Attachments: The more aloof I appear the more attached I am. I get attached quickly deeply weaving language and lens flares and light rain and scent and touch and texture and tone into something of great and succinct beauty.
Everything is temporal; my rigidity rears its writhing, grieving head and my attachment, it's grasping amateur claws when something, that has touched me inexplicably, to the depth of which it's beauty makes possible, must evolve from physical reality
into memory and dreams.
In this case: I speak of the last two years and the family cat and this family's isolated acres. It will be two years since a nasty bout of viral meningitis woke up the looming epigenetic storm that had no regard for MY ( humanly selfish as it is) trajectory of life (or anyone's life, who experienced these things)
Storms! people exclaim, PASS! I am the Storm! People exclaim, in an inspired camouflage.
This is a crestfallen attempt to thwart
the evolution from physical reality
into memory and dreams, of others; they hope.
They will never know, nor will you or I...
Storms on earth, are all we know.
Jupiter's Great Red Spot is a storm that rages on despite its three hundred and fifty years.
In its chemistry, in its alien meteorological behavior, the storm has no desire to pass or purpose to appease by passing.
I AM THE STORM
sounds like and
has the quality of a light southerly breeze, whispering sparingly, through a blooming almond orchard.
Once more, our attempt to attenuate the fear and wonder of Post Life. Releasing attachment as softly and fearlessly, as a mother releases the hand of a child, who wants to walk on their own, straight to the sea.
The Great Red Spot's constant storming has me sequestered. The Earth unrepentant, corresponded zealously with Jupiter:
This one,
it cannot sit still,
or slow down,
or breathe.
Not because Earth cares personally, but the torque of evading one's own grief and attachment to it,
brought upon by circumstances or oneself,
has the power, en masse,
to create actions
that choke life.
Earth, in confidential talks with Jupiter, asked for the best way to stop a certain kind of madness.
"Create a perfect storm, an alien storm that doesn't succumb to the will of this human's wanting, or discomfort or fear
Or attachment to its outcome because
This is the madness"
So the headwinds began on the Great Highway bordering the Pacific, before one could even grab a beloved, pleasantly milquetoast warming coffee at Java Beach, or have one last walk through the beloved Golden Gate Park, perfumed with eucalyptus, redwood chips, the golden laughter of the slipping San Andreas.
I could not grab the places and stuff them in a rucksack, as my temperature soared, my lucidity waned, my legs convulsing in a heap below me, like a struggling baby giraffe.
The scent instead, seeped deep
into my nerve,
the tracts,
evolving quickly into memory: As quickly
as the physical metamorphosed.
Arrival at the family home. A year of ginger ices and wasting muscles and intractable pain and worried faces.
Some faces showed curiosity, not concern .
The kept Jupiter's secret, and intuited Earth's plan.
The curious had proprietary knowledge of:
all of the trees on the old property,
the two, TWO, families of white owls habituating the centenarian pine tree.
The hawks, the magpies, the coyotes, the ferocious and glorious hummingbirds, the cactus, the pomegranate trees, the yucca, the tamarack trees, the calendulas ( planted to bring back memories of Tunisia) herbs, vegetables, all of the blossoms, camellias, the Bella Donna lilies and the homecoming Maple tree.
The same tree where I sat as a small child, so ill, so still, with nothing but a cloth diaper because my skin was screaming.
It offered shade and took my body's fraught , infantile confusion to the earth, deep below
to transmute ... and wait.
Attachment: a false stoic.
Loss and grief bends me like a pine, holding on at Point Reyes.
I have tried to not let it etch my external features, a false stoic is vain survivalist.
My inner landscape, well, it understands a three hundred and fifty year storm.
It understands the infinite deep azure sacred depth of a cenote.
It stares in awe at the creatures who make the Mariana Trench their home.
THEIR. HOME.
The cubic pressure of water obliterates attachment, it is stoic and so are its inhabitants.
...
Some of faces of the curious are, of course, feline.
A lineage of abandoned farm cats, now sculpted into a rarefied lineage of mystics, sages and clowns.
...
Attachment: I have never owned a pet as an adult. Never, never, never. A playboy model in Los Angeles put her beautiful dog, Hollywood, down because her life fell apart according to "her" plan.
She should have let him save her, but she had cruelty and manipulation running through desperate exploited veins.
Hollywood, the place, was where she should have administered the pink syringe of poison, not her loyal companion.
It has been twenty years: it never leaves my thoughts.
I did not and could not save him, I was not told until after the procedure had taken place.
He never leaves my thoughts.
Soulful chestnut colored eyes to a lifeless writhing then rigid...
NEVER, NEVER, NEVER.
...
The curious felines have seen me come and go.
The many, many phases of a scattered life were anchored by the maple tree, the centenarian pine, blooming orchards, temptations involving stone fruit crops and stories of feline antics.
Especially the one who outlived most of the lineages and who an affinity for being attended to, much like Louis XIV.
I have known him since his arrival. A big beautiful fluffy round peach pastry with a congenital crook at the end of his plume like swashbuckling tail. He immediately was crowned KING and given indoor privileges. The acre and a half was merely his Park, his Bois de Boulogne, to survey daily, smell the air and let the breeze and sunlight configure his regal silhouette.
The others, were not peasants
They were and are staunch pagans.
Nature
their wonderland; the last thing on earth they could bear is/was coddling, cooing and humanizing.
No attachments: Aloof only because they were confident in their physical reality but persuasive enough to be fed as to not disturb the birds. A trade off occurred. Primal nature repressed for easily gained large quantities of nourishment and some doting... but not too much.
They all watched me for six months to see if I could be trusted, to see what creature I turned into when a wheelchair was brought out or a walker, or the constant presence of sunglasses that gave me four sets of eyes. As the six months became a year, then the year became another, they could tell how attached I could get:
my rigidity rears its writhing, grieving head and my attachment, it's grasping, amateur claws when something, that has touched me inexplicably, to
the depth of which it's beauty makes possible, must evolve from physical reality
into memory and dreams
The false stoic is a city girl.
There is no more city, girl.
This girl has been operating the body of this woman for so and too long.
This girl. This girl cannot bear the sight, the feel the movements, the labored breath of this debilitated woman.
The roots of the Maple don't argue;
the roots have grown large enough to disrupt a retaining wall and hold a much larger body.
The white owls keep chanting change, change,change... sailing by quietly to grasp prey.
And in this time, the regal feline, the KING, has watched me wither as well.
My arrogance weaves stories of him sensing how much I adore him. That may not be the case.
My physical sequestering has shoved me into the eye of the storm;
So quietly the time moves in isolation.
Living hour to hour, watching the seasons develop between bouts of incomprehensible, wretched illness. No more time to charade, to play aloof.
I cannot weather a three hundred and fifty year storm by practical design, neither can the regal feline.
He has remained strong until this last week, he has reigned here for sixteen years.
Earth and Jupiter conspired to end my tenure as a false stoic.
I lie on the heated tile in the bathroom, which serves as both a triage unit and sanctuary for the both of us...
both of us watching each other breath, until one falls asleep.
He will soon release attachment, as softly and fearlessly, as a mother releases the hand of a child, who wants to walk on their own, straight to the sea.
My heart expanded under his tutelage, I wonder how I will weather the rest of the storm , as he leaves his physical majesty for the majesty of his spirit.
I will cry in the aging knuckles of the Maple
No longer rigid
Nor will I fight a storm resplendent with truths:
something, that has touched me inexplicably, to the depth of which it's beauty makes possible, must evolve from physical reality
into memory
and dreams
