Not that Kind of Traveler Anymore

Strangers saying thank you. Let us face the war in us, let us face the pogrom.

Clipping song lyrics to an old music stand I stole back in college. Nothing is lifted like this heart is lifted, this bag of black stones, this sky blue turtle shell no man is allowed to fondle or hit. 

The new therapist smiles, "far be it from you to be dramatic." Icarus leaves the villages for faraway Athens, doesn't actually believe he'll arrive, he's not that kind of traveler anymore.

Three a.m. out back with the horses, star-gazing. Nobody told me it would hurt this bad but they did all say the hurt was necessary.

A story we tell that includes a lot of bells and giving her head on terms and conditions that she sets, which are not negotiable, and which we call Prayer. Rabbits in the clover, no hawk overhead, who feeds when.

I am saying there is no point where all this grounds out and you can plant a flag and say "game over." Studying towering cannabis plants at twilight, both of us surprised to find ourselves here.

Boiling chicken at six a.m., mid-August. Maybe let go of some of this, not for any spiritual reason, not to be religious, just because of what is lightened thereby.

Mirrors are nontrivial aspects of the overarching problem we name "ego." So it's turtles, chalices, frames, narratives, threads, knowings, quilts and ghosts all the way down, good to know.

"Tell me about your writing," no thanks, I don't play that game anymore. Steve Hagen helped me see the value of seeing the lack of value in the nomenclature.

We are Skinner boxes, black boxes, and what helped in the end was understanding sex was a form of communion but not the only or even the best form. Wading into the river, going further than Chrisoula goes in order to remember how to return and stand with her in her garden under the moon with our God, amen.