telling stories
Sometimes a story doesn't get to the heart of it. But it is all I have.
Sometimes I fly around it, circling like a sea gull, hoping that I will find a moment in which I can dive right to the center and grab it by the throat.
My new therapist has me searching through that same old pile of rocks that I've searched through time and time again, but she has offered me a lens I've never tried before. The rocks are filled with glowing embers and streaks of color that I missed in every previous shake down.
Sometimes a story is worth a million pictures. A little girl, a little boy, an explosion that upturns a country and a house in the rural South.
An endless desire to clean up the pieces, to sweep away dirt from childhood, follows me from there to here and fuels a flaming need to keep a house tidy. Another gripping compulsion to take care of them, to fill in their gaping holes with my personal successes walks under me like my favorite shoes.
Sometimes a story is not enough. But I pick up each brick, each piece of crumbled mortar obediently because that is what I do. I obey. I behave. I put the bits in an order I can understand, even if I can never find the heart.
Sometimes I fly around it, circling like a sea gull, hoping that I will find a moment in which I can dive right to the center and grab it by the throat.
My new therapist has me searching through that same old pile of rocks that I've searched through time and time again, but she has offered me a lens I've never tried before. The rocks are filled with glowing embers and streaks of color that I missed in every previous shake down.
Sometimes a story is worth a million pictures. A little girl, a little boy, an explosion that upturns a country and a house in the rural South.
An endless desire to clean up the pieces, to sweep away dirt from childhood, follows me from there to here and fuels a flaming need to keep a house tidy. Another gripping compulsion to take care of them, to fill in their gaping holes with my personal successes walks under me like my favorite shoes.
Sometimes a story is not enough. But I pick up each brick, each piece of crumbled mortar obediently because that is what I do. I obey. I behave. I put the bits in an order I can understand, even if I can never find the heart.
posted by perrykat at
3:50 PM
2 Comments:
~~Memorial~~
"The most trying moments came in New York, site of one of Tuesday's terror attacks. At least eight people were arrested Thursday at John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports. Asked if this was seen as another hijacking attempt, one U.S. official said, "Certainly, this is being looked at." The Federal Aviation Administration, which had allowed airports that met strict security guidelines to reopen Thursday morning, ordered all three of New York's major airports closed around 5:30 p.m. Thursday."
On 9/13 as workers continued to dig through the rubble, taking no breaks to smoke their plastic asbestos cigarettes, desert birds in widening gyre, rows of eyes raking the coals below, looked for life and meaning.
"Why do they hate us?"
Our liberty or weaponry? In a holding pattern above the unlearned lessons of history, fight and flight continue.
We are always fighting the last war.
My head is circling. Have an appointment today -- may be better or worse after. I may continue to circle.
The weave of personal, political, (inter)national, and local continues to baffle me.
fight or flight
?
war
?
So much to consider
and
so much depends
upon
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