Leaps

It is amazing what we learn about ourselves, about others, about the human experience, when we put our feet forward.

Of course you have heard the old “put you best foot forward” adage, but this is pedal discrimination in my opinion.

They work best together to take great leaps.

And once you have left the ground the magic starts to happen.

Straddling the learning curve at the place where knowing and not knowing meet is a very exciting place to be.

Such tension is the birthplace of creativity, that movement of the soul that reinforces the will to live and the will to meaning.

Of late, my life has felt so dreamlike. I am doing things and going places I never thought would ever actualize in my life, but here I am.

I am focused on the future, but absorbed in the present. I am the harvester of authentic and almost palpably intimate moments with those in my life: family, friends, strangers and the like. The stories of others and their raw emotions are my drug.

My soul can rest knowing that the seemingly futile hard work I put into building my character has paid off exponentially as I am blossoming into the woman I have always wanted to be.

I just never realized any of it until I took that leap…

                                                                                                      

Journeying

The grey clouds with their powerful display of ambiguous authority create a heavy ceiling bearing frigid gusts as I set off home. My hand shakes as I close the door behind me. I am tense and stiff, losing my balance as I walk but maintaining a level of control that keeps me in motion, surprisingly. Steadying myself with one hand on the fence, I recognize my nervousness and partially blame it on the sudden change of temperature, unwilling to trace the anxiety to its origin. As this awareness fumbles around my conscious mind it becomes all the more pronounced.

Bending over to free the lock from the chain, I move as if in slow motion. The chain is cold to the touch and the links jingle together as I uncoil it from the fence and gather it in one hand. The other hand uncaps the lock to expose the keyhole and I place the key inside, yet, all the while observing the nervous vibrations pulsing through my body. The lock is snuggly replaced around the seat shaft and I unassuredly raise my leg over the seat and set my foot back on the ground, a little steadier than before. Cautiously eyeing the street for any yellow orbs tearing in my direction, my bike and I cross the threshold of the driveway and I suddenly realize that my journey here was somewhat hazy and the thick twilight of the newly rested sun has made any landmarks unrecognizable.

I head into the direction from whence I came a short while earlier, but am overwhelmed by the indistinct buildings surrounding me, undifferentiating one street from another. Something pulls me to the left. I pause and peer at the street sign from under the bright, conical projection of the streetlight. The name sounds familiar, but the direction is unknown. My countenance hardens and I strain my neck to conduct a thorough reading of my environment; the brow furrows and eyes narrow their perspective.

Exhaling, I push myself erect on the seat and try to hold myself in such a way that will best block out the cold wind. My feet manage to stay strong and controlled in their circular movements as I ride to the next sign. The stop sign ceases the motion of my body and my thoughts and I am reminded of my disorientation. I recognize the name but am again troubled with which direction to choose. I feel I should take another left, but turn my head right and my body follows. The contoured ridges of the handle dig into my hands as I tighten my grip. I pass one unfamiliar street and then another, and peer down the corridor of houses to the small lighted frame on the horizon and smile.

“Ahh…Montreal road” I think to myself.

I execute a quick turn across the two lanes and begin to back track riding away from the misdirection of the previous moment. I am a little better oriented now, heading North East.

I ride back to the original intersection and pass through the quadrant surprised at my pleasant demeanour. The cold is no longer my enemy but a brother in arms as it cools the internal embers of a spirit screaming for equanimity. This ever-present nervousness is but a symptom of its dis-ease and the cold provides a striking contrast to its ferocity. The interaction of these extremes feeds my strength as it passes through the thin fabric of my clothing, pushing me forward. I knew as I left home that it was going to be a brisk evening, but had not anticipated this. My emotional volatility seems somewhat akin to the capriciousness of Canadian weather – all four seasons in one day.  

Another memorable street. I am now cognizant that I am headed in the right direction and aware of my good pace kept with cool clarity, yet that anxious presence has not subsided. I squeeze the handlebars and allow the strength to surge up my arms. My laboured breathing alarms me, as it always does. At the next sign I smile and turn right. My feet, head and heart are all leading me on the right path, so why this internal unrest? I still struggle for a deeper breath but feel poised atop this wonderful piece of technology that requires my energetic commitment to fulfill its purpose. Some of the tension in my shoulders releases and I sit more firmly in my seat; heavy, centred – grounded.

I feel the lump in my throat and knot in my side and slump with a deflating sigh. The same baggage from the same thoughts, feelings and behaviours.

            “…How does one rid oneself of self-destructive habits? Why do we hold onto pain like we own it?” I think to myself.

I let out a forceful sigh. As I feel the restricted movements of my lungs trapped inside their caged housing, I suddenly become aware of the immediate centre point of my body. This awareness forces my spine straight of its own volition and causes my feet dig into the peddles. I smile again. My body is no longer a separate entity from the road, from the cars, from the atmosphere. All are travelling together one moment at a time; the strength in my core, the combustion of the engine, the charge in the clouds are all in time. The click, click, click of the spinning tire is steady and I begin to tap my hand against the handlebar to the rhythm on the count of one and three, and think to myself…

“…Music is a marriage of time kept and timelessness felt when you are lost in a moment…”

Another recognizable name. I immediately turn right without skipping a beat. My fingers are beginning to chill but my heart is warm and I shut my mind to the cold.  My ability to navigate through this suburban traffic trap surprises me since I usually feel caught like a rat in a maze from the all the seemingly nonsensical twists and turns. A self-pride inflates me and I hold myself with a relaxed authority as if a touring motorcycle were instead beneath me. My skittishness to the diminished sunlight is overcome with a feeling of unity with my environment; sight is no longer the predominant sense leading me home. I feel as if I were tied to a tether wound through the streets that will lead me to my door. Looking to my right, my eye catches a tall, willowy tree in its early spring bloom and it feels as if an ethereal elixir capable of calming the quick pace of time was being secreted from its form. The road is quiet now, free of any movement but the rotation of the circles carrying me to my destination. As I enter the mouth of a path that winds through a small forest, I immediately feel the fresh, still air that envelops wooded land.

As I move through the cool blanket, threads dance across my face and kiss my lips as I inhale, mixing this cool, peaceful substance with the inferno burning inside. The air permeates my thoughts and the current pushes them out through the back of my skull. I sit higher still, lighter. I am out on the other side, entering more suburbs. I hesitate for a moment, turn right, and then swerve back again. I know where I need to go.

A little frightened by this confident and wordless voice inside, I feel myself retracting into my mind: the slate where fear is manifest. Another recognizable name; a sigh of relief and a smile for my stupid doubt. I round a corner and come to a catwalk between two houses, linking cul-de-sacs. The bricks are purposefully raised to slow bikers. I cautiously slow my speed and straighten my legs to rise from my seat.

“Is it ever bumpy!”

I allow a quiet giggle to escape as I near the end. The vibrations have made their way into every part of my body, leaving me to feel as though I were glowing as I return to the smooth pavement. My knuckles are chapped from gripping so tightly in the wind, but I do not care.

As I shift gears, a hidden passage of my mind is sparked to light. My gaze moves inward as I investigate the permeable darkness, judging its depths and intentions whilst continuing my forward physical motion. My legs are moving to the metronomical sound of the rotations, my lungs heaving with respiration, my eyes are open to the road ahead, but I lose conscious presence for a moment. My mind is instantaneously hard at work drawing up a storyboard of demonic fantasies. That recess of my mind that wants itself to be known, grabbing hold of my attention. My stomach tightens, my shoulders rise towards my ears and my back inclines with a slight curve.

I snap back to reality, shaking my head to re-gain visual focus. A hard and fast exhalation passes through my lips as I ponder the split second journey from whence I just came: the mines of fear; those deep, dark parts of ourselves where guilt, shame, disappointment and despair are extracted from the infinitely abundant quarries of self-loathing. I may have been swift to shut the door this time, but it always swings back leaving itself slightly ajar.

I think to myself, “Why does my mind naturally take me to such scary places? What is fuelling this tirade?”

As I ride on in reflection of this unnecessary self-immolation, my attention is again called to my internal distress. I feel as though there were a constant standoff being staged between the voices calling out from the quarries of fear, trying to pull me further and further down into a self-contemptuous disparity, and the song of my spirit, a melody of simple wisdom and inherent strength so profound yet so subtle. They are waging a territorial and cacophonous battle of words within, trying to determine who will be victorious, a battle in which my outward successes or failures will be determined.

A break in the cloud reveals a waxing moon and my eyes turn to reflect its light. I look down at my hands upon the handlebar and my arms that extend out of them to meet my shoulders. I feel the weight of my body and my muscles react to the impact of the uneven road, a welcome sensation from the weightlessness of pure thought. From the painted lines of the road that grabbed my attention, I look up to the street sign. Through my cheeky half smile I exhale and peddle harder. I am but a few streets from home now and aware of my diminished anxiety. Closing my eyes for a moment I turn my face toward the sky and a thought enters my head:

“We are not brought into this world to be afraid but to feel feelings and experience experiences. Uncertainty of what lies around the next corner may be the tightrope we tread upon, but trust in oneself is the safety net.”

I round the last corner at a sharp angle and my knee threatens to scrape the pavement. I pick up the pace and speed right past my door without a glance.

A Matter of Choice

We are faced with a decision as a species that humanity has never had to seriously concern itself with,
Until now.
We know not why we inhabit this mound of rock,
But we know we are programmed to keep it inhabited.
Or are we?
I am told that within the next few years,
The natural biological tendency written deep within my genetic code will send stronger and stronger signals to my male counterparts that I am ready to be drilled, filled and fertilized.
A rather unsettling prospect for me.
When our ancestors emerged from the primordial soup of originality,
I imagine the single-celled organisms that came to be lacked the complex neurological chemistry to foresee the evolutionary tangent nature would later produce: us.
We, however, happen to house this magical, chemical machinery within the confines of our being,
And, unlike those funky inhabitants of the womb of the Earth itself, we have foresight and the ability to choose to bare fruit.
No immaculate conceptions here, ladies and gentlemen.
So, what of this choice?
The thinker inside of me says:
Take stock of the billions of us roaming the very ground from which we were birthed,
Chipping away at what was once abundant,
Only to move ourselves closer to a self-inflicted apocalypse.
Taps will no longer run freely,
Fossil fuels will no longer be beneath our feet but amongst the gaseous realm of our atmosphere,
Fertile land will be barren and arid from chemical exposure and mass production.
And what about our superior Western culture which capitalizes on the docility of children,
Shaping their minds to be little consumers,
Stealing that sparkle from their eyes ever earlier and earlier?
I would not wish to throw my children into the thralls of chaos,
Paying the heaviest price for mistakes made by generations past.
Knowingly and willingly placing a human being into a situation of such sufferableness seems sociopathic.
The agent within me, however, says:
That these breasts and hips were not given to me for show but are instead tools for creating, birthing, rearing, and shaping a generation of beings.
Through lots of hard, socially alienating work, the fruit of my labour can posses a global consciousness unfathomable to us straddling the fence of eco-socio-spiritual consciousness and materialistic, consumer-based systems;
A global consciousness that will soon recognize the necessity of action in favour of retaining a habitable habitat.
But such a perspective requires nourishing values and us fence-sitters are not quite so good at identifying let alone acting upon benevolent values.
When my child just out of diapers demands the latest Mac gizmo for fear of being ostracized from their peers,
I know the super heroine work will begin.
So, to abstain from or to bring forth life are both acts of love rooted in the desire to diminish suffering.
But the very nature of the question is not rooted in love,
Rather a frightening distrust of humanity.
Where, then, do I derive my hope?

Small Frames in the Bigger Picture

It always seemed more correct to me that life should be complicated.
Surrounded by many known unknowns and an infinite amount of unknown unknowns, it just seemed likely that complexity should be the foundation from which a life is built.
However serious I take my life and the experiences I have, I always considered that within such a perspective of life meaning is born.
But if life is what you make it and if I choose to complicate mine, what of those who choose simplicity?
They cannot be deemed incorrect, on the contrary.
With eyes connected to a brain that filters life through the big picture lens, over complication comes naturally.
Taming the wild intellectual beast seems to be my quest,
Turning a heavily laden life into a weightless one,
Devoid of abstract meaning or purpose.
Admitting that there are so many facets of this earthly life which we will never know, understand, ascertain is step one of the self-help programme.
I have always sought rules of engagement, or certainty, within the day-to-day,
Providing myself with a false sense of security.
From whence these rules are supposed to originate or whom enforces them is a question I cannot answer, And I reject anyone else's rules but mine thus.
But to play the game with authenticity one must embrace uncertainty.
The magic elixir of life.
Full of fear, excitement, enchantment and disappointment.
Simply put,
The best parts of the human experience.
Simplicity, or the process to, must involve a stripping away of unnecessities,
So here comes the hard work:
Discerning which parts stay and which parts are destined for the burning pile.
It seems simplicity, too, can be complicated.

Un-Present

Rushing moments, pushing the present to its limits,
Conscious of the constant hum of right now.
With fingers housing creative energies poised to attack the next project that must be undertaken,
Charging forward with an unharnessed power of lightening.
Shrugging off the past, blazing into the future, and disconnected from the moment
As self-consciousness is intellectualized and not holistically experienced.
Come down from the clouds to rest your feet on the Earth.
Painful awareness of the tick-tock of the clock ironically brings one closer to death by preventing life,
As time is kept alive in the mind,
Staking claim to valuable space.
Stunted by the pressure of what must, what should, what could be done in the next moment.
Overwhelmed by the possibilities and paralyzed by indecision.
The clock ticks on.
This is the perversion of living here and now,
Letting oneself be caged by thought and not be freed by thoughtlessness.
The anxiety stirred by the passing moments commands to be heeded
As attempts are made to weave the fabric of time into a satin smooth material.
A kind of enveloping cloth that caresses the skin softly and lays lightly upon the body.
But this is not time.
It is not gentle,
It is not subtle,
But it is weightless.
The lightest thing in existence.

A.C.H.

Do not be preoccupied with the amount of spins around the sun,
Do not think about the missed opportunities for fun.
Do not think about where you should and ought to be
And all the things you never got to see.
The past is past so lay it to rest
For the years ahead will be amongst the best.
Do not try to so hard to find the true you,
For the more you focus,
The more its slips out of view.
Give yourself some credit and time to mature,
You will find your place in this crazy world,
Of that, I am sure.

Garage Sale

Selling memories for a dollar here, a dollar there.
Shedding non-contiguous layers that adhered themselves to my subjectivity.
Objects of fondness,
Objects of darkness,
Of beauty, of pain,
Of excess, of childishness.
All of days gone by.
My objective history laid out on poinsettia print without sequence, without the cut of time's knife slicing the past into dates, places, people,
Nicely categorized for easy mental reference.
A dollar here, a dollar there as I watch physical parts of my narrative history incite the desire of passerbys who know not of its place within my life.
The item exchanges hands and a new story begun.
I am glad to see some go as easy and cheaply as they do,
Others cause me to hesitate as a rush of images flood my mind.
A summer in England, a trip to Paris, a visit to the Laurentian mountains all embodied into a few items of representation.
In losing objects I have not lost my past ,
I have lost weight,
Mentally and physically,
As the heaviness of past is replaced with the lightness of future.
A dollar here, a dollar there is all they are worth in the end.

Wordliness

To conjure up no image
Thinking only in alphabetics
Crossing the same streets
Hitting the same walls.
Stunting thoughts with the weight of words,
Feeling incomplete from putting understanding into one flawed mechanism.
The hand seeks not to affect the appetite of the eye,
But to stimulate the ear of the mind through the rhythm of words sat atop a page,
Symbols of interpretation and communication
Representing sound resonating inside the mind,
Reverberating down and out through the base of the skull to journey through the body.
Particles dance from head to foot as the transverse momentum of an unseen ocean wave passes through physical form,
Only to escape constitution and synergistically merge with the eternal somethingness of space.
Interpretations of reality are inspired by the emotions imposed upon us from our environment.
Words seek to recreate the rushes we experience when life washes over us like river stones,
Obstructing and obscuring the flow of water.
The internal narrator searches for the symbolic sounds that can reconstitute these affections 
To create a muscle memory able to recall these forms.
Words are energy whether actively expressed through the movement of tongue to teeth to affect the body of the passive participant, 
Or, through absorption by the passive soul affected by the sound of an encrypted script of a once active hand that echoes in the mind.
These sounds are the highest form of reason, the reflective and creative genius of the human mind, 
With all its gaps in comprehension and arrogant misappropriation. 

Water Babies

The drip drip drip of pure intention
As it runs from crown, to nape, to sacrum,
Making space upon its topographical journey from above to below,
Taking with it a toxicity of physical and psychological proportions.
Rid me of the weight of existential excruciation.
Grant me lightness of mind and heart that come with your ritualistic purification.
Seep into my soul as you dance upon my skin,
Rolling hither and thither,
Only to submit to the great pull and fall to earth,
Removing the day's demons down the drain.
I watch the counterclockwise swirling of pooled droplets formed beneath my feet.
Wishing myself to be taken by the whirlpool,
To find myself in perpetual motion never again to exact will, permit impurity, sully my soul,
But to remain infinitely immaculate in the warm hold of the eternal watery abyss.

Feeling "The Way"

My reception to your slow gait increases its speed as the triads spin faster to meet their synthesis in my mind,
Making love to oppositions to bare ideological children.
Yet, I seek to diminish, decrease, detach myself from these mediocre meanderings of the mechanics of motion within our minuscule manifestation.
De-cluttering the absolutes and inventions of an anthropocentric arrogance that asserts itself as truth and embodies myth.
With ease the folly drops from my shoulders, seeps through my pores, and eliminates itself from my body like the shit that it is.
Eyes expand to take in more light, heart lifts to beat in cosmic rhythm, lungs respire to bring life to nerves once benumbed with fear.
The wall of complexities I have built for myself and hid behind are crumbling, giving rise to simplistic structure:
Water, air, nutrition, rest, emotion, consciousness.
I prepare for the fullness of the empty,
Making room for your intermittence and existence within my every cell.
Your movements become clearer the less I focus. 
Acceptance replaces understanding;
Analysis secedes to sensation,
And I begin to live harmony. 

Metaphysical Love

You just didn’t see the connections, 
You didn’t allow yourself the intuitive freedom of thoughts to roll on, 
The fluid nature they display when sewing the tape that biases the corners of hunches together. 
The intellect, my friends, is a beautiful highway. 
One which, if left to unfurl itself in its natural state, 
Will reveal to oneself one self that you never knew you really knew. 
It is true. 
You have known yourself all along, 
But never took the chance to get to take it real slow, 
Brushing yourself aside thinking you’ve sized yourself up enough to know that if you knew you, you wouldn’t want to know you. 
No, you didn’t do it the right way, taking your time to show some respect. 
Letting yourself develop some 
real emotions and fall deeply in love. 
Not an obsessive love, or pitiful love, or destructive love, 
But a healthy kind of love, founded upon trust.  
A trust that can only emerge out of a kind of openness that allows you to walk through your days like running water rushing over stones.  
But you fear this benevolent trust. 
Alas, you settle, instead, into the cold comfort of complacency,  
You stay within the confines of the little reality you have constructed for yourself. 
Fearing abandonment, estrangement, isolation from the self you have committed yourself to, till death do you part. 
What if there was a self within yourself that could be all you hoped you could be?  
The mere fact you can perceive this seemingly distant self indicates an already existent relationship. 
Running from thoughts, closing the eyelids of the mind to a sight you cannot bare to see metaphysically because you believe it can never exist physically. 
Instead of taking the first exit off the highway to avoid the restless anxiety that comes from the freedom of the open road,  
Ride on when you feel yourself connect to the road beneath.  
Trust that connection, for that is the ground from which you grow into yourself. 
Take it slow, feel the pleasures that come from existence and fall in love with your life. 
You’ve always been there,  
You just didn’t see the connections. 

Humanity's Paradox

I have no reason to have the feeling of disappointment that I do, for upon what is it based? However, my increasing displeasure with the conduct of our species has me greatly concerned. I cannot dedicate my life to self interested matters, but I cannot dedicate it to a humanity who's nature seems to be progressively inhumane. 
For what do I strife and struggle? 
Since the years in which I became aware of my emotivity I have been denying the darkness that dwells within me on account of the darkness that is with out me. I can deny this no longer, for my nature is changing. I am on the cusp of a transformation that this system is trying to hold me back from, constantly reinforcing the notion that change does not come from the actions of the honourable, but of the dishonourable. The paradoxical nature of the inhumanity of humanity leaves me confounded, so, atop this fence I sit, trying to discern which field looks greenest. 
It is a question of finding the outlet which allows me transform my darkness into the production of light. But this quest will take a lifetime, something that just does not sit well with the instant-gratification programming that has been superimposed upon my brain. So, what happens during the in-between years? 
I guess I'll just keep dancing.

Severance of Summer

I could not bring myself to talk

Only to sing, not words but notes

Feeling stunted by inertia

Unable to face faces

And engage gazes

I had to hide behind closed doors

Troubled by unprecedented emotivity

Eyes spun in their sockets

Seeking shelter from the sights

And set

For the most inward of reflections

I felt ripped open by the blades of misanthropy

Simultaneously fortified and utterly weak

From experiences heavily laden with meaning

Enigmas, always stifle me

Leave me breathless, hopeless

But these riddles, these frightening mysteries…

Overstimulated and undernourished

Underexposed and overabstracted

The psychotic inducement

Of baring all of yourself at once

Discerning fact from fiction

Truth from confabulation

I needed isolation

The purifier of poisons

I Sucked up into my mind

Detached from the phenomenological world

To wage preposterous wars 

Within this passionate flesh

Musical Majestry at Mexicana Magica

Last night I was witness to the present. Amongst beautiful hearts and souls I was witness to the potential of our lost species. I was given hope as I ever-so gently pulled open the door to my soul and gazed into the overwhelming amount of ferventness there within. 


As I joined some companions in a little conversation with the vibrations of our instruments and voices I found myself abstracted from the default state of auto-pilot I find myself increasingly set to and truly lived. My mind, in the midst of the musical majestry, conjured up primary physical properties and applied them to that very moment:
 - this moment is a unique moment that will never be recreated again
 - bliss is finite within human existence
 - get over your fears and insecurities because this, like any other moment in the time of your life, is the moment to BE


In that moment I was filled with so much joy for merely existing that I cracked a sly smile to life. I felt like I was in on some cosmic inside-joke that I had never understood. Finally, I got it. The best inside-joke this universe has to offer. 


The key to spreading that warmth within the innermost of your existence is you. Not you who seeks to quiet the cacophony of individual voices and champion the status quo, but you who seeks to elevate the dissonance by adding your own voice to the mix. 
Sing your own song and do not ever stop and you will contribute the best thing you can to this world: love, healing and the expansion of consciousness.