juniperowinds

[juniperowinds]

Lost 

Desolate and lone 

All night long on the lake 

Where fog trails and mist creeps, 

The whistle of a boat 

Calls and cries unendingly, 

Like some lost child 

In tears and trouble 

Hunting the harbor's breast 

And the harbor's eyes. 

BY CARL SANDBURG

[juniperowinds]

Wandering 

these days i would characterize myself as a wanderer. I have absolutely no idea where i am going or what will happen along the way. I find that i can no longer predict how i will feel or what i will need. it is a wild wild world. the only desire i have is to meander. to allow the unfolding of each moment and attempt to accept what it brings.

Whether it brings lighting or blinding sun, discomfort or peace, i realize now i have no control. the world is not safe and anything else is an illusion. I feel shaggy and unkept. my hair is tangling like weeds and my skin has a film of sweat and dirt. sometimes i feel scared and lost as wandering often leads to unknown alleys and corridors. Yet somehow i am comfortable here, in the dark and silent spaces that i find myself drawn towards.

The only time in the past that i have experienced this feeling is when i am on vacation or i intentionally allowed the space to wander. except now, this is not a holiday. My life has been rearranged and i am lost by virtue of continuing to live. to live with a piece of me missing and every thought or encounter takes on a hue of sorrow. Unknowing.

I wonder if i will find my footing on this earth, on what pema chodron calls groundlessness. Yet i can still feel peace admits the chaos. i can feel solid in the slippery reality i now inhabit. i no longer relate to hope in the way i knew it before. i am creating a new language and the only way to describe it in words would be openness. I am allowing the unfolding of time and space and that feels like the only thing i can do. the only real thing.

As the veil of illusion fades, i no longer feel grateful. i feel a love that supersedes gratitude, as it can hold more than what i cherish or what sustains me, but also that which reminds me that in a single moment, all can be lost or vanish into thin air. It is a sensation that permeates much farther and deeper than my own reality. it reaches into the farthest depths of the ocean floor and most distant galaxy. it is an egoless love that knows destruction and suffering and attaches itself to everything and nothing at the same time.

For now i wait. for now i continue to wander into unknown territory. i continue to peer past the horizon and stay curious. i continue to weep and laugh. If you happen so meet me along the way, stop for a moment and find yourself lost. i will be right there with you.

[juniperowinds]

My world has been irrevocably ripped apart, rearranged and disfigured since my son's death. I was already lost and trying to find my way through confusion and sadness. Now I find myself an alien to my body and mind. Nothing seems familiar and almost everything that I once had passion for or interest in seems unimportant and like a distant or vague memory of another person's life.

Now I am reorienting myself, scared and tender. I am confused. The only thing that makes sense is writing and taking my camera out and peering through the viewfinder. My lens is filtered through deep grief and sorrow. Every moment, regardless if I am laughing with a friend or resting by a pond or laying my head to rest, is tinted with a darkness that can only be described as a void.

I am seeing under the surface and beyond the reality humans attempt to construct to feel safe and avoid the darkest corners and blinding depths of change and loss; of death. What do you see when you forget about the world? When you body guides you and Earth beckons you, will you say yes?