Consciousness

Blank space, memory and feeling. Monuments, stone, love. Falling, falling, speeding ahead, no sight. There you go, Gertrude Stein. Out of feeling, into thinking.

Perhaps this is my impetus, the push - the shove - back into creativity. Solitude always did that for me. When you're busy and happy there's no reason, no time, no desperation for writing. Are you my friend, blank screen? Oh, to be alone, to wake every day fearing my solitude. These babies, my social creatures, my reasons for smiling and crying. What would life look like if I we were transplanted anywhere but here? Pick us up, O Great Hand, move us along to that place where we are Known and Loved. But not too quickly. Don't let them grow, please let them change. So childish, only a child. Not here, not there. This is the mortal discontent, the sadness that traps me and brings me back to the place of hope and longing. How loved is our Forever Home when our temporary shell is empty and cold.

So cold.

I am lonely. Alone, yet never alone. Am I weak, to not see the beauty, not love the temporal for what I'm learning? What am I learning that I did not know?

I know that I am weak, I am selfish, I am needy. I know. Please stop reminding me.

I want to see a therapist - at least then I would have someone to talk to - face to face. If I paid you to listen to me, would you be my friend? Can I listen to you? Do you exist?

Is our life just a series of repetitions? I am older, I have a few gray hairs, I've born children. Yet this life pulls me back, 17 years ago - SEVENTEEN - I was just as lonely, just as unsatisfied and powerless. One man's job moved me away from friendship into solitude. Seventeen years forward - repeat - another man's job moves me away. Hope rises and crashes. Am I better equipped for the isolation? I'm not sure. This time there are the lovelies, my poor babies. They deserve so much better.

Perhaps this is the shove into grace - perhaps that is the cycle. Forgiven, loved, joyful, lazy, easy, forgetful, sad, needy, lonely, humbled, repeat.

There is no conclusion to this. This piece does not end -