Rambling Roads 🏵

Dizzy, feeling the world spin beneath my feet. Something so subtle, suddenly transparent, transformed into braille, bumps rising to the surface to meet my fingertips and let me read. I try to catch my breath and get my bearings, but the air has changed. Even my skin feels tight, restricting the oxygen flow. So I peel off my armor and let it drop like discarded clothes, that has outlived its purpose, though the cotton has grown soft and familiar from wear. Without its protection, I stand bare and exposed, register the shift in weight recalibrate for the missing mass. Aware I will have to negotiate anew how to move my body through space. Close my eyes and savor how smooth and lithe it propels itself, the breeze now at my back and not cold and hostile against my face. Occasionally my feet lift lightly from the ground having been accustomed to the constant downward pressure. Like when I finally got my braces off and my tongue explore...

The other night at the shaman circle we all held pieces of string.   Forty strangers in a circle, eyes gently closed as silent helpers skit about the room looping and tying our strands together into an elaborate web.   They told us to hold tightly, and the occasional tug pulled at my fingers as I journeyed inside my own thoughts.   Reminding me not to forget the work happening all around.   My body still present and intricately related in an organic, complex latticework, even while my mind wandered through space and time.   When I opened my eyes, there it was: the intangible made visible.   We were all holding pieces of the larger puzzle.   Each responsible for suspending its shape in air.   One by one members entered the circle created.   Experiencing the healing power generated by our joint good intentions.   The power of ritual restoring self within the community from which it sprung.   Like individual drops merging with t...

So many years of being entwined that I’ve forgotten where you end, and I begin.   So I work, sweat dripping as I loosen the threads like spiraling tendrils, wound snug around my thoughts and feelings until they’ve strangled the life out of the plant they once clung to, leaving no room to grow, deep impressions engraved in the skin like fingerprints, a scar. I breathe into them, hammer out the dents until they pop back out to the surface, and blink stunned in the blare of sunshine. It’s dangerous work, uncoiling a spring under years of pressure. They can pop off like firecrackers and blind an eye. As I carefully untie the binds, they snap and curl like a whip. And as I toil in the heat, dangling strands still snag.   An unexpected yank on one can still send me spinning into a nosedive like a tangled kite. A sudden tug can unwind me until I’m spinning round and round with no center.   Calling out to hear my own echo bounce off someth...