I Need Some Strong Arms
Some strong arms and present hands. I’m wanting to be comforted within proximity, in that special human song called Presence. All thoughts and thinking aside.. the cacophony inside my head longs for the silence of skin engaged with skin, pulses meeting underneath soft cocoons of nerves. Reminding me (and us) of the belonging and healing that comes within arms and hands and bodies. (more…)
We cannot tell the exact moment a friendship is formed; as in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses, there is at last one that makes the heart run over.
Companion
My phone buzzes in the middle of the night, a repetitive staccato. Someone’s mind is wrestling and restless with contention, causing sleeplessness. No wonder, as I wake from my slumber containing a dream of you anyway, that my eyes and hands are flickering open reaching for contact before I’m even aware. I know the sound of your thoughts on the black sky and the moonlight wakes me before they reach me.
What is this strange entanglement of thoughts and presence that wraps around me? You reach deep into my mind and extract all sorts of secrets and goodness. You shine light into spaces I had kept away and make them appear beautiful for your knowing them, and I in turn, have a knowing of you that makes the heart full, the drop of running-over has landed on the parched soil of the soul. I am connected with all the intangible parts of me.
Companion is the word that stretches into my memory. A friend who is frequently in the company of another, a traveller on the journey who accompanies you. The ‘other’ of another.
Thomas Merton said ‘The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them. Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.
On Friendship
Kahlil Gibran
Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the “nay” in your own mind, nor do you withhold the “ay.”
And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.
And let your best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live.
For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
She looks frazzled and tired, he looks frustrated but calm; trying to maintain patience. They’ve walked off a 21 hour flight to Australia to begin the adventure honeymoon of a lifetime. Their rings are glistening under fluorescent light and both are still fidgeting, getting used to the weight of warm metal against skin; twisting and admiring the statement it makes on each of their hands. Then the too-warm air of the airport arrivals terminal clouds in, the groaning luggage carousel clanks along and other passengers swarm in.
She pushes then pulls their luggage cart to a stop beside a queue of people pushing themselves towards the customs line. He tries to steal a kiss but she pushes him to one side and gestures to the carousel. He struggles his way through the crowd and back, one suitcase at a time. Now he’s made three trips and is torn between anxiously looking for the next bag and glancing back at his wife, tapping her foot and waiting for her iPhone to find signal. By the time he returns with the fourth bag, those over-packed full size suitcases perilously stacked on the cart, she’s done with the phone and marching through the lines towards fresh air.
Now it’s his turn to sigh and hustle, creeping closer to people slightly ahead of them in the queue.
Maybe he’s anxious to shower and change or just to get his wife into more comfortable surrounds but now it’s his frustration that claws at the atmosphere. Here’s where I learn their story – he’s from Oklahoma, she’s from Los Angeles. They’ll be here for two weeks. I look at the luggage, I look back to them. She explains one bag is shoes, and I laugh – embarrassed but amused at the easy cliche. Their itinerary is jam-packed, they’ll cover New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, not to mention a flying visit to Uluru and she has a pair of shoes for every occasion. She pulls him close, looks up into his face with a moment of calm. I feel relieved; they were making me anxious but I run out of time to tell them why. I hit the security fast-track lane and leave with my hopes for them heavy in my head.
“Dear American Honeymooners,
Please slow down. You’re running the risk of missing each other in your rush not to miss a thing. Don’t fall into the trap of writing a to-do list that doesn’t leave you anytime to make memories of what it was like to be together in that place. Don’t set a pace for your life you can’t maintain. You’ll leave one another behind.
Please pack less. I’m not sure what you were planning on doing, but life just doesn’t need that much baggage. Love is only helped with great hair and nails, it isn’t made. Buy more lingerie and fewer pairs of jeans. Be light on your feet. We carry each other – learn not to be too heavy when you are expecting someone else to carry your bags.
I hope you have a wonderful time, see all sorts of things you’ve never imagined before and have your childlike wonder engaged with creativity, nature and breathing the air of the one you love. Love each other well – you deserve it. You came a long way to get here.
Oh – one last thought. I’m a big believer in shoes. They’re glamorous, enigmatic, practical, empowering and often necessary. But they’re also the difference between staying home and going out. A great shoe isn’t a personality that you put on, but it expresses something of your persona. Learn to wear your lover like one great pair of shoes. The ones that become an extension of who you are. The ones you can’t live without. The ones that make you feel strong enough to climb mountains and fast enough to run for cover. Warm like slippers and a fireplace, easy like Chucks you wear everywhere. And keep walking in them. Live in your love the way you live in your shoes. You’ll need less of them, you’ll take better care of them, you’ll nurture and protect them, you’ll take a lot of pride in them when they’re the only pair you’ve got.
Wishing you all the best,
T.”
We forget that the seasons of life do not move as quickly as the seasons of spring, winter and fall. For some of us, we have never been known in summer; in full bloom. Some of us are re-emerging, seen for the first time.
I wrote this poem when as I was stepping back into myself after some time away. I realised that while the reflection of myself I saw in the eyes of others was familiar to me; they were seeing me for the first time.
Oh, the possibility that we could see ourselves new again, recognising our strength, our beauty, our wonder as if for the first time and without fear.
Fierce.
This woman is like an army in front of me
Like a great tiger out of hibernation
Everything about her uniform is strong,
she is oiled like snakeskin
I forget, you have forgotten her – before the Hiberation,
that great dark winter when she watched
hovering from the north west east south borders of you
And you, hidden in the corner, did not know me
before the winter; cracking brittle icicle heart.
That underneath, she is entirely fierce
You over there could not know, you there, have pushed it from your mind –
That I am always summer.
Always, like an unshakeable,
immovable living oak tree, a cedar, fragrant – I am drenched
in some internal sunshine, I am always summer merely beneath snow
My blazing flesh becoming sacred, holiness of ash and ice
I have a secret, layers of secrets over hidden things and the most
furthest hidden thing in my heart, beating like a drum…
I do not need to feel happy to be happy
Happiness is in me like spring, summer and snow
now that I have remembered
How to roar from within to always be warm,
the dancing hunt of the tiger, the flight of the dove –
do not forget me again (I will not forget myself)
I do not need to be happy as some people need happiness
or melancholy as fuel, not to be happy or sad
the deepest melancholy is joy to me in summer, spring or snow
I fear nothing, I am not burdened by desire – I am freer
than one who tries to satisfy the burn
the burn instead delights me
i do not need to feel happy to be happy
I am fierce, like summer.
Fearless like this army within me.
We were just kids walking to school, skipping classes, drinking too much Coke in the weekends and talking about small things as if the world depended on them. We believed the world would depend on us. We were well-intentioned, no matter how we played on the edges of darkness and clung to one another in the chaos of adolescence. We held on to one another with a fervour. Somewhere within we knew that innocence was rushing from us like the tide escaping the shoreline. We longed for our freedom but had no idea what ‘real-life’ would bring.
We were unprepared – no fault of our parents, our school system, our religious institutions or lack of. It wasn’t television, the dawning of the internet age or the influence of sex, drugs’n’rock’n’roll. We were unprepared because that’s how you must be, to enter the fray of life. Stepping up onto the diving board, if you knew what was ahead you would never do it. So we closed our eyes and jumped, hoping everyone was just as scared as we were and trying not to show it.
But that was only yesterday, and what the hell just happened?
We gave birth to babies, kept some and gave some away; lost husbands, boyfriends, broke a limb, broke a back.
Suffered cancer, fought cancer and won, fought cancer and lost.
Stayed in one place for 2 years not leaving the house, didn’t stay anywhere more than 2 weeks, didn’t call anywhere home.
Tried to have babies and lost them, tried to have babies and couldn’t make them, tried to have babies then hated them, tried to have babies but couldn’t find a lover.
Found love in the arms of men, of a woman, of a few men and women.
Called ourselves feminist, traditionalist, reformist, non-conformist, modern, post-modern, wouldn’t be called anything or put in a box.
We tried over and over to find hope, until it was hopeless and then we succumbed to depression, succumbed to life and to death.
We died in our waking and living the same old thing, day in and day out wishing we were dead and some of us just died. Drove a car into a cliff face, never woke up. Drank too much vodka and drove, never woke up. Drank just enough wine to wash down the pills, never woke up. Tried to slice ourselves open but that never took, while some of us starved and others threw up. Some of us heartbroken and fear never recovering, others so strong now we hate ourselves and everyone. Some of us just lived but never woke up.
Some of us divorced, divorcing or cheating in public, in private – all of us still lonely somehow, even as we find ourselves in the places we never expected to be. Good or bad, who knows, who cares – we’re still fifteen and holding on to ourselves. Trying to let go and leap, trying to hold on to someone else just enough to let them be loved and be loved ourselves but not enough to kill it, the love in our hearts, the love in our life.
And we have become well-practiced at living, even when it doesn’t feel real but there is so much that feels so good, that we live like the breath is being stolen from us. Live, live, live screams our blood.
Some of us burying children, marriages, husbands, parents. Some of us nursing each other. Some of us dreaming still, looking forward to next beginnings, some of us waiting for the first beginnings and what the hell just happened? Live, live live screams our blood.
It was yesterday and we were jumping with our eyes closed into Life, that we had been hurtled towards by Time and everyone, hurtled ourselves into it and now we are dying. Some of us have died.
So all the time, we are hurtling towards death and it flies at us in the minutes and hours. Our lovers, our children, our parents, our siblings. By car, by disease, by water, by choice and I do not know if we are ever at peace.