The choice to love, to really love, is incredibly, ridiculously brave.
It is not a surrendering of self but rather, a time when you scramble a bit to find your footing, and then you stand in your own power and look the Vast Beast in the eye and say, “I choose this.” I choose this thing that can both protect me and tear me apart; that can and will bring me my most enthralling joys and my most excruciating and unanticipated pain. I choose the risk. I choose the possibility of endings. I choose to be as simpatico as old souls and to be equally, heartrendingly misunderstood. I choose to be at intervals rashly taken advantage of and unexpectedly worshiped. I choose this terror and this beauty. I choose love.
Rachelle Mee-Chapman, Magpie Girl
Showing posts with label beauty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beauty. Show all posts
November 14, 2012
this terror and this beauty
July 1, 2012
May 29, 2012
Right Where I Am: 2012
I saw the invitation from Angie on Thursday morning, and I've been attempting to write this post ever since. Opening, rewriting, saving, staring, deleting, closing. Where the hell am I, anyway?
Ironic, that this call to write comes hot on the heels of my decision to stop tracking the days since they died. It was making me feel sad, and stagnant, so I traded the tickers in my sidebar for simple memorial buttons. And I had no twinges about it.
Will you judge me very harshly if I say I don't miss them like I used to? Not that I don't miss them--of course I do. But it's not the same as it used to be.
I don't look around and see where they're not. I don't resent my space or my nice clothes or my paychecks spent only on me. I don't obsess about how big they would be or what milestones they would have achieved by now. I don't worry that total strangers can't have the faintest idea whether I'm a mother or not. That they might look at me and see just another fairly pretty twenty-something who seems to mostly have her shit together. I think the reason I don't worry about that anymore is because I've realized that it actually is who I am now. I've realized I'm not fooling anyone, including myself... because it's no longer a lie.
I've got necklaces and initials. I've got two boxes of baby clothes in the back of my closet. I've got their pages on my blog, and indelible ink on my left thigh: two little doves I designed myself. My wrists are bare, but if I didn't know better, I'd swear their names were written there too. An invisible list. Indelible in its own way.
S has seen my tattoo, and the pictures that hang by my bed. He hasn't asked who they are, and I haven't told. I will, eventually. But not yet. We've been seeing each other for two months; long enough that I realized yesterday it will hurt if we break up. The thought made my stomach drop. It means I'm invested now, you see.
My babies often cross my mind, but for the most part tend to move on quickly. A smile and a nod--they get it. Mama's busy. And anyway, they've got time. They understand forever. They know we've got all the time in the world.
I feel like they each took a piece of my heart with them, when they left. That it is with them, that piece, wherever they are. Always. Except they didn't leave behind a hole, as I first thought. Clever thieves! They filled that small but gaping space with eternity instead. I simply didn't recognize it right away, couldn't sense the shape of it, was confused by its unfamiliar weight. I did not know, at first, that what I thought was lonely emptiness was really the vast wholeness of all things.
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Last year's posts: Lissie. No-No.
Ironic, that this call to write comes hot on the heels of my decision to stop tracking the days since they died. It was making me feel sad, and stagnant, so I traded the tickers in my sidebar for simple memorial buttons. And I had no twinges about it.
Will you judge me very harshly if I say I don't miss them like I used to? Not that I don't miss them--of course I do. But it's not the same as it used to be.
I don't look around and see where they're not. I don't resent my space or my nice clothes or my paychecks spent only on me. I don't obsess about how big they would be or what milestones they would have achieved by now. I don't worry that total strangers can't have the faintest idea whether I'm a mother or not. That they might look at me and see just another fairly pretty twenty-something who seems to mostly have her shit together. I think the reason I don't worry about that anymore is because I've realized that it actually is who I am now. I've realized I'm not fooling anyone, including myself... because it's no longer a lie.
I've got necklaces and initials. I've got two boxes of baby clothes in the back of my closet. I've got their pages on my blog, and indelible ink on my left thigh: two little doves I designed myself. My wrists are bare, but if I didn't know better, I'd swear their names were written there too. An invisible list. Indelible in its own way.
S has seen my tattoo, and the pictures that hang by my bed. He hasn't asked who they are, and I haven't told. I will, eventually. But not yet. We've been seeing each other for two months; long enough that I realized yesterday it will hurt if we break up. The thought made my stomach drop. It means I'm invested now, you see.
My babies often cross my mind, but for the most part tend to move on quickly. A smile and a nod--they get it. Mama's busy. And anyway, they've got time. They understand forever. They know we've got all the time in the world.
I feel like they each took a piece of my heart with them, when they left. That it is with them, that piece, wherever they are. Always. Except they didn't leave behind a hole, as I first thought. Clever thieves! They filled that small but gaping space with eternity instead. I simply didn't recognize it right away, couldn't sense the shape of it, was confused by its unfamiliar weight. I did not know, at first, that what I thought was lonely emptiness was really the vast wholeness of all things.
----------
Last year's posts: Lissie. No-No.
April 25, 2012
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
April 12, 2012
stand rapt in awe
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
Albert Einstein
February 1, 2012
January 15, 2012
come morning light
Sad, but so well done I can't stop listening to it.
(And now, a beautiful video to go with it!)
October 8, 2011
raw
My consciousness streams like comets, like meteors. Streams like rivers running madly, racing to the sea. It could be like this all the time; this free flow of thoughts. This sea of ideas. But I am surrounded by sluices and dams, all meticulously handmade... I'm terrified of drowning, you see.
A seamless transition.
That's what we all hope for, isn't it. But does it ever really happen? Is it even possible? I don't know. I think it might be a thing we made up.
I feel like every change I've ever made has been wrenching, like ripping off a band aid--only not done and over then, quickly, like they say it will be, but awful and messy and the sting doesn't fade, it just gets overwritten eventually, maybe, by a new kind of sting that isn't any better, just different.
It is so abrupt, this wide world. Blatant. Blatantly kind; blatantly cruel. Lacking in subtleties.
Oh, subtlety.
How I long for quiet details, rather than this vast, raw experience I've had. Raw like meat. Raw like bones exposed. Raw like animals in the winter in the wild, cold, ravening, merciless. Harsh.
Weeks, months, years. My baby is dead, dead! And it guts me still, in the same beautiful, haunting way it always has and always will, except that my breaths get bigger, now, instead of smaller, and I am so excruciatingly alive I can hardly stand it. I want to cry and sing. Laugh and scream. Shake my fist at the falling sky. Dance. Dance. Dance.
I am alive.
Last night I dreamed I was pregnant, heavily so, and happy. Near the end of the dream, I thought my water broke, but I wasn't sure, because I'd never felt it before. It made me sad, in the dream. I didn't know what to do next, and I was so sad. I felt like less than the other mothers, the ones who had done this before. I felt that I should know.
I was still sad, when I woke up, still unsure.
There is indescribable pain radiating outward from behind my right shoulder blade, as if there were a massive hook through and through my flesh. (It's happened before, right there, though I couldn't tell you why.) I've been almost totally incapacitated for two whole days. Disheartening. I try to breathe into it, but it's deep deep down and it's boiling lava hot and it hurts-hurts-hurts-hurts-hurts, and I'd rather just lie as still as I can, and pretend it's not there.
Story of my life.
Oh god, it hurts. All of it hurts.
But I am fierce, and clever, and strong, and no one has completely gotten the best of me yet.
A seamless transition.
That's what we all hope for, isn't it. But does it ever really happen? Is it even possible? I don't know. I think it might be a thing we made up.
I feel like every change I've ever made has been wrenching, like ripping off a band aid--only not done and over then, quickly, like they say it will be, but awful and messy and the sting doesn't fade, it just gets overwritten eventually, maybe, by a new kind of sting that isn't any better, just different.
It is so abrupt, this wide world. Blatant. Blatantly kind; blatantly cruel. Lacking in subtleties.
Oh, subtlety.
How I long for quiet details, rather than this vast, raw experience I've had. Raw like meat. Raw like bones exposed. Raw like animals in the winter in the wild, cold, ravening, merciless. Harsh.
Weeks, months, years. My baby is dead, dead! And it guts me still, in the same beautiful, haunting way it always has and always will, except that my breaths get bigger, now, instead of smaller, and I am so excruciatingly alive I can hardly stand it. I want to cry and sing. Laugh and scream. Shake my fist at the falling sky. Dance. Dance. Dance.
I am alive.
Last night I dreamed I was pregnant, heavily so, and happy. Near the end of the dream, I thought my water broke, but I wasn't sure, because I'd never felt it before. It made me sad, in the dream. I didn't know what to do next, and I was so sad. I felt like less than the other mothers, the ones who had done this before. I felt that I should know.
I was still sad, when I woke up, still unsure.
There is indescribable pain radiating outward from behind my right shoulder blade, as if there were a massive hook through and through my flesh. (It's happened before, right there, though I couldn't tell you why.) I've been almost totally incapacitated for two whole days. Disheartening. I try to breathe into it, but it's deep deep down and it's boiling lava hot and it hurts-hurts-hurts-hurts-hurts, and I'd rather just lie as still as I can, and pretend it's not there.
Story of my life.
Oh god, it hurts. All of it hurts.
But I am fierce, and clever, and strong, and no one has completely gotten the best of me yet.
June 19, 2011
over it
I'm not over it. Any of it. I doubt I will ever be "over it." Rather, I feel as though I am--suddenly--in it. Not again, but for the first time. I am in my life. And the clarity and the openness come not from looking back, but from looking around. Here. Now. This moment, and this one, and this.
I am in.
I am in.
January 6, 2011
speaking of stars
Long after dinner was done and the coals in the kettle barbeque gone nearly cold, we stoked them back up again and toasted American marshmallows over the low flames on fondue forks scavenged resourcefully from a kitchen drawer.
Hovering too close for comfort over glowing briquettes, fingers and tongues both burnt willingly on molten globs of sugar. The scrape of the spade across the grate, making golden splinters of light fly in every direction. The unique, peculiar sound of a marshmallow, burning. (Have you ever sat and listened to a marshmallow, burning? It's fantastic.)
Overhead a million million stars glittered in the night sky, like a massive firework whose sparks have never stopped falling toward us. And I thought to myself: I am happy. In this moment, I am as near to happy as I have ever been.
Hovering too close for comfort over glowing briquettes, fingers and tongues both burnt willingly on molten globs of sugar. The scrape of the spade across the grate, making golden splinters of light fly in every direction. The unique, peculiar sound of a marshmallow, burning. (Have you ever sat and listened to a marshmallow, burning? It's fantastic.)
Overhead a million million stars glittered in the night sky, like a massive firework whose sparks have never stopped falling toward us. And I thought to myself: I am happy. In this moment, I am as near to happy as I have ever been.
September 12, 2010
the vast soft interior of the universe
As I lay there, listening to the soft slap of the sea, and thinking these sad and strange thoughts, more and more and more stars had gathered, obliterating the separateness of the Milky Way and filling
up the whole sky. And far far away in the ocean of gold, stars were silently shooting and falling and finding their fates, among those billions and billions of merging golden lights. And curtain after
curtain of gauze was quietly removed, and I saw stars behind stars behind stars, as in the magical Odeon of my youth. And I saw into
the vast soft interior of the universe which was slowly and gently turning itself inside out. I went to sleep, and in my sleep I seemed to hear a sound of singing.
Irish Murdoch, The sea, the sea
September 8, 2010
outcomes
There's no denying that losing my babies has made me a more compassionate person. Losing my children has made me gentler with myself and others. It has given me an intimate understanding of the intense fragility of life. Which is a kind of beauty from ashes, I suppose. A pale, attenuated beauty.
But I have to say, I would much rather be a bit less understanding, a little more naive -- a slightly crummier person all together -- if it meant I had my children here with me tonight.
But I have to say, I would much rather be a bit less understanding, a little more naive -- a slightly crummier person all together -- if it meant I had my children here with me tonight.
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