Digging Down...

Friday, January 28, 2011

There is a layer of artifice in myself I must penetrate, as thin and transparent as it might be, for that is its disguise. I have been aware of its presence for some time now, but mostly the awareness came and went, until I began to write poetry lately, until I began to strive to be a poet and kept hitting a wall once I get a few lines into it. I think now, that the wall is my artifice. It is the same glass wall that was in my dream a few days ago, of being with 3 love interests in a glass building, then watching them leave through the glass revolving door with other women.
__________

Blew my stack, again, at Michael, over the seemingly trivial issue of household chores, my old thorn of contention. How many times have I been here? Dozens? Hundreds? I told him that if I could, I would move out and live by myself, never to clean up or take care of anyone else again. He was hurt and stormed out. So here I am, alone, sitting in the fall-out and checking for survivors…

My soul, what do you want?

Solitude, silence, stillness. Relationship without attachment, in the spiritual sense.

What does that mean…?

………

So I wrote him this email:

“I am being triggered, so I am regressing where this issue is concerned. Therefore I need you to be here completely, or as much as you can, in this moment, in all of your maturity and vision. We can live without each other, of course, we are old enough to know that, and we are tougher than we like to believe. But we won’t be happy with the hole it leaves, because we are not enlightened beings who are whole. We are still struggling with missing pieces of ourselves and have need of someone else to bridge those gaps for us. Aside from that so-called co-dependency, which is not necessarily a ‘bad’ thing because it does provide nurture, we also share. This is the deeper core, or the spine, of the body of our relationship. I know this is the part that counts, this is the part that’s rare. Without this part, this core, there is no relationship, at least not one that matters to me. So when you mentioned love, I am hoping this is what you see, deep down inside, beyond the physical attachment and conventional notion of love.

In my dark corner, I am struggling to bring some light to the question:

If our relationship is a whole body, and this problem I have is an illness which has just displayed its symptoms, then I want to know, is it just an allergic reaction, like a skin rash, or is it pre-cancerous? I think it’s not too late, right now, to commit to working on it, to reverse the symptoms. This is the question I am asking myself, because it feels the most important. It is a question to myself first, but you are a part of the answer.”

Perhaps I am still side-stepping the real issue rumbling underground, but I think I’m at least being honest about where I am with this, and where I am in my whole process right now… Make way, for the auger*…

~~~~~~~~~

* the "auger" refers to an image I had while writing the following poem a few days ago:

My Addiction

I wanted to look at
my unhappiness as
an addiction, but I knew
that
in using a label I am
putting the whole ball
of wax—teeth, hair, claws and all—
into a ready-made mould.

It is a perspective, one
defined by other people’s
ideas of addiction, but it
also stops me from seeing
it any other way. Peeling

back the label then, there is
just the usual yawning
chasm of a black nothing.
I’ve stood on this precipice many times,
looking down into its indifference. It is
oddly quiet
and still,
and I am calm
in the absence of anything.

I’ll stay here for a while,
navel-gaze at this black hole
inside me…

There seems to be, in the middle
distance, a shape that’s sharply conical,
tapering down into the vastness, its
lines glinting barely, but clearly
in my mind. There’s something
surgical about it, as if it’s capable
of boring with immeasurable precision
into the densest, hardest dark. I wonder

what such an instrument is
doing in the bowels
of my nothingness. It is as still
as everything else is here, and
I know it’s never been set
into motion, never been used.

Ought I to turn it on
then, as it seems to imply
a depth that I hadn’t known
was there, unplumbed. (Who’s
ever heard of a deep that comes
with its own auger?) Uncertainty
sparks around my head, it is the air
that I draw, the gap between me
and my greatness. It is
the negative matter this
hole is made of.

Uncertainty.

The sucking mud of paradise
lost that is now frozen. My
selfhood in it trapped
like fish from the last
age, mid-gasp.

It is the source of coldness in me,
what you turn away from.

I am mortalized
in discontent.

If only I could turn
myself inside out, bring
the black hole of nothingness
into the light of day, it would
become the mantle of
nothingness I could wear
on lonely treks
along the Middle Way.

The auger whirs,
virgin metal winking
in collusion.

It’s time to go down. Are you
ready?