This poem is about timing. It is about making big changes, and why. It is about letting go of the past, of my identity. I generally don’t do changes of this magnitude that well. My friend Vivian, sober for a long time now, the banker bitch by day, crankster gangster at night, she says it’s really hard to save your ass and your face at the same time. Her whole self marks that saying since she has perfect hair and a nearly perfect face most times. What if you were told you had to leave behind your whole reason for living and switch it for some other way? Who would actually be able to tell you such a thing? Maybe not even God.
Now I'm To Be A Witness
You told me my job.
My hot sweated brow furrowed
at the thought of it.
Used to building things
like fences and walls, bolted
shut doors, with my hands,
now you say I am
to use my dim eyes, brighten
them right up. Oh man,
I hate thinking this,
I'm to use my eyes much more
and my hands will lose
all the old calluses
as I open my doors up,
tear down my high walls.
March 11, 2009 12:59 PM
Contraction
1 week ago
christopher,
ReplyDeletethis is a great poem... so embodied and grounded... i just love the lines:
my hands will lose
all the old calluses
as I open my doors
Open the doors wide!
But, Jon, I loved my calluses.
ReplyDeleteI like this very much.
ReplyDeleteAnd don't worry about your calluses, your hands are softer yet :)
Easy for you to say Jozien, those calluses were everything. :)
ReplyDeleteMaybe there is work for soft hands.
Big changes are scary, and no more so than when the person telling you of the necessity is yourself. There's nowhere to hide from yourself is there? And I like my callouses too, they are familiar and comforting ... they connect me to myself and my past. But sometimes we have to re-define our lives in order to keep on living. Some choices really are that stark. xx Jos
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of a truism I have been rediscovering. {when we try to please everyone, we end up pleasing no one, least of all ourselves and God} So we can be rold-but should we listen. ~rick
ReplyDeleteJos, that's how I saw it.
ReplyDeleteRick, you have picked up some slant light off this one. No doubt you are going through something of your own here. I know this place you describe too.
As for me, the telling and the changes have happened three times in my life. I thought I might die out each time. The last one took my retirement from me along with my wife. The changes nearly killed me and they did kill her.
Sometimes we get so mixed up in what we do that we think that's who we are. Ask anybody who they are, and they'll tell you what they do. I'm trying to remember that who I am is invested in what I do and affects it in every way but is someone apart, a being of spirit and light that affects what I do more than it affects me.
ReplyDeleteDoes that make any sense at all?
Yes of course Karen, though I think the capacity of life to overwhelm with a "higher command" lies much deeper than any posture of choice that I may make. The wisdom traditions are unanimous in asserting that the walk of separation of body and spirit that you speak of is no simple matter. It is a practice that requires years, special circumstances, and an unusual degree of commitment.
ReplyDeleteI see an alternative in a more radical reliance on the presence of a higher power in the heart of my life to meet with adequate power the inevitabilities that are already coming my way. This is what I was taught in AA, that there is an imbalance of power between life and me so severe that I am unlikely on my own to ever master my most basic need.
Oh yes, I should freely add that I am not making any universal claim for my condition. This condition of power imbalance may not hold for more than one in four people on the planet. I make no claim even for that estimated number, though I am sure it is more than one in ten.
ReplyDeleteI was further taught in AA that one must diagnose oneself in this matter, that the condition of lacking sufficient power is not readily visible from an outside vantage. Everything about this condition is available to the alternative diagnoses of pernicious stupidity, ignorance and a weak will.
Because of that, the idea of this position of radical dependence is (while highly favored in many religious traditions) by no means certain as a universal position of all men and women. Modern societies have offered this other condition, one of ignorance and a solution of education and radical self reliance. This is the modern version of humanism that we have grown up within. If that condition explains your life sufficiently, then you may not need to seek a power source that lies beyond you.
Heh. After a nap, I notice that I have overlooked the extreme poverty conditions found throughout the world. This ups the need for a power source radically, but not so much among the people likely to read this blog.
ReplyDeleteI have found that tearing down walls builds up a whole different kind of callus!
ReplyDeletejonnia, I am not so sure that the tissue that gets worked in me when the walls are no longer in my life, that that tissue actually calluses up. :)
ReplyDeleteThere is some kind of toughening I suppose.
It is never easy to reorganize life. But too, it is no easier to stay the same.
ReplyDeleteCalluses are very very appealing. There is a truth to them, or so it seems.
xo
erin
I think you have run into a little bit of this recently.
ReplyDeleteLove you, Erin.
I go back here to a real time of transition in my life, Christopher, to see where I have come from. What an interesting trail we leave here in the blogging world. I'm grateful to see myself for how I presented. (And yikes for that, too.)
ReplyDeletexo
erin
Hmmm. When my blog was fresher than today. I miss having the exchanges but what is true, I actually have more readers now, just less commenters. I remember too that you were in transition, faced with certain reluctances.
ReplyDeleteI loved you already from here, of course.