i need to be a better hostess.

The guest house
by Rumi

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.


again, my thanks.

ashes, ashes...

there are so many nevers in my head tonight.
i am weary, even of myself,
and this incessant elation and despair.

nothing is real.
my heart is of no importance.

and if i could, i would, but i lost the trick of it a long time ago. my conscience is too clever; it worms in through the tiniest crack.

never mind.

i am only talking to myself.

dissolution.

i am dying, actually.

after that autumn when everyone was leaving me, i began to look at my life as if it was being stripped down for some reason. it was very painful, but i pulled myself out of the hole time and time again with the nebulous idea that maybe, just maybe, this flaying of my life down to the bones had a purpose. maybe my life was being clear-cut to make room for something better, for my true and best self.

today a new image came to me. i didn't understand it, at first.

my life has been emptied out, and i'm slowly, in fits and starts, refilling it. i was beginning to see my life as a winter garden, bare and waiting for the spring planting. but then, this image.

the stripping down continues. it has moved within. i am dissolving, disintegrating and all on the inside. i am losing parts of myself that i thought crucial and core, and today i realized that they are being stripped away like particles in a sandstorm, components of my being flaking away in an internal cloud, gone away.

what will be left?

who will i be?

will i be anything at all?

because sometimes i forget.

Become the Sky
by Rumi

Inside this new love...die
Your way begins on the other side
Become the sky
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color
Do it now
You're covered with thick cloud
Slide out the side.
Die...and be quiet
Quietness is the surest sign
that you've died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence.

The speechless full moon
comes out now.



Thank you.

and sometimes, no one at all.

He would not stay for me, and who can wonder
by A. E. Housman

He would not stay for me, and who can wonder?
He would not stay for me to stand and gaze.
I shook his hand, and tore my heart in sunder,
And went with half my life about my ways.

and sometimes ariadne.

the descent made without passing a gate
standing in a labyrinth of no walls
an open plain
scoured and sere
somewhere, the minotaur awaits
and there is no hero to save myself
save myself
and i left the thread
i lost the thread
i lost myself and if i could only see the path at my feet
i could trace my way in and back out again
i could go to the heart and face the beast
could embrace the beast
turn this way
turn around again
helping voices call
and the path is found, dust kicks up from determined steps
a few
faltering
and again lost
and again the fool stands still
waiting for the thread
waiting for the minotaur
waiting for life
for love
for health

pick up your thread, damn woman!
there is only one path!
thread the labyrinth, make your way through to the heart!
win!
win your life!
win your love!
win your health!
grab your purpose in the beating heart of the minotaur

can't you feel it already within you?