February 9, 2011

This morning the dawn sky was pink-rimmed around the whole circle of horizon, then the spotlight sunshine began to fill the treetops to the west, across the valley, and then suddenly the spotlight effect was gone behind a cloud. Like a switch had been turned off. I was not yet done with looking.

I have been noticing that knowing a concept and applying that concept in one's own specific life are such different things. Just saying.

The fox runs up the hill, panting. About halfway to the crest, behind the house, s/he heads slant-wise across the slope and his/her mouth closes. Was the fox running hard uphill from joy or fear? I'd like to imagine its spur to be a frolic of sheer animal joy, but it's more realistic, in my mind, to imagine it was running from fear. And what might have frightened the fox?

From my bedroom window yesterday I saw a bird tumbling through the windy sky as if it had imagined it might perch on a cloud edge and had instead been betrayed by such a wild hope.

My friend who was a storyteller (on stage, for money) and a poet died of kidney failure when she was in her forties, way too young. When she knew she was sick to death she wrote:

What's a storyteller to do
with the bits and pieces
that are left behind
when storytime
is over?
With the rags and tags
of fairy tales
lined up
on a shelf
and beginnings
and ends
in a pile
on the floor?
(excerpt from the unpublished poem "Storytime Is Over" by Martha Spice)

Those lines stay with me as I, too, wonder. What are we to do with all our lonely, silent stories? The words stuck on our tongues, stuck behind our fearsome, fearful teeth. Our longings and ideas, things we notice and would engage. But then, we need community to engage, community within which to listen, to speak and be heard, and instead we so often find ourselves in silence, alone with our rags and tags and fairy tales in a pile on the floor.

I recently came across a wisdom writing that suggested that what we most desire might be the same thing as what we most fear. Do you think that observation carries truth? What do you most fear? Most desire?