A dream from 1996:

For a brief moment the world spins and I feel myself on the verge of chaos... then I regain my balance and open my eyes to...

Nothing moves, nothing touches my senses, no sound, no sight, no breeze upon my skin... the absence of everything begins to press about me, then out of the nothingness comes the gentle sound of shepherd’s pipes, their tone so pure and perfectly pitched that tears begin to well up in my eyes. The melody wraps itself around me like a delicate spider web, capturing me as sure as if it had been chains. Almost unnoticed, a deep soothing harmony slips in, working into my skin, seeping into my blood, whispering to me and singing to me of life itself. The song blends together and sweeps me along, the tempo and intensity building up, different sounds, each as pure as the one before it, slip into my soul. A deep pulsing races upward, my heart struggling to keep time to what can only be the very heartbeat of time itself until I touch a point where I know I must explode from the intensity...

In a heartrending wrench the music is gone, and I feel with certainty that my soul must have been pulled out with it and I open my eyes to see what death looks like...
Velvet black. I stand in the midst of a field of stars, there is no up or down, no sense of perspective, simply blackness sprinkled with a myriad of lights. Slowly as I watch around me, I see a spectacular silent dance going on in the very stars and I am awed as I see the song that I had only heard before. My senses begin to reel as they are washed over, seeing the dance of stars for what it is... the patterns of life, all of the ‘what is’ and ‘what could have beens’, the ‘what was’ and the multitudes of ‘what may be’ and I begin to fall, spiraling ever downward through a sea of infinite possibilities...

The sensation of falling stops abruptly as my body is blasted by an onslaught of sensations that it had forgotten in the eternity of the past moments...
Soft grasses caress my skin as a breeze blows gently around me.
I hear the rustle of leaves and the scurrying of life around me. The smell of wildflowers lingers as the breeze moves by and the taste of warm damp earth invades my mouth. I open my eyes to a dazzling palette of colors; rich greens roll out before me sprinkled with patches of vivid purple and yellow flowers. Deep browns rise up from the grass then burst full of many hues of green leaves then turn into the softest blue of the sky blanketing over it all. LIFE moves around me, a cycle of living and dying and decaying, then life springing from the decay to rise anew... I hear the song and see the dance and rest at peace and simply... live.

Silence
12/13/96

Silence, sweet silence,
Like a cloak of midnight black,
Slips over my soul
As I walk an endless track.
Sweet, sweet silence.

An ebon tunnel
Through an eternity of stars,
That wraps around my mind
Against the bright light noise that jars.
Oh, sweet silence.

Not for me the light
Of piercing pain or joys,
But for a single moment
Give me freedom from the noise.
Calm, sweet silence.

So rich a quiet
As to almost be a sound;
My soul, drained by chaos,
Can revive as it is drowned.
Sweet, sweet silence.

Copyright @ Kelly Bowron

We went to Niagara Falls this weekend, on the Canadian side. I had been as a 13 year old, but I remembered all the cheesy things...the tourist trap street full of Ripley's Believe It or Not, Movie Star Wax Museum, and etc. etc. etc. A winding street of bright lights and amazing things. So I came back to the falls, excited, but with a bit of skepticism over the cheesiness of the whole place. One look out the hotel window and I was awe struck. Still, standing in line to go on the Maid of the Mist ferry ride, I was still skeptical. Crowds of people lined the boat all sporting see through blue plastic bag parkas with cameras and video cameras clutched in hand. I followed my husband quickly to get the prime spot and made out to be enthusiastic. Been there, done that, as my daughter would say.

I was wrong, I was bowled over by the sheer enormity of being in the middle of the horseshoe falls being whipped about, soaked to the skin, and deafened by the roar of so much water cascading so close by. Grinning from ear to ear and water running down my face, the boat turned to head back out of the fall area and I was once again floored. I was instantly glad of the water running down my face because it hid the tears as I looked at the most perfect rainbow, beginning and end. The end of the rainbow wasn't over there behind that cloud, or down the next street, or in the next town, but right in front of me down in the water. I cannot tell you how many "End of the Rainbow" finding expeditions I went on as a child, as many times as there were rainbows to be seen. Here I was, 35 years old and I had found a rainbow with both ends in sight. So while my kids squeezed their eyes shut to make a wish on the best wishing rainbow ever, I could only grin and cry. I know rainbows are made from light refracting the water, I know that anyone can make a rainbow with some cut glass or a crystal, but for that moment I ignored the logic and simply enjoyed the pure magic of rainbow--then I grabbed my camera:

Religion is an issue I mull over a lot. For the most part because it played such an integral part of shaping who I was. This seems to be poetry week, so I'll throw in a poem that sums up my take on religion:

Progress
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Let there be many windows to your soul,
That all the glory of the universe
May beautify it. Not the narrow pane
Of one poor creed can catch the radiant rays
That shine from countless sources. Tear away
The blinds of superstition; let the light
Pour through fair windows broad as Truth itself
And high as God.

Why should the spirit peer
Through some priest-curtained orifice, and grope
Along dim corridors of doubt, when all
The splendor from unfathomed seas of space
Might bathe it with the golden waves of Love?
Sweep up the debris of decaying faiths;
Sweep down the cobwebs of worn-out beliefs,
And throw your soul wide open to the light
Of Reason and of Knowledge. Tune your ear
To all the wordless music of the stars
And to the voice of Nature, and your heart
Shall turn to truth and goodness as the plant
Turns to the sun. A thousand unseen hands
Reach down to help you to their peace-crowned heights,
And all the forces of the firmament
Shall fortify your strength. Be not afraid
To thrust aside half-truths and grasp the whole.

I love the sound and the taste of that last, "Be not afraid to thrust aside half-truths and grasp the whole." Its all very liberating and very resounding. Yet I still have a respect for people who choose to walk the path of one faith, one religion, and when I'm being very honest with myself...I am envious of them at times. There is a comfort in faith. In surety that someone, or something is watching over and guiding your life. When you step outside of that, there is a loss. What does one do when you hear your brother is in a car accident hundreds of miles away, that he stopped breathing in the ambulance? What do you do when a friend calls and has been told her mammogram showed some unusual tissue and needs to go back in a few days for another? My mother is what I would call a prayer warrior. The person people call when things have gone wrong and they want to get ahold of God. She's the kind of person who says, "I'm so sorry, I will be praying for you." And then, rather than go about her life and do nothing as many do...she actually prays, and prays fervently. Instead of sitting by idly and worrying and wringing her hands, she prays and puts it in God's hands. What do you do when you have no one else's hands to put trouble into but your own? Somehow saying, "I'll be thinking of you." or "I'll be sending good thoughts your way" just doesn't have the same sense of comfort as, "I'll be praying for you."

There is no question that religion has the power to comfort, why else would people cling to it so fervently in all cultures and societies? Is there such a thing as a culture without some sort of religious system? I have never heard of one. Still, despite these days when I want to fall back into that comfort of leaving it in someone else's hands, the truth is, religion takes an act of faith. No matter how one might try to back it up with facts or proofs, the very nature of religion requires that proverbial leap of faith. I can't manage that leap anymore, but now and then I can envy other's ability to do so.

Some of my favorite poems of Sara Teasdale, I remember reading these for the first time and thinking...I wrote that! Not that I had written them, but the feeling that they were taken from my insides, a recognition. It is amazing when you find a connection that tranverses space and time. She struggled much of her life with spirituality vs. religion, a struggle I well understand.

The Sanctuary

If I could keep my innermost Me
Fearless, aloof and free
Of the least breath of love or hate,
And not disconsolate
At the sick load of sorrow laid on men;
If I could keep a sanctuary there
Free even of prayer,
If I could do this, then,
With quiet candor as I grew more wise
I could look even at God with grave forgiving eyes.

Interlude: Songs out of Sorrow


I. Spirit's House

From naked stones of agony
I will build a house for me;
As a mason all alone
I will raise it, stone by stone,
And every stone where I have bled
Will show a sign of dusky red.
I have not gone the way in vain,
For I have good of all my pain;
My spirit's quiet house will be
Built of naked stones I trod
On roads where I lost sight of God.

II. Mastery

I would not have a god come in
To shield me suddenly from sin,
And set my house of life to rights;
Nor angels with bright burning wings
Ordering my earthly thoughts and things;
Rather my own frail guttering lights
Wind blown and nearly beaten out;
Rather the terror of the nights
And long, sick groping after doubt;
Rather be lost than let my soul
Slip vaguely from my own control --
Of my own spirit let me be
In sole though feeble mastery.

VII. Refuge

From my spirit's gray defeat,
From my pulse's flagging beat,
From my hopes that turned to sand
Sifting through my close-clenched hand,
From my own fault's slavery,
If I can sing, I still am free.

For with my singing I can make
A refuge for my spirit's sake,
A house of shining words, to be
My fragile immortality.

Brain dead. I most certainly feel brain dead. I guess that qualifies me to write following the theme of "The Edge", the edge of insanity! Too much school work, too much mixing of Victorian Edwardian literature, with feminism, patriarchy, norms, racism, racialism, etc. etc.

So, I'll touch on the topic of insanity. I have always found this an interesting topic, one of my aunts is into iridology--a method whereby a person examines your eyes or irises and are then able to tell all sorts of things about you. She looked in my eyes during one of those infamous family reunions we have and told me I showed a tendency for not being completely sane. Well, if it helps my writing to be a little on the edge of insanity, so be it, we use what we have. ;)

Two books that are fantastic, "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath, and my favorite of the two, "Woman on the Edge of Time" by Marge Piercy (Note: Author of "He, She, and It" which is truly one of my favorite books of all time, a must read!). After reading both, not at one time, I wrote this poem:

Hope in a crack
or ray of light
4/8/00

She walks
eyes to the ground
chin to her chest
shoulders hunched
against the
onslaught
of life

as if trying
to take up
the least
space possible
in a world
too big
yet infinitely
too small.

She darts
occasional glances
at the glass
jar barrier
confining her
hoping
not expecting
a crack
or a ray of
Light
from Mattapoisett--

but she is
trapped too sane
in a world
where only
the blind walk
eyes ahead
shoulders straight
free.

What does it mean, you ask? I'm not sure, I think it is interesting to wonder who exactly are the insane ones, and perhaps some people we think of as insane simply have knowledge, like Connie in "Woman on the Edge of Time", that the rest of us are missing. Perhaps it is those who see life the clearest that have the hardest time living, and the only ones who can walk nonchalantly through life are those who are blind. Doesn't someone say that there is a very thin line between insanity and genius? I believe it. But maybe I'm jsut hoping that dot in my iris that says I'm insane is really a dot in my iris that says I'm genius and set on a course to writing the next great American novel!

While doing some reading for my literature class, I came across a passage that really struck me. It is taken from Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Ulysses":

I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.

It reminded me of a quote that I heard once, I have no idea what it was or who it was by, but it had to do with our lives being like drops of water that slide down a window glass. Each bumps into another and slides down taking a part of the other drop. The gist being that we take something from every person and every experience that we have. Tennyson takes that further in that not only are our experiences part of us, but we are part of them and it is those experiences that make a door for us to step through for more...ever beyond reach...always an experience ready to be lived.

There are so many people that I have met that I will likely never meet again, and yet they had a profound impact on my life. It might be for best, memories are always more powerful than reality. Still, sometimes out of the blue something will trigger my memory...a song, the lines of a poem, a color even...and I suddenly have a deep longing to reconnect with someone. There is nothing in my life that I would change, no one I have known that I would "unknow"...they are all part of me and I can only hope that I have left something in them as well.

I'm up watching television entirely too late, once again, and saw a commercial that struck me oddly. It started out too cute, with with little kids talking about they thought was in water...one little girl so thrilled when she said, "Mermaids!"...the commercial ended up being a water filter and ended up by saying that their system filtered out everything, even Mermaids. Now, obviously I'm not going to start a campaign against this organization who is endangering mermaids ;) However, it does make me wonder why we are so quick to make our children be little adults, to trim off all the "excess" imagination, think critically, logically, cease to dream? Is this what we really want for our children? When my kids ask me if I believe in mermaids, I ask them, what do they believe? They respond that there are depths of the ocean we have never explored and have I seen some of the wild and amazing things they "have" found. So, it is a possibility that there are mermaids we haven't found, but they don't know. Sounds logical to me, seems to be thinking critically...and still dreaming. Aliens? There are so many galaxies and so many planets, they note, and so yes, it seems to reason there are. One concludes they are most likely like us, the other is holding out for something a bit more exciting... :) Santa, hmm, they believe that one simply for the joy of believing, sort of an unspoken "suspension of disbelief". The tooth fairy, though, that is a whole other ball game. There is no question on that one as they have seen our black cat, Lucky, chasing her out of their room early one morning. Who can argue with that?