Awakened mid-dream, my jukebox mind is playing Buck Owens' Together Again. This began a few months ago, the music of others already in progress. I have no idea what it means.
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I am a drawer full of swapmeet silverware, grape-patterns, flowers, initials that are not mine. I am vintage Nancy Drew and The Road; It's A Wonderful Life and True Romance. My heart wishes for claret-red frizzy hair; my head seeks invisibility.
I am the seven-year-old who wants pink boiled icing on her birthday cake, the eleven-year-old who moistens Mabelline black cake mascara with spit. I am the eighteen-year-old whose only vision is to call San Francisco home while someone teaches her how to write plays and the twenty-three-year-old who wonders if it is possible to wish herself into a sleep that will not end.
My parts don't match. Are we allowed to serve arthritis and rock and roll on the same plate? Aren't there rules?
Apparently not. We are untethered, certain at last of one thing: that we have to make it up as we go along.
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- Marylinn Kelly
- “i want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. i want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing as though I had WINGS.” -- Mary Oliver "The whole of life lies in the verb seeing." Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881 - 1955)
11 comments:
there are no rules but that everyone ends. it's terrifying and liberating.
Your writing today reminds me of Walt Whitman's "Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am huge. I contain multitudes." I know how you feel, Marylinn. Such is the timbre of these times? Courage... L, C
Lateral thinking has got me this far, but if I’m to circumvent my fear of flight to one day reach the remote Pitcairn Island somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean only via 4-wheels, I may just need to devise some sort of a plan... may, albeit not necessarily will. ;)
In extemporizing we trust.
PS: Many thanks for dropping by, it’s always a delight to welcome new readers into my little cove of silliness, occasionally there’s the odd post on there with a semblance of added gravitas about every 32nd of each month. ;)
Maggie - Terrifying and liberating would be my definition of untethered.
Claire - Is it possible to prepare anyone for the fact that they will need to find their own way? Thank you, courage back.
t i m - I think what it might be like to have a plan but seem to lack the skills to construct one. I will be back, not only on the 32nd of the month, for we seem to have about all the gravitas we can handle.
Marylinn,
Well, it probably doesn't mean anything. But then the fact that it probably doesn't mean anything also probably doesn't mean anything. So it all sort of evens out. Emphasis on the sort of.
"I have no idea what it means..."
More important than meaning, I think, is trust. Recently it seems (from this distance anyway) you have found something that may or may not mean something. But you are trusting it anyway. This means everything, sort of, I think.
WV says: "loggy". This would be an example of how things seems to clamourously insist on meaning something to us, though of course we are the makers of meaning, not the things. It is late and I am feeling logy.
(I find by the way that arthritis does impede rock & roll somewhat, and I fear that I know what this means, though I wish I did not.)
I'm stopped on "the music of others already in progress."
Is it our job as individual selves to make our own music? Everything means something in a dream. Or the state where you are dreaming, but you aren't awake.
I feel I have two parts. The inside parts and the outside parts - the writing self and the walking self. They are slippery around each other. Hold on for bits of time to remind me they can coexist and then their hands let go. And in the meantime your shadow feels two steps behind and your jeans feel loose.
I don't know if our parts are made to match. Perhaps they are made to coexist or touch or roll off each other - like oil, like paints mixing, like all fluid things. We are more fluid than not.
Your rules are what you make. The beauty of being a self is you can make the rules as you go.
Hi Marylinn, the good thing the absolute truth about growing up or old depending is how we get to dissolve the rules if we want. If I want to ride my bike in flip flops I do. If I want to go to the grocery store without brushing my hair I do and fuck you if you don't like it. I have a voice now and while it's quiet it's powerful. And so is yours. I don't care who so and so thinks. There's no time to worry about how you think I look! There's so much time such a luxury of time to be exactly who I always wanted to be without anyone wanting to mold or form me. This kind of freedom is exhilarating and so was this post.
Yours,
Rebecca
wv: luber (I still am! Just another lie they foist on us)
Hi Marylinn...what a provocative post. Your writing swoops me up and takes me such fun places!! I want to be a red head too!!
Tom - Thank you. Intuition, after I turned my back on it throughout my childhood and so-called youth, plays a great part in what I trust. And I agree (if I understand correctly) that we have the choice of assigning our own meanings, and not necessarily to situations around us which are declared meaningful by others. I wish for both of us a way that arthritis and rock and roll can be compatible...I suppose if the feet aren't asked to do too much, it could work.
Rachel - I think my music consists, in large part, of music made, created by others, my soundtrack, for I am not a musician. If dream information was easier to decipher...and I don't think our parts are meant to match, that is some antiquated notion that is prying itself loose. We, and life around us, are very fluid indeed. Thank you for adding to this exploration.
Rebecca - Thank you. Exhilarating is a desirable quality. So is freedom, once it becomes possible to trust that nothing dark-winged and pointy-clawed will come shrieking out to punish us for flip-flops or other perceived transgressions. It sometimes feels that we take such a long time to grow into ourselves.
Donna - We should swoop together to the hair coloring aisle, perhaps. I have not entirely given up on the idea. Sometimes my process is slow. Thank you for coming along for the ride.
i am drawn to contaryness (sp?). not everything about us fits in a neat package. not everything should make sense. moreso, life is not efficient even though mankind makes waterways that run straight. i like to remember natural streams meander.
Sherry - It like that too - natural streams meander. We are not box-shaped; how can we expect to fit comfortably into one and what is within us that would make us want to try?
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