I do have and through the sheer need to survive, divert all foreign objects that aren’t born of my own volition to stick somewhere else.
I have to get clear, and this bottle of beer is not usually the kind of medicine I settle for, but today is a different kind of day and the land I’m in is new and an excuse to arm myself for the battlefield of emotion that I have stepped into — tiny bombs hiding beneath my feet waiting to take me away.
I know the tools I need to navigate through, but right now I am the curious case of the confused motherless daughter, or something like that.
We are given this life and we are given no guidebook on how to live it; to survive, we make rules about how it’s all supposed to work.
We develop outlines for a few different kinds of living and we do our best to factor in happiness and joy and we fill everything we can see with voices and images telling us all how it should all look — the blueprints we drew to keep us safe and contained.
Beyond what we dreamed up is the unknown, and more of us than we think are cutting through the wild jungle to find the treasure of something-else that is out there.
Sometimes we see past it, we get it, and we stop watching because we know already (we have known since birth) that the beat we move to does not keep up with the hum around us; our vibration has a bit of treble over here and bass over there and every now and then (when we least expect it!), a sound like a haven of trees covered in a coven of birds singing at dusk takes us by surprise and the soundtrack changes and so do we.
And then, we end up here and realize that the warmth in our left palm is from the heart that we’ve torn out of our chest; we sit here — I sit here — and play the same song on repeat.
I watch my own heart throb in my own hand and I feel her ooze and I think for a moment what would it feel like to stick pins into her and I realize that the sediment of bullshit that pulsed through my system (a hundred years ago, when I was a different person altogether) has been disturbed and it’s coming up for a last hurrah.
I will finish this one bottle of beer and I will fill a jar full of water and I will wash it all down.
I will move from the bed that has become my favorite place to write because the animals can snuggle as close as they feel like it and I will kneel down on the floor and place my forehead on the cool wood and I will pray like a motherfucker.
I will ask God to hold me as I rock from side to side and I will pray for understanding and I will pray for grace and I will pray for all of the things that are much bigger than me and that I only have an inkling of understanding of.
I will ask what my fate is; I will not expect an answer but I will ask the question because I do not know what lies in store and maybe nobody does.
And then, I will crawl in this big bed with a warm dog and sleep the sleep of angels who’ve spent the night in hell.
Tomorrow, when and if it comes, will ask me again and again: Is love enough?
*****