Friday, April 17, 2009

No. I'm Not Tripping.

Although I have lived here for five years now, there is never a day when I don't raise my eyes to the oak trees and feel blessed and this morning I got a fuller realization of why that is.
It's because it's like living in the midst of the elders, the wise parents, the glorious ancient ones.
They make me feel sheltered and they remind me that roots are important and if they are deep enough and strong enough, the things which can't be controlled- drought and wind and lightening- can be survived.
We are not trees and our roots don't have to be put down in one particular place. They can be put down anywhere, in the rich loam of family, in the ethereal and very real energy of love. They can be put down in belief, in work, in writing poems or raising hogs or in any of the things humans do which gives them a feeling of belonging, of rightness.
And if they are strong enough, the things which we cannot control will be survived.

I went crazy last year. I lost my shit. I thought I was dying, I wanted to die. I didn't know what to do. I walked and wandered and shivered and cowered. I got help, I took (and take) pills, I tried breathing and reading and escape and all together, they helped bring me back to this place where I am now- not entirely whole, but sound enough.
And what kept me from being one of those people who end up in a "facility" or from following up on what something kept telling me I wanted- perfect peace- was roots. As strong as the wind of insanity blew, my roots which have been planted so deeply into the love of my family would not be tugged up or out. But I will tell you this- it was a tenuous grasp those roots kept. It could have gone either way. As powerful as the hold of the love of my family was, it could have gone either way.
But they held. And so did the roots I have planted in some deep place of myself. Roots which I don't even think about, which I don't give credence to, which I don't even always believe in.

This thing which is me.

It's strange to think about oneself. Who am I? the teenager asks. What am I here for? the adult wonders. What has my life been about? asks the middle-aged woman when her children leave, her body changes, her mind scrambles for reason and rhyme. What have I done, what will I leave, how will it matter? all of us ask, no matter our age and although we may not have answers, somewhere inside of us, I think we know. It may not be the answer we wish we could give, but all of us have had a purpose here, all of us have had a meaning. All of us will have mattered. Poet or hog farmer or pianist or mother or father or lover or teacher or builder of roads or bird houses.

We have moments of perfect knowing the answers to all the questions. I'll admit I've moments on hallucinogens. Moments of perfect clarity. But somehow, artificially induced moments of clarity are not completely to be trusted.

The moments when I was most sure were the moments of giving birth. There was nothing artificially induced about that. I was fulfilling a biological destiny, kissed with perfect relief and joy.

Sometimes when I write something, I have a moment of knowing that yes, I said what I meant to say in words plain enough to understand. Those moments are rare but they shine so clearly and feel so perfect that there is no turning back from trying again and again to recreate them.
I am afraid I am not going to have one of those moments today. Maybe my heart is TOO filled for the words to translate feeling and belief into something to be read.

But I have to try. I have to try and describe what it's like to come back from nearly toppling over in a storm which came from nowhere, which battered me and bruised me and left me now, in the calm aftermath, so much surer of myself than I was before. Of myself, of the strength and depth of the roots of myself, planted perhaps originally in soil which had very little to offer in the way of fertility, but which now, through the life I have led, do. I feel them push down into rich ground, even here in this tiny world I live in, so rich to me, so real to me, so surrounded and sheltered by the ancients.

And this is what I love as much as being sheltered by those ancient trees- planting new ones. It's not enough to draw strength from what has been growing here for centuries. There has to be new life, too, and this is why I love to take the smallest things and put them into dirt and nourish them into flourishing life. Not to replace what is already here, but to continue the cycle of it all.

Ah, this is a mishmash of simile and metaphor and yet, there is nothing metaphorical about the way I feel when it comes to trees and plants and roots and storms and love and dirt.
Nothing at all.
One is as the other and they are all (please forgive this old hippie) one.

And I know how lucky I am to be here in this place, both in "reality" and metaphorically where the old oaks tower over me and I can slip new life into the ground to be here when I am long gone. Where I am in my heart, which is at a place where I can plant, I can believe in new life, I can yearn for it and nurture it and patiently wait for it to grow.
In all ways.
Or at least the ones I know.

Happy Friday. I'm sorry I got all philosophical about it today. But my heart is filled with it to the point where it has flowed over and spilled out through my fingers and I want you to think about your roots and where they flourish and how to nourish them because honestly, that's what keeps us here when things beyond our control seem to want to tear us away.

Go do something to nourish those roots. Draw a picture, write a poem, plant a flower, fertilize a garden, fantasize about raising chickens or having babies or falling in love or kiss your already-here babies or your already-here loves or plan a meal or make an altar or stop entirely and close your eyes and breathe and feel the connection of all things, living/not living, ancient, newborn, hoped for, dreamed for, schemed and plotted for, composed with sweat and blood, sprung forth fully formed, fish and apes and man and frogs, think of how we and they are all here with meaning and with purpose and all dependent on the whole made up of all of it, connected, even if it's not always apparent.

All is one, chants the yogi in quiet ecstasy. All is one, murmurs the breeze as it travels. All is one, whispers the blood as it rushes through our veins with its saltwater and iron. All is one, says the ocean as it touches the shore. All is one, says the dirt as it nourishes and holds up the old and the newly planted. All is one, says the oak tree as it stands above me, making the light green with its new leaves. Ancient and new and its roots go so deep. Deep enough to support the old, deep enough to give life to the new, deep enough to keep its hold as the planet spins and we are one as we spin together, our roots holding us fast, tangled together in ways of which we cannot see but which are true, nonetheless.

23 comments:

  1. Hi gorgeous. I have a draft post along the same lines, though not nearly as eloquent, inspired by planting wisteria in my backyard. Wisteria was very present and appreciated in my childhood home, and I love the idea of giving those same odors and sites to my own children's memories.

    Tonight I will drive my children, my husband and my widowed mother-in-law over to my grandparents’ house for dinner. Also there will be one of my kids’ second cousins, a 10 month-old whose grandmother is dying as we speak. Her grandmother is the mother of my cousin-in-law, a woman who is so perfectly suited to our odd little family that she was family to me the moment I met her. I hate that this member of my family is losing her mother much too young, and that her baby won’t know her grandmother the way I have known mine.

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  2. Ms Moon: reading you blog to day all I could think of is the words to "Coming Back to Life" by Pink Floyd.
    .......I took a heavenly ride through our silence.
    I knew the moment had arrived.
    For killing the past and coming back to life.
    I took a heavenly ride through our silence.
    I knew the waiting had begun.
    And headed straight....into the shining sun.
    David Gilmour

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  3. Very lovely.

    I have a question for you. My father uses the phrase "all one" a lot in reference to his religion (and no, he is not Dr. Bronner, ha). When you say it, does it indicate something spiritual to you? I know you are not religious in a standard sense, but do you consider it spiritual or just having a deep appreciation of the natural world around you?

    I hope you and yours have a lovely weekend. Will be looking forward to a chicklet update soon!

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  4. My gosh am I glad I found you, and I think I love you.

    Your writing speaks my heart and my soul; although I could never put it in words such as you do. And it WAS plain enough to be understood.
    Oh, I could go on and on, Ms. Moon! I will be sending my forever friend a link to this post - we have been talking about our childhood's lately, and how although we have known each other forever (literally, since we were 5, which is basically forever, right?) there is so much of ourselves and our lives that we never talked about. And we are trying to figure out how and where we go from here. And she has struggled with just wanting 'perfect peace' and as powerful of a love she has for her children, it could have gone either way for her, too. And I think your words will help her.

    And one IS as the other and they ARE all one.

    And all of this spoke to my spiritual journey and struggles...to me, what you have said is what 'it' is all about...All of THAT stuff, to me? THAT is GOD. And THAT is what feels right in my soul; as hard as it is to convince my mind that it is okay. It is OKAY to find MY TRUTH in something other than the religion that I was raised in.

    Oh, I need to stop, but really I could go on.

    Thank you. I have printed this post off, and will be including it in this notebook I have been filling with things I find that have inspired clarity in MY mind with regard to my journey. Things that reassure me that *I* know *MY* truth, no matter how much my brain and what I had been taught tries to fight my soul.

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  5. Yes. This is so beautiful.YOU could write a book. I need to have this under my fingertips, smoothing the pages, I would be running my fingers up that tree trunk.

    www.lulu.com

    Just saying...

    Oh, and you made me think of that bit in Phenomenon , where John Travolta finds peace in the waving branches.

    Roots are better though, for obvious reasons.

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  6. You leave me stunned today, given MY post and the crap it has dredged up, and how I feel inside that I haven't gotten to yet, and that simple fact that we are all, in our own ways, just trying to find that peace.

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  7. you help so many to see perspective outside of ourselves...
    thank you for todays life lesson

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  8. Steph- We all get the blessings we get and you got your grandmother. This child will not get hers but she has you in her life. I hope it's a good evening and there is lots of laughter. Hold and kiss that baby for me.

    Ochlockneeboy- Wow. That's a good verse. I never really listened much to Pink Floyd but I see they have words of value. Thanks for saying that what I wrote reminded you of that.

    Lady Lemon- All One may be different from All is One. Not sure. All one may refer to the Trinity. All is one is a very spiritual thought for me. It reflects the connection of every bit of matter and being. Which means we have to respect it all and take care of it all. It's hard to explain, but the separation and classifications we humans love to make are valuable as tools to understanding things separately but when you get right down to the breath of essence, are artificial. Damn. I wish I could explain this better. Perhaps it's what some people call God. Maybe I would consider that the God spark is in everything.

    JustMe- Last week a good friend of mine asked me why I take on religion. "It's a powerful energy," he said. "Why take that on?" And I said, "Because there are people who don't believe and sometimes they need to hear another message, that it's okay not to believe in religion but to believe in something our hearts tell us."
    Thank-you for understanding what I said. Thank-you for telling me you did.

    Ms. Jo- It's hard to see the roots, though, and easy to be uplifted and soothed by the branches. And that's fine and good enough. As to self-publishing- well, you know, I have thought about doing something crazy like telling people they can pick out ten or so of their favorite posts and I will make them a homemade book of them and then I will send it to them for money. Does that sound crazy?

    Xbox- Takes one to know one.

    Kori- Believe me, I have waded in that crap. That very same crap. I still do sometimes, but here I am to say that it recedes. It even goes away. Keep your head up and know that. The crap has to be dredged up in order to be cleared out. I wish it weren't so, but it is.

    Learner- Honey, you're putting out some life lessons yourself.

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  9. Hehe, bless you but there's no even faking comparison here.

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  10. Xbox- I totally disagree. And I'm the mother! Your post today was complete and utter poetry. Just a different kind from a different heart but all connected.

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  11. That's blasphemy I must say.

    Now stop. Behave yourself.

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  12. Xbox- It's my party, I'll blasphemy if I want to.
    Hey! Are you enjoying a Friday night beverage? Is it a delicious ale?

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  13. I had one single beer before my dinner and I left it at that!

    I'm either becoming old, or sensible, or boring, or all of the above.

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  14. I'd love a couple of glasses of white, but she won't split the bottle with me, so it has to stay intact!

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  15. No, I think that is a great idea.

    Though if I were you I'd take requests, but offer your own collections mostly. Based around themes, sort of thing. Lulu looks good and affordable - they print as people order so there's no outlay for you. A brilliant idea, but I'm sure there's loads of places like that.

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  16. Ms. Moon, your words leave me breathless...again. I know this year has been a long journey. Perhaps, the last year strengthened your roots, and this year your words are the blossoms borne of deep roots.

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  17. Your posts so challenge my ADD mind, but golly that was incredible. I'm so glad you write. Your words just flowed out so lovely, even as you claimed you weren't today. I so enjoy your words. :)

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  18. Just me, still- It feels something like that.

    Quietgirl- I'm sort of in love with words, aren't I?

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  19. This is the kind of entry that makes me wonder how you don't get paid for this stuff =) This is seriously a very good piece of writing and really makes you think. And speaks to the kind of serenity I think we all aim for.

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  20. SJ- Paid? To do what I love? Oh. I should be so lucky.
    Wait! I SHOULD BE SO LUCKY!
    In my dreams.

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Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.