the old-school guestbook archives
my amazon wish list... my favorite astrologer... my favorite artist... yerba mate revolution! erowid: a travel guide for interior journeys... no more war: MoveOn.org United for Peace and Justice True Majority seek the truth: Common Dreams Unamerican Activities The Nation people I adore, diaries I read: rev.raikes ariana cubiclegirl epiphany glitter333 laurakay wammo the music: the asylum street spankers backyard tire fire blue highway bill camplin wendy colonna freedom tribe joules graves guy forsyth band hamsa lila hanuman libby kirkpatrick leftover salmon pamela means medeski martin & wood the motet the nice outfit nickel creek open road rose polenzani railroad earth south austin jug band string cheese incident taarka tha musemeant the devil makes three tim o'brien band trolley wild sage keller williams yonder mountain string band |
radio silence ~ October 7, 2003 - 5:02 a.m. that was the longest I've gone without writing in a long time. and I'm still not sure that I'm ready. or even sure why I haven't been. there is a roaring inside my head, chaos and unrest, and on the surface it looks like paralysis. like inertia. like apathy. and I am here, at my parents' house in milwaukee, curled around my wounds and wrapped in distractions so thick that I only realize that I'm in pain during the rare moments when I stop and remember to breathe, to center. or when I take a moment to inhabit my body and realize that the muscles in my shoulders are stretched tight as piano wire. and I don't even know what all of this is. I'm so preoccupied with damage control that I haven't even begun to deal with myself in a way that approaches healthy. but something is shifting, something is changing. movement is beginning to feel possible again. witness: I am here. writing again, in spite of myself. people ask me sometimes about this diary, when I tell them that this is something that I do; something I have done for something like three years now: what is that about, for you? and one of the things I tell them is that it's a way for me to feel connected to the world, no matter what I'm doing. whether I'm in a bangkok guesthouse, a mountaintop ashram, or sleeping in my car somewhere off the highway in new mexico, it's a way for me to feel seen, heard and witnessed. to know that there are people out there who interact with this journey of mine, in ways however deep or marginal. who have me in their hearts and minds at least some of the time. when you spend so much time on the road, it's easy to feel outside of everything. outside of the rhythms and structures which guide so much of the lives of so many. in the world, but not of it. and I guess, for a time, I just needed to disconnect. and I have. gone quiet. gone dark. gone home. my parents house, in spite of the struggles and the insanity of growing up here, has become some kind of refuge for me. a place where I can come to collapse when my energy runs low, when the weight of the world lays heavy. a home for a thirty-year-old woman who has none. and I can't even begin to go into my screaming, nightmarish exit from california, or the realization that I really haven't been in a healthy place for a good long stretch of time. or the panicked urge to stay here just long enough to earn a plane ticket and some more traveling money, to get the hell out. but I know that I'm here for a lot of good reasons, and that this is where I'm supposed to be, for the time being. I just wish I could learn to live in the world without exhausting myself so utterly. that health was an ongoing state of being for me. but I am here, and things are slowly shifting. I am grateful for this space, this refuge, this time to rest and heal. I am beginning the movement that grows in momentum, that plants the seeds of change, that begins the shift from chaos to balance. from exhaustion to health. witness: I am here, I am writing, I am breaking my silence with the world. contemplating the 76 new messages in my inbox. reconnecting. it's a start.
(((rings))) |