I have to tell you, and I don't care if the whole world knows it. From now on, I want to live as you live. Don't send me away because I'm a woman with little strength or gentle manners. I'm not seeking to be understood anymore. I want to understand. I'm not asking to be loved. I want to love. Where there is sadness, please, please, help me find joy.
-Brother Sun, Sister Moon
I'm not seeking to be understood anymore.
I want to understand.
I'm not asking to be loved.
I want to love.
You get one life, and I spend mine chasing highways made of ghosts now I don't know the way home from where I stand.
-Spirit First
How did I get here? Where am I? What exactly am I doing here? I've been chasing a ghost a phantom. It wasn't always like this. I use to pursue with purpose. The phantom was at one point tangible.
Every new road has so much promise, so much to discover at that time it is nearly impossible, if possible at all to consider that this road may one day in all actuality be a highway made of ghosts.
The insane continue on, what else can they do? What choice to they have? Now I don't know the way home from where I stand. What choice do I have? Am I insane?
What exactly am I doing here?
Conversations with ghosts are one sided. Sometimes they seem too real. Until the silence of reality rings so loudly the questions of insanity begin to creep back.
I've been searching and chasing ghosts for far too long now with hopes that if I could collect enough fragments of vapor something concrete might be formed. Or at the very least I will come to the conclusion that these ghosts I've been hunting are exactly that, ghosts.
But I continue on like some solider carrying the flag of a country long since destroyed but still gripping to the iron flagpole like hope.
I hate the reality of the fiction. The way my mind and heart battle with each other in the night. One knows it's a losing fight but still it must plant apple seeds on the eve of Armageddon.
Still I chase the phantom like an artist mad with drive to finish the piece even if it means cutting off an ear.
I've been looking everywhere for what I seemed to have lost. I know I must have lost it, not because I remember having possessed it but now experiencing the void in which it has created I know now it is lost.
So I grow the hair and it is beautiful and I find a fragment of the ghost in the ponytail holder.
I grow the beard and there as I slowly lose sight of my youthful jawline and cheek bone shape I find another piece of the ghost.
In the guitar as I strum it at a days end I seem to be coercing yet another portion of the ghost from the strings.
As I zipped up the sleeping bag in the middle of capital of Wyoming to sleep for the night I found in the bag with me the ghost. As I reached the ocean on Christmas day I seemed to have spotted the damned ghost swimming in the December Pacific.
And this past weekend as I crept up the steps of an old stoop towards cheerful conversation of strangers' voices as the sun was easing towards the West I came face to face with another part of the ghost.
By now I should have enough piece of the thing to draw one of the two conclusions.
It's as if they are casting votes in to the ballet box and now as the polls seem to be closing I am about to count the vote to see if the head or the heart is elected as the ruler of my being.
But I'm afraid to unlatch the box. I'm afraid to tally up the votes. I'm afraid that if I stop going down this highway made of ghosts I won't know the way home from where I stand. That doesn't seem like a reason to keep going but it seems to be making a convincing argument to the jury.
We jump into other's webs aware of the risk but yet it isn't until we are tangled that our eyes are open to the gravity of that tiny jump.
I knock at the door as the voices grow louder and louder. A man opens the door it must be Robert. He steps out with me and welcomes me. Then with a hand shake he asks if I'm ready to meet a room full of strangers. A fear that every "introvert" must push past. I step through the threshold as I push past the universal introvert fear and begin collecting handshakes and first names. After everyone has made sure I've gotten them all we sit down and the Seder meal begins...
The next morning I drive from Alan's downtown apartment back to Norwood where I pour some coffee and grab a seat with a wedge of omelet. The discussion with these strangers begins and it is ridiculously engaging my head and my heart were for the time being working as one as they played off of each other's strengths and seemed to help along the other's weaknesses.
We ate a sunny lunch with spread out blankets on stumps and soil. Afterwards the gardening portion began.
By the afternoon the strangers, the loud voices from last night, have transformed into individual artistic representations of the image of God from which they were crafted.
That evening as we settled into seats at Moriah Pie Joshua was giving me recommendations off the menu while Kevin was confirming. After the pizza came out and the glasses filled with beer something struck me. It happened in the middle of a roar of laughter at the table. I can't recall why or hardly any of the conversation but something was happening inside of me. Norwood Ohio this spot on some forgotten map, this tiny business that intentionally doesn't advertise, this room filled with neighbors and neighbors that know each other on a first name basis, something was happening here.
The Kingdom of God.
Community.
Finitude.
Dependence.
Being.
Ontology.
Existing.
I saw the moment approaching and in that instant. In that time I reached out and I grabbed it. This wasn't a ghost, this was it. I had it between my fingers. Here it is, it is now, it is here, it is real. What "it" was I couldn't say but I knew and I know that that was it.
I leaned back in my chair and I held it. And holding it there understanding it I knew that I couldn't hold it forever. I knew I couldn't capture it. For to capture it would be to destroy it's very nature. Like a bird or cutting down a tree to count it's age.
As I sit here recalling that moment, this weekend, I realize I feel as if I am back on the ghost hunt again, as if that was merely a rest stop of the endless highway.
I find more questions in each answer.
I want to understand.
I want to love.
Dead Can Dance - The Host of Seraphim
-Brother Sun, Sister Moon
I'm not seeking to be understood anymore.
I want to understand.
I'm not asking to be loved.
I want to love.
You get one life, and I spend mine chasing highways made of ghosts now I don't know the way home from where I stand.
-Spirit First
How did I get here? Where am I? What exactly am I doing here? I've been chasing a ghost a phantom. It wasn't always like this. I use to pursue with purpose. The phantom was at one point tangible.
Every new road has so much promise, so much to discover at that time it is nearly impossible, if possible at all to consider that this road may one day in all actuality be a highway made of ghosts.
The insane continue on, what else can they do? What choice to they have? Now I don't know the way home from where I stand. What choice do I have? Am I insane?
What exactly am I doing here?
Conversations with ghosts are one sided. Sometimes they seem too real. Until the silence of reality rings so loudly the questions of insanity begin to creep back.
I've been searching and chasing ghosts for far too long now with hopes that if I could collect enough fragments of vapor something concrete might be formed. Or at the very least I will come to the conclusion that these ghosts I've been hunting are exactly that, ghosts.
But I continue on like some solider carrying the flag of a country long since destroyed but still gripping to the iron flagpole like hope.
I hate the reality of the fiction. The way my mind and heart battle with each other in the night. One knows it's a losing fight but still it must plant apple seeds on the eve of Armageddon.
Still I chase the phantom like an artist mad with drive to finish the piece even if it means cutting off an ear.
I've been looking everywhere for what I seemed to have lost. I know I must have lost it, not because I remember having possessed it but now experiencing the void in which it has created I know now it is lost.
So I grow the hair and it is beautiful and I find a fragment of the ghost in the ponytail holder.
I grow the beard and there as I slowly lose sight of my youthful jawline and cheek bone shape I find another piece of the ghost.
In the guitar as I strum it at a days end I seem to be coercing yet another portion of the ghost from the strings.
As I zipped up the sleeping bag in the middle of capital of Wyoming to sleep for the night I found in the bag with me the ghost. As I reached the ocean on Christmas day I seemed to have spotted the damned ghost swimming in the December Pacific.
And this past weekend as I crept up the steps of an old stoop towards cheerful conversation of strangers' voices as the sun was easing towards the West I came face to face with another part of the ghost.
By now I should have enough piece of the thing to draw one of the two conclusions.
It's as if they are casting votes in to the ballet box and now as the polls seem to be closing I am about to count the vote to see if the head or the heart is elected as the ruler of my being.
But I'm afraid to unlatch the box. I'm afraid to tally up the votes. I'm afraid that if I stop going down this highway made of ghosts I won't know the way home from where I stand. That doesn't seem like a reason to keep going but it seems to be making a convincing argument to the jury.
We jump into other's webs aware of the risk but yet it isn't until we are tangled that our eyes are open to the gravity of that tiny jump.
I knock at the door as the voices grow louder and louder. A man opens the door it must be Robert. He steps out with me and welcomes me. Then with a hand shake he asks if I'm ready to meet a room full of strangers. A fear that every "introvert" must push past. I step through the threshold as I push past the universal introvert fear and begin collecting handshakes and first names. After everyone has made sure I've gotten them all we sit down and the Seder meal begins...
The next morning I drive from Alan's downtown apartment back to Norwood where I pour some coffee and grab a seat with a wedge of omelet. The discussion with these strangers begins and it is ridiculously engaging my head and my heart were for the time being working as one as they played off of each other's strengths and seemed to help along the other's weaknesses.
We ate a sunny lunch with spread out blankets on stumps and soil. Afterwards the gardening portion began.
By the afternoon the strangers, the loud voices from last night, have transformed into individual artistic representations of the image of God from which they were crafted.
That evening as we settled into seats at Moriah Pie Joshua was giving me recommendations off the menu while Kevin was confirming. After the pizza came out and the glasses filled with beer something struck me. It happened in the middle of a roar of laughter at the table. I can't recall why or hardly any of the conversation but something was happening inside of me. Norwood Ohio this spot on some forgotten map, this tiny business that intentionally doesn't advertise, this room filled with neighbors and neighbors that know each other on a first name basis, something was happening here.
The Kingdom of God.
Community.
Finitude.
Dependence.
Being.
Ontology.
Existing.
I saw the moment approaching and in that instant. In that time I reached out and I grabbed it. This wasn't a ghost, this was it. I had it between my fingers. Here it is, it is now, it is here, it is real. What "it" was I couldn't say but I knew and I know that that was it.
I leaned back in my chair and I held it. And holding it there understanding it I knew that I couldn't hold it forever. I knew I couldn't capture it. For to capture it would be to destroy it's very nature. Like a bird or cutting down a tree to count it's age.
As I sit here recalling that moment, this weekend, I realize I feel as if I am back on the ghost hunt again, as if that was merely a rest stop of the endless highway.
I find more questions in each answer.
I want to understand.
I want to love.
Dead Can Dance - The Host of Seraphim