Or else it takes a second.
Once that sinks in, something golden wells up. It can take a while to well, 'cause it can feel a little agoraphobic after the blinkers. It threatens to bubble right out the middle of your chest when you see and hear and read and get to experience a little bit of the creativity and vision of those who have jumped ship.
You realise that the small group of ship-steerers have it in their own best interest to keep you believing that everywhere you turn there is lack. And that you have believed them, though you had hoped that the world was big enough to sustain you all. And then you realise that while they tell you out of one side of their mouths that there is lack, there is lack, there is lack, through the other side they suck in through a straw your riches and spew out degradation into the earth in return.
You realise that these fuckers are insane.
And then you realise, with a flip into the middle of the golden, that what flutters in you as hope and feels like naivety is not pie-in-the-sky daydreaming. It is the hope of creative possibility. Of sanity. Of caretaking. Of a new (old) narrative. It is yours.
And then you start to see how it is possible to be doing pretty much near *everything* differently. And that it is our dream, the earthdwellers, to birth into reality.
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| Feather by St Stev |
Can't add much to that, Sue. That Seeing drove me nuts for a while, but now I find an ever-increasing compassion for the insanity of it all, and I see that we had to go totally insane in order to appreciate sanity - and that I have a unique part to play in restoring equilibrium. Love that link to BEM.
ReplyDeleteOh, the morning glory —
ReplyDeleteIt has taken the well-bucket
I must ask elsewhere for water
A masterpiece by the Japanese poet Chiyo-ni (b.1703), written from the depths of her heart. But it has caused an amazing amount of literary controversy. It's not a real haiku, they say, or it's too precious, or it never happened, and endless criticism. The poem fits your reflection, Sue, so beautifully, the intuition to care profoundly for things deemed by the world utterly foolish or insignificant.
The world is flip-sided to what we've learned. The utterly foolish and insignificant is a doorway into that :)
ReplyDeleteCan you talk to me a bit more about this haiku please, Sarah? I feel like I don't quite understand it (damnit, my ego doesn't like admitting that, tedious being that it can sometimes be :)
I guess it would be weird if that seeing didn't drive you nuts for a while, wouldn't it. I love what you say here. This seems to be a lesson I keep seeing everywhere lately. Reminders of a space I walk in and then promptly forget I've walked in it. People - you, my partner, others - keep talking about embracing that which you fear. It's always been about walking right into the centre of the cowpat and finding treasures in the midst of them :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the question Sue. Yes, the haiku is similar to the idea of "step lightly" in environmentalism. The poet can't bear to rip away the vine of the morning glory from around the bucket, so she goes off to visit a neighbor to beg for water, or maybe to borrow another well bucket. That seemingly too precious a relationship to nature is not pie-in-the-sky dreaming, but rather her hope (that feels like naivety), truly representing an amazing, creative possibility.
ReplyDeleteAhhh, so it *was* literally morning glory. Now it makes sense. Oh, yes, now that's beautiful :)
ReplyDelete