I bring myself to the Macal gnarled and knotted from the American Grind.
Maps soon become obsolete and the compass I relied on for so long has drowned itself in time.
I stay until we merge and the sound of raw water rouses the blood rivers running through my flesh.
After tapas at Bulla,
we walked down Morse Ave.,
through the white knives of light
cutting through the trees.
We stopped at the Castle Park
underneath the cream moon
that glittered off the lake.
I put my arms around you,
while you burrowed into my chest,
and then we offered a question to each other:
“Am I causing you to suffer in any way?”
That night carved us up
and what was left
was the gift of love
and the courage
to follow its path.
no matter how lost in fear, distrust or indifference
you may find yourself in,
the thread
that has been running through your entire life
up until this moment
is still there waiting patiently, quietly,
for you.
You, me, everyone: We all have dark sides and light sides. Our task is not to suppress or obsess over any of these subterranean streams.
Instead, we are invited to know all of our shades intimately so that we may express any one of them with elegant timing.
We keep trying but the hours keep grinding on us, and every so often we look in the mirror and think that our youth, not our bodies, but our heart of hearts, has taken off to greener land.
We pile on more distraction and call it effort. At some point, the chords of disorder tear our eyes from the floor and point them straight ahead.
We discover that we cannot see the end of the bridge we are walking. All we have left to work with is the material of daily life.
Let the waves of disorientation settle, and love becomes a possibility, again.
Survival work requires your entire life.
But in the gaps, perhaps over a freshly corked bottle, while the game is on silent on a late Friday afternoon, I begin to over cherish the earlier minutes of life.
Then, a primal urge rushes forward and the need to recreate the good ol’ days dominates my thinking.
When this romantic delusion causes me to slip, it is a sign that I am over-leveraged trying to live at a pace that I can’t keep up with.
While there are many methods to remedy this situation, there is one old-fashioned move that seems to be the most potent:
Light a candle,
and wait for that
fugitive soul to
crawl back into its seat.
Made in 85. I write about self-discovery & personal effectiveness using both sides of my brain. My work: https://linktr.ee/itsbrianmcfadden
