Desire, Demand, or Destiny at the Dali

“With mercy for the Greedy” please pardon this indulgence….it may not make sense to most readers. I apologize and appreciate your allowance, dear reader.

“When you find yourself in hell- keep going.”

The years since 2020 have left a mark which I can only hope I somehow manage to incorporate into a small act of creation.

I know that not everyone shares the same aftermath of these chillingly inhuman years. I also think some have remained as inessential as the moment they were treated as disposable on mass, and we never really recovered. How can you unless you find new community? And how can that ever be as innocent as it was and not alter every relation forever after

How - I sincerely ask how?

Because many of us have not recovered. People lost cermonies of innocence and that is a tragedy - but the sheer number and for what? For nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I hope I’ve done some good toward not letting that just simply happen. I don’t say this for pity. Many of us who attempt to help aren’t helpable. That’s a sad truth. It is as it is. I am sad. But more - I feel useless and full of desire to leave behind what I had been blessed to learn before it dies and dies in me too. And I hope I’ve done a little of that because I’m tired My strength is running on fumes and what I am struggling with in my private life can’t even be discussed - And that, is so true for so many

And the pettiness of it all. When all is political Nothing is personal The world I feared for many is here

I’m a childless woman But I’ll be damned if I let that make me wicked too

I won’t let my purpose be created by the new normal or be grateful for it

I will never say any of this turned out for the best or through suffering came strength This wasn’t natural None of Tiis and we all know it

What do people seem to settle for now? Balance- Mechanized. Useless with purpose. Nothing but inevitablity?

No

Perhaps we’re destined never to survive this on some real level. That the tragedy of it is part Of the final work. Sounds way too solution oriented to me and man made. But to simply believe and be apathetic to it? Passionless? No

Not an option.

Did somehow there exist a knowing “they” were coming haunt some of us since childhood? Were we all Lady of Shallot weaving away and her fate, her finality of her moment of joy? A spectical? A jesus’ette on the cross? No. It’s nearly a lost myth - Like Danae lost to Nyx

My earliest memory is of two incredibly diametrically opposed suprapersonal and strange thoughts; deep gratitude to God for my existence and the natural world, and a terror / nightmare I could not ever describe satisfactorily but if a kind of aloneness that was lurking and could overtake my entire world; and how avoiding it was - not assured but desired - my destiny was dark, but not inevitable and it haunted me in a strange way A way that once I found something that felt near to what I knew on some strange and hidden level

“No Autopilot” self titled from Dali Museim Open AI generated image of one of my vivid dreams it created today. I like it very much. I rarely dream in story and even rarer recall it

I reacted much like the boy in the film “Never Ending Story” - throwing the book in fear of what felt so…impossible and like far too much to even think about. I threw the book under my bed and left it there for months. Couldn’t unknow the mystery. I wasn’t as brave as they boy

Mine was the first page in a book I opened - mid volume and stumbled over or

Really into a poem - it felt so unfair. I’d chosen to ask my father to purchase this book when I was still a child - and it was a poem by Anne Sexton in the first publishing of her complete works.

I knew nothing about her. I just liked how the paper felt on my finger tips. I had no idea that could be so dangerous.

Old Dwarf Heart

True.  All too true.  I have never been at home inlife.  All my decay has taken place upon a child.Henderson the Rain King, by Saul Bellow

When I lie down to love, old dwarf heart shakes her head.Like an imbecile she was born old.

Her eyes wobble as thirty-one thick foldsof skin open to glare at me on my flickering bed.  She knows the decay we're made of.

When hurt she is abrupt.

Now she is solid, like fat, breathing in loops like a green hen in the dust.

But if I dream of loving, then my dreams are of snarling strangers. She dreams that… strange, strange, and corrupt.

Good God, the things she knows! And worse, the sores she holds in her hands, gathered in like a nest from an abandoned field.  

At her bestshe is all red muscle, humming in and out, cajoled by time.  Where I go, she goes.

Oh now I lay me down to love, how awkwardly her arms undo, bow patiently I untangle her wrists like knots.  

Old ornament, old naked fist, even if I put on seventy coats I could not cover you…  mother, father, I'm made of.

I fear destiny so much now that its inevitability, or character of seeming inevitability is beginning to weigh so heavy that hope no longer floats but, sinks. I got passed the Sexton curse - only to be right back there again .

My love of existence has been replaced with a fear that it was all too cruel Too cruel and no encouragement will ever match the tears of realization that - being of use is not the same thing as being…

Simply being is not enough. And I will never be able to pass along that precious thing to another being. What’s one to do?

Hope that something in the intimate and deepest truth of why solace can come from writing? The reason we began - the essence of the hope of being heard. A declaration of I am with a response from, somewhere, that says as simple as so am I.

May I be an essential part of the story. Please. May the essence of that desire find harmony in the only way possible -kinship, a secret understanding of that stream that some of us have heard as long as we can recall - in silence. Like the breath of a river of memory endlessly following and writing or riding that kurrent is the only current we breath. Floating is never just still - that’s the sinking of destiny - no choice at all

When I was 14 I found a book of poetry while browsing with my father - another forgotten kinship and belief in the character building quality of books, art, principle and truth.

Truth is a fragile thing. It has little to do with destiny’s mission until it drapes a fabric of illusion that resembles truth over free Will.

Endnote:

I wrote the above in the garden of the Dali museum - I was interrupted but then went in as my Will determined my destiny by flowing with my desire

“When the soul wishes to experience something she throws an image is the experience out before her and enters into her own image.” - Meister Eckhart

Now back to the Dali museum’s exhibit The students’ work did more than any adult has done since 2020

Extraordinary work by kindred to show these kids that lineage is linked to talent…and teaching requires being taught, and taught well. Grateful for the listener, listening and lenses, I hear you even if I never see you.

speak xx

x

• Bravo - rebuilding culture one student at a time