When it’s the hardest for me to sit down, be still, collect my thoughts, and write… is when I need to the most.
I can feel the amalgamation of experiences, learning, and emotions built up like the fine dust on the my window sill that floated over from the adjacent saw mill. It’s funny, when I first moved into this little space I now call my home, I was dismayed by the constant sounds and noises that emitted from the saw mill. Now, when I lay my head on my pillow to sleep the sounds are almost soothing and I wonder if the silence of somewhere less trafficked would strike me as eerie.
My pillow is resting towards the East and in my sloped cape cod style bedroom, it places my bed at an awkward resting point. One has to roll over from the left hand side of the bed in order to rise with out seriously damaging their forehead on the all too close and personal roof. So why the East? For dreams of course. The East is the direction of all things spiritual and the dreamers of my tribal lineage (Dane Zaa) slept with their heads to the East with their medicine bags beside their heads.
My awkward sloped ceiling bedroom arrangement is an attempt at reclaiming the dreamer side of me. The other night I placed out medicines on my small coffee table. My eagle feather lay next to my smudge bowl, then came my tobacco offering, then my water offering. I asked for direction for this summer. I asked to be shown where I was needed so that I wasn’t choosing directions that were only where I wanted to go. I have the tendency to lead myself into trouble and precarious positions.
I find lately that I have become quite caught up in this notion, creation, and maintenance of “me”. I forget that I am connected to all things and living daily in this body, attached to all of my emotions and ambitions is only my subjective reality. I can deconstruct this moment and see that I am sitting on a chair, typing on a keyboard, assembling letters and symbols that I have learned to assign meaning to so they will relay a message. Am I even typing these words for anyone to read them? Does typing on my WordPress blog cause me to censor the sometimes volatile and existentialist waves that surge out of me? I would think not, I am fairly open… but what meaning have I assigned to this blog? to getting a “like” on statuses and written pieces? What meaning have I assigned to male attention, to A+ on research papers, to clean floors and manicured nails, to nice cars and to all things I consider to be beautiful? All of this meaning without substance.
These meanings are all focused on the individual, on “I” and “myself”. I place value in bed with these meanings I have assigned them and tell them they’re married up now. Inseparable. That is a lie, most of everything I know to be true are lies, I just need to loosen my death grip on “reality”. When it comes down to it, I know so very little about what it means to be alive, to live out purpose, to live out love… does accepting this bring me closer to undoing my unknowing?
What I do know is that I am connected to everything and everyone, whether or not they chose to acknowledge this same truth. I will never be a standalone entity, and thus my frequent feelings of loneliness are feelings born out of a fallacy.
I am connected. Division is my own illusion.
With love,
Helen K
ifieverstoploving 