Icarus and the Giant Clitoris

If we were all so open...maybe pain wouldn't be called such.  Because it would be shared.  And when it is shared it is somehow more comfortable, sweeter, unpainful.  It becomes a medium for connection. 

Happiness is Icarus flying skyward, on his own, delighting in the experience of individual corporeal incarnation - the freedom to be one.  Pain does not have a specific archetype (in this metaphor).  Pain is the mother of experience.  It is the impetus for surrender and the terrifying truth that we are all one, little nerve endings on the end of a giant clitoris.  All sensation is shared, regardless of the walls we build.

Why would it be terrifying that we are all one?  Because I am no longer... The reality of oneness suggests Katrina, in all MY beauty and insecurity and invented importance, is not real and never was.  All that righteous self-making, for what?

Who is the me that possesses the idea of Katrina anyway?  Could it be that happiness exalts the self, while pain dissolves it?  Does Icarus know that his elation pulls him to the sun, the heat, the perpetual orgasm that melts the wax in our wings and swallows our joyful bodies?

Strangers Die Every Day

I'm struggling today.  With death and birth and trying to understand.  Trying to do a good job.  Trying so hard.  All this gratitude and all this suffering at once.  I feel big and bright and lonely.

I'm giving a presentation tonight.  I'm proposing and working and all those things... but I feel  stuck.  What do we do with life?  There is so much to feel and explore and make - we stumble around in our glorious imperfections and get triggered and yell at our friends and then someone dies and it hurts so much because we opened up and then we ask, “Do I just keep opening to this pain?”

Strangers die every day.  (I had friends at Naropa who were in a band by that name).

Thank you for being someone I can write all this to.  Thank you for sharing dreams and searching for potatoes.

Sly's son jumped out of a window.  He was having a nightmare...that's what Sly thinks.  He didn't jump out of an open window.  He jumped through it.  Now his brain is dead and his body is alive because his organs will be someone else's organs soon.  Sly thought the crash from the other room was a painting falling off of the wall.  Then he felt a breeze and opened the curtain to see his son crumpled on the pavement.  His spine was crushed.

And who am I in this momentary, star-muted world?  What do we do when the ineffable happens for real?  I write a lot of manifesto-ish stuff, but now I feel so distant, so impotent to help my friend or even help myself understand emotionally what is happening.  I want to hug everyone...No, I want everyone to hug each other and hug me and why did I even put on mascara today?

Strangers die every day.

And I worry about love handles, bags under my eyes, whether to buy kombucha or kevita, if I'll ever make a lot of money...

And I realize that humans are superheros.  Because how do you suffer through suffering like this without being a hero?  This happens, terribly painful things, brilliantly painful things happen all the time and we keep going.  How is that possible?

Suffering, fear and pain are the stimuli for heroism.  It's what triggers the hero inside and what makes us such incredible creatures.  We love even when we know that as love deepens so too does the potential pain of loss.  It is a risk we can't not take.

People fall...in love all the time.  And strangers die every day.

Don't Be Worried