As he and I watched the sunset on my last evening in North Carolina, he said, “I’m so jealous. I’d be riding a wind current up there, like a hawk, not even flapping my wings.” I stared out at the sky, at the birds, black swatches against the pinkening horizon. I was reminded of The Once and Future King, when Merlin teaches The Wart by allowing him to inhabit animal bodies: ants, geese, fish.
What would it be like to have the strength of imagination, or memory, to know what that would feel like, deep in the marrow of your bones?
Category: Universe
sure of the tide
These waters
Pull at me
Lap at my hips
I learned to swim
In the roughest weather
So here
I am
Breathing in
Sure of myself
Sure of the tide
That always takes me
To you
the monsters aren’t what you think they are
I am terrified that nobody will see.
I am terrified that someone will see.
I am terrified that nobody will ask me if I’m okay.
I am terrified that someone will ask me if I’m okay.
I long to stay hidden forever.
I long to be seen.
I long to suddenly cease to exist.
I long to live.
These are all stories we tell ourselves. All of it. The heartbreak. The childhood. The loves. The things we’re good at, the people we want to be around, the places we find joy, all of it. Every last drop is a story we tell ourselves.
Except the body. The body speaks only in memory. In grief. In imprints. There are no tales to weave here. The body cannot lie. Here, there is only an unraveling of what is already whole and perfect and older than we can imagine.
The monsters aren’t what you think they are.
This is our work, this task of ‘being human.’ None of us are prepared. We don’t know how to live. We try anyway. We want to allow our deepest desires to come up for air, but we are terrified of what they will do to our lives. We condemn our fears, even as we lean in closer to listen to their warnings.
The monsters aren’t what you think they are.
We long for a soft landing. We want beauty to be simple, joy to be pure, and growth to be painless. We are ashamed when our lives are complex and difficult. We condemn our darkness, even as it reaches up to us, a gentle suppliant.
The monsters aren’t what you think they are.
The body knows darkness. It knows the darkness that envelops the moon each month, the darkness of incubation, the bearer of life. Incapable of masking, paraphrasing, mitigating, or pretending to be something it’s not, the darkness simply is.
This terrifies us. We have no control. We try, desperately, to maintain the illusion that we are separate from our darkness. We are determined to chase our myth of perfection. We are determined to deny the murk collecting in our torsos, in our jawbones, our hands.
The monsters aren’t what you think they are.
The body knows murk.
The murk is the soft darkness after a parent says goodnight, when you can still hear voices murmuring on the other side of the door. The murk is the stillness of a summer evening, draping itself leisurely out over the white hay bales. The murk is not a sinister mystery. Instead, it is a circle of your younger selves. They are pulling memories out from the depths of their backpacks, showing you each precious piece, proud, triumphant, a little self-conscious. They are naming their grief. They are showing you their wounds. They are waiting for you to touch their shoulders, to smile at their tales, to come to know their desires.
The monsters aren’t what you think they are. Most often, they are scared children, desperate to be heard.
These are all stories we tell ourselves. The darkness teaches us how to notice our stories. How to ask questions. How to be quiet. How to listen. How to love. How to live.
Hi all. You can read one of the seeds for this piece here.
-Siena
Security is Surrender
It is astounding to me how much I have grasped at security. I have believed that in order to secure my future, I need to live small and tidy in the present. I have nursed anxieties about “not having enough” and “not being enough” and “not doing enough.” Grasping at security offers the illusion of control. If I can just make everything good enough, if I can settle into something, then I have control over my life, my existence, the lives of my beloveds. But this isn’t true, is it? Why is it that I insist on keeping up this ridiculous charade of control?
We do not know if we will be alive tomorrow. We do not know if we will be alive one minute from now. We do not know if our friends and family will be here, either.
What is “security,” then, really? What does security look like amidst all of these truths?
Perhaps, faced with this question, we are drawn to admit that we know nothing. That we control nothing. That, in fact, security does not exist.
Or, perhaps, we are drawn to redefine security.
Security is possessing the ability to access your core self, maintaining a direct line to your life force.
Security is staying curious, and receptive towards, perspectives on the world that differ from your own.
Security is allowing your desire to shine out of your body, to play, to explore, to keep you safe.
Perhaps, faced with these truths, we are led to a different conclusion entirely: security is surrender. How might we live our lives, love our people, do our work, if we truly believe that to be secure is to be like water, not hard stone? Even hard stone gives way eventually to the current.
attention is
Attention is closeness.
Attention is surrender to the ordinary.
Attention is what happens when God becomes elemental.
Attention is intimacy with mortality.
Attention is freedom.
Attention accepts but does not make excuses for.
Attention is love.
we are the subject, not the object
I was.
I wanted.
I came.
I remember.
I felt.
I wanted.
I needed.
I conducted.
I made.
I wanted.
I knew.
I lived.
I was afraid.
I was listening.
I wanted to be free.
I came across myself many times over.
I remembered.
I felt myself forgetting.
I wanted to be good.
I needed everything.
I conducted ceremonies.
I climbed up, even as I dreaded falling off.
I made myself jump.
I wanted wholeness.
I knew I would always be leaving a version of myself behind.
I lived anyway.
evolving
I say
through saying, I die a little
through dying, I grow a little broader
approaching masculinity and femininity as neutral territories
Feminine is moon, is flower, is twilight.
Masculine is sun, is pollen, is high noon.
Feminine is wisdom, is strength, is color.
Masculine is clarity, is armor, is shape.
suddenly, there was light
It was as if the ceiling cracked suddenly, and the light danced all around us, defying all fear or obligation.
this is how it’s supposed to be
this is how it’s supposed to be.
life is not meant to be easy
it is not meant to have obvious meaning
or to satisfy some colossal curiosity.
Life was never meant to be simple.
Nature isn’t simple.
Humans aren’t simple.
we are here
we exist
even that statement contains
infinite complexity
ordered chaos
disappointments.
this is how it’s supposed to be.
Siena Rose 