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Gestation: Reflections On the New Year

Louisiana City Cemetery Scene

City Cemetery, Louisiana by Jim Dollar Photography

So, it’s that time again.  Time for a New Year and the wonder over whether or not there will be a new me.  Perhaps, several new me’s.  It seems that I have a brain and a life that is always reinventing itself.  Sometimes to my betterment, sometimes to my detriment.  Still, I’m never that.  Never “still”.

I search behind me and in front of me, looking for common threads.  Common events and relationships that define the base me.  Something of stability to hold onto in this shifting plane that is my life.  I have lived so many, many lifetimes, and I’m not talking about having been reincarnated.  I mean within this lifetime.

All of the lovers.  All of the different times, and the different ages that I’ve lived with the souls that interact with me as my children here in this place that I call life, on this planet that others call Earth, in these years that I’ve called “now” in the stair-step progression of the thing called time – that thing I flow through like an unfamiliar, alien liquidity to my awareness.

I awoke again last night in a familiar panic.  It’s a panic that I’ve felt on and off since I was at least as young as five.  Perhaps even earlier, but I clearly remember the panic from when I was five.  Then, like now, I became aware of myself trapped, here, in this physical form, owning the experiences that happen to these senses that are attached as input receivers in this physical self I occupy.

I panic because I don’t understand WHY I am in here.  I don’t understand WHAT it is all for.  I’m confused about this idea that my hand is my hand, and that another person’s hand is his or her hand.  I’m acutely aware of the fact that others feel, when they look down at their selves, this same sense of being trapped inside of something and looking out and wondering, “Why?”

Except, I’m told, most of them don’t.  Most of them aren’t wondering.  They’re just living.  Taking their being, and their right of being, for granted.  I envy them, really.  I envy their peace and the fact they aren’t awakened in the night with these troubled dreams of a spirit in chains to a physical reality that feels all wrong for them.  That feels like a pair of ill-fitting clothes smeared with heavy grime and mud and history.

Just as soon as that happens, though, just as soon as I get that feeling that I can’t breathe, that I’m suffocating in this flesh, that my life is a purposeless torture, a personal hell from which I cannot awaken…as soon as this perception of reality becomes the dominating factor in this organic machine that is my brain, I find the valley before me open onto a brilliant sunrise.  I come to feel the arms of Earth wrap around me, and the energy of a soft, rolling mountain range gather me to her bosom and hold me tightly until the blanket of night replaces her, wrapping Orion’s starry, shining gaze upon my comforted countenance, the eloquent music of Ocean’s tide lulling me back to peaceful slumber.  And then, oh, then, I am right, exactly right where I belong!

It is then that the wonder at the miracle of my being juxtaposes the knowing, painful mystery of it.  I am grateful for the fact that I am AWAKE, no matter how hard reality has had to pinch me in order to keep me so.  “One day,” I tell myself, “one day it will all come together and make sense to you.  One day, this same awareness that is you will be looking back at you, just as you look back upon your childhood self of this brief lifetime – and when you do, you will feel love and compassion for the confusion of the child that you currently are.  One day,” I tell myself, “you will be large enough to contain both the beauty and horror of existence in equal degrees, and this will pose no conflict for you.”

Until that time dawns, I guess that I shall continue to wake up in the dark, my heart pounding, a cold sweat dripping it’s salty burn into my recently opened eyes.  Until then, I’ll soak in the wonders when I can, spread my arms with loving as wide as they can go, and take my comfort from what ever pitying source crosses my path to offer it.

As I map out the ticking of the clock to show me into a New Year, a New Me, I keep in mind that it is but a mere shadow of another, important countdown.  The one where I find myself in that place called Heaven, Nirvana, Paradise.  That one where my AWAKENESS comes into synch with the reality I occupy, and I can and will, at last, don the clothing that fits exactly upon Me.  At least for a spate of rest, until I broach, yet again, another unrest.  Another spurt of discomfort whose purpose, like now, spurns me to grow again, and again, and again into the endless, wondrous, birthing process that we all must labor through.  The forever, neverending birthing of Me!

Special thanks, as always to: Jim Dollar Photography

Posted in My Life Today, Where Am I Now?.

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One Response

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  1. Yvonne says

    Although you feel alone in this constant re-birthing process, Deneen, there are many of us who are dissatisfied with the sameness of who we are. Hence, we are also engaging in the struggle to change, to improve, to rebirth. For as long as I can remember, I have had nightmares almost every time I go to sleep. In good times, in bad times and in indifferent times, I rarely have anything but disturbing dreams. Therefore, I know the panic, the confusion and the pain of this particular malady.

    Realistically, your life has produced many horrors mine has not. I can only read and imagine what it was like to be a child robbed of her innocence. But I never lived it, unlike you. In this regard, I do not know your experience. But the mind is a fragile thing and not everyone responds the same. Some become stronger, more understanding and loving as a result of turbulent times. Others become broken, like Humpty Dumpty, never to be put together again. Most of us, however, live somewhere in between and try to fix ourselves, over and over each new day. Sometimes we succeed; sometimes we fail. The important thing to remember is we keep trying. Hang in there. We may remain a cocoon, never emerging as a butterfly, but we can be the best cocoon the world has ever seen, my friend.



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