I wrote this during my writing group this morning and it is well over 750words but… oh, well!
I have been writing with my friends, now the Blue Jean Babes, for a few years now. No leader, co-leaders – and we move ourselves along, writing, writing, writing, writing some members are almost always absent, others are almost always present and most of all, we all aim to love each other and honor one anothers words.
It works.
Today the Babe who was supposed to lead us was absent, so Jodi stepped in with some words from Janis Joplin which just happened to be on her desk. How fun is that?
Here is what I wrote:
“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”... Janis Joplin
Maybe that’s it: that’s the thing…. maybe that is this peace I feel, much of the time, that sweet soft patch I settle into when I rest, when I experience a moment fully and relax into the next and the next and the next. Sometimes I label that feeling trust, sometimes I label that feeling home and sometimes I label that feeling ‘simply me.’
Its like this: I’ve lost so much of what I used to label “not losable” that I am adept at both loss and I am adept at hang gliding into the feeling of freedom when my muscles release and I allow myself to sink into the loss and nose dive, free form, into freedom.
What a paradox and what a true place to live.
Maybe that’s what my soul was seeking to communicate to me, that moment John died. My beloved younger brother with whom I shared a language free connection. I was only thirteen-months-old when John was born with Downs syndrome and rocked my family to the core. To me, he was just another brother to love and my special life-mate because of our closeness in age. In the moments after John died, we zoomed out of our bodies, the two of us. I sought freedom from my skin. I had to be with him, I was his protector, no one else knew him like I did.
My soul didn’t give a thought for even my own heartbeat or my own children, my stuff, my projects, my relentless to-do list. I tasted a split second of freedom from all of those finite realities of living in a body before being shoved back into my skin, back into covering my bones, my organs, inhabiting this noise making organism as I heard animal-like sounds bursting from that space that begged to be flying, free-form, toward my brother once again.
I wasn’t prepared for the lurch of freedom’s insistent call. I wasn’t prepared for that level of freedom in the first place. It felt like I was folded back into my body with an experience of the words, “Not yet”, just like they were spoken yet they weren’t heard, they were known. They were agreed to by my heart and lungs, by my crying sobbing voice. My children, who witnessed the entire process and my head almost slamming violently into the steering wheel yet somehow, unscathed, breathed together in relief, in sadness, in trust.
Each layer of my skin vibrated with me being alive.
Each layer of me sank deeply into a more intimate knowing. I knew then that no matter what I most, no matter what I seemed to “not have” whatever I needed would always be there for me exactly when I need it, every time.
Freedom even for a split second amidst what should have been – and indeed, at times still feels like unbearable loss – taught me that and much more is still unfolding and making itself known.
“Nothing don’t mean nothing honey if it ain’t free”
Janis is right. Meaningless surrounds the price tag @least for me. The only thing I am wearing which cost me anything are my panties and my socks yet this blouse fits me perfectly and is oh so flattering. Though I don’t think this is what Janis meant when she wrote those words. No. Not at all.
I think she meant…
==== seeing heaven on Earth on the faces of those immersed in the creative process and each other.
==== feeling the divine (soft) breeze, tapping or perhaps its better said massaging my skin. More like that so-close-hug from behind. That hug that is without a cost, priceless, soul injected goodness.
==== the river’s floor, cradling my feet. Minnows making themselves seen as I stand, patiently still, for a moment beyond the first moment. Canyons as rich and deep as the “grand” one we humans see close up is created overnight on the shallow doorway to the river I stand in, like a giant, barely a foot into this sacred world. Overnight this gigantic canyon will be swept away – before I come back another one may appear and maybe it won’t. Who knows? It is just like these words, coming in and being swept away and maybe not…
==== like those words, ‘splendor’ or ‘majestic’ or ‘grandeur’ will be replaced by a different river doorway of equal… oh, how to describe it adequately? Its not possible. I can’t see it from the minnow view! That moment of disbelief of one’s true insignificance meeting up with “I have something real to contribute! Here! Right here, right now!”
Time leaves. It loses its place of importance.
Light collects in beams of connection.
There is no bow tied at the end of this writing. It simply ends.
“Feeling as nearly faded as my jeans”
I have a favorite pair of jeans, or more accurate would be to say I HAD a favorite pair of jeans. I tore through them in an unfixable space last Winter and I need to replace them. I notice I haven’t rushed back to the store to buy another pair. I am waiting.
There’s something sacred in our relationship to our jeans. They touch us in our most private places, these spots we’re taught as young girls to push roving hands away from, with power and strength and somehow polite insistent grace mixed in as well. Those still stiff and still scratchy new jean-friendships don’t have the same access to our private places as our older, worn jean-friendships. Those denim friends who know what we look like first thing in the morning without make up or hair brushed or flossing/ These friends have seen us sweaty from raking leaves and smelled us, unwashed after horseback rides and hikes, maybe watching sunset perched on boulders or a hillside, or perhaps sat beside us listening to us crying howling, unkempt tears together.
Its no wonder I haven’t rushed off to the store to buy an identical yet not the same pair of jeans yet.
I’m just not ready.
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