DEEPLY AWAKE – HERE

I must finish my thought. I have been in a wonderful place all day, into the night, contemplating, holding, exploring, loving such a great light, loosely translated in the way the snow is falling, the woody smell of coffee hanging like a cloud in this little home, the way my nightgown now hangs off my body.

I've been a shuffling magician today, an American gandhi, a bestower of blessing and hope. Everything has felt so golden today, so singularly beautiful, so mysterious. So deep runs my river now. So calm lies the body of my true love. So serene do the objects glow within my field.

I awoke today with the thoughts with which I wish to put myself to sleep.

This morning I was told, understood, breathed into and breathed from an understanding which came once the body flush had passed. I saw me as a big being, a tall being, living on the upper floors of a very large home. I realized that the me who works as a nurse, who struggles to find peace with her family, who stumbles and falls and is in debt and can't seem to keep her house tidy, she has taken refuge with the bigger me for many months. She has let things go, caught up in ecstasy and understanding, remaining, for all these months so deeply awake.

DEEPLY AWAKE – HOME

I write this next part with a shakiness within. With uncanny reverence and customary humor. I wrote on and on and on as it was happening, and review my field notes rarely. I have felt an invitation to discuss it. It is a mystical event, one I find sacred. Ridiculous. Holy. Only the insanely blessed can make fun of themselves to this degree.

I had, since waking up in January, felt as if there was a wall of light constructed past May 25, 2012. It seemed there was an impenetrable barrier, one which did not yield to the darkest threats, the meanest epithets, the most pitiful begging. It was just there. A lighted koan. A big question mark.

I did not know what my life would look like on May 26. In fact, I lived from January to May not really believing there would be anything at all that I would recognize on the 26th. I sensed a surprise.

By the 23rd of May, I was in a panic. It is one thing to consider that it might all be over on a certain date in the future. We all live with our expiration dates stamped on everything we produce, while living in the world of days and nights, good and bad, up and down. It is quite another to be two days away from some made up deadline, unconvinced I will be, once the calendar page flips and the day arrives.

I went to a friend who works as a guide and psychic. I go to her when my mechanical life is so intensely messed up that I come to the standstill of paralysis. She lifted me out of my fear. She told me I was perhaps pushing myself too hard. She gave me solace, encouragement, and the fear found surcease. I woke up on the 25th unafraid and expectant.

DEEPLY AWAKE – RIDDLE

Do you like riddles? Do you remember the first time you heard the Riddle of the Sphinx? Riddles have always struck me as a bit dangerous, an elder taunting his student, displaying higher knowledge in the common man's tongue, confounding an intricate mind with pure simplicity. They are mysterious, deep, and speak to ancient, withheld, earned knowledge.

Such it is with daily life for me now.

Daily I am given two, three, sometimes more punchlines, solutions, connections and significances. I can think of no better word, significance.

And the thing is, all of this is going on behind a plain, sort of frumpy exterior, a simple woman living beyond her means, her means having become alarmingly scarce. Monumental truths being revealed to a beggar. The Universe breathes deeply once again, on inhale, all is in macrocosm, on exhale, micro. In and out, expanding and contracting, communicating always, inferring constantly, revealing at will. Whose will is always in question.

I perceive this hushed breathing now, have for a few hours. I think of my littlemind's life. I remember the truth. I get stuck on a physical problem requiring resolution. I am awed by another notion, my heart expands, my body flushes, I feel the presence of my family, I swim away again, to nearly drown again, in that sea of misinterpretation and silence, silently mourning that no one comes to my rescue, realizing only in meditation I never make a sound when in extremity.

I have come to understand that most of the isolation I felt this lifetime was because I went unrecognized. The part of me which feeds the whole operation, the coal pit in me, it kept lurching through, year after year, never getting a delivery, mining instead my blood and bones for the fuel to keep this whole operation afloat.

DEEPLY AWAKE – OUR LEADERS

I spoke with my dad this morning about this presidential race. He is 75, highly astute politically, and has an uncanny ability to call out falsehood and affectation.

He said that Romney reminds him of when Hitler was voted into office by Germany. There was desperation and retribution in the air, and Hitler seized upon it. He promised prosperity. Some of the Germans knew prosperity. They became part of the war machine. He said if Romney does get in, we will have a certain kind of prosperity, because we will have perpetual and amplified war. That our leaders are puppets, and each bring their own kind of trouble.

It takes a consummate liar to turn from understanding that in Germany, as in America, killers have been, are and will be granted full authority and immunity by the victims, just to keep it tidy and legal. If you are filled with venom for your fellow man, thinking of them as inferior or separate, it is easy to travel to the place where a “their own good” mantra will make you doubly dangerous.

I think we have a choice between willful incarceration, or the slow, shambling walk of a crippled and terminal empire, so filled with disgust for the governed, that nothing short of ignoring it all will make it better.

DEEPLY AWAKE – TEND TO YOUR PUZZLE

It is such an old saw, and due to its truth, it is a sturdy and predictably apt descriptor of the writing process: we write that which we know.

I've been thinking about writing and the pleasure it affords me. Since my childhood. I have gone from writing poems, essays, short stories, reports, magazine articles, novels and plays to revealing blog entries, and always with the thought that if I can just commercialize my writing, I would have the perfect life. And, just to be clear, I knew, in my soul of souls that the only things holding me back were others... my parents, my job, my temperament, my lovers, my culture.... Until this afternoon.

If The World would ever just get off my back for five minutes, if The World would just cooperate with this genius of mine, then, dammit, I'd be happy. I'd be free. I'd be released from this nightmare.

Imagine my surprise, finding in the fifth decade, not only my voice but an avenue to express it day or night, with the knowledge that in real time, someone might actually read my words and benefit from them, or, better, be amused by them.