All Is Full of Love

I often get completely overtaken by love. By the massive amounts of love and beauty I feel coursing through the world. Not the pretty kind of love, the heartcrushing, bloody, raging kind of love. Maybe some people call this god, although I can't imagine the white bread, follow-the-rules, frail image I have of christian churchgoers to at all be feeling what I'm talking about. Or maybe they feel and worship it but are terrified and choose to distance themselves by calling it something outside of themselves, not knowing how to partake. At times, this love gushes out of me so powerfully that I fall completely helpless to it and for some reason, all I seem to be able to do is cry. Cry so hard that I feel like I could choke. Or I'm sure I could absolutely rage out in the forest somewhere, scream and stetch my arms out. This is the kind of love that makes me want to fight, be violent although not hurt anything. Like the ocean crashing up against rocks, each crash humbling the last, so lucky to be able to express this raging sublime violence.

This will ebb, or quiet down, and I'll look at myself in the mirror, feeling so incredibly beautiful, radiant and powerful. But in the mirror, I don't look that at all. My face is red, my lips puffy and I look small and petty. And I'm always so surprised. That what feels so incredibly beautiful doesn't look that pretty. Yet some people have an ability to transform this heartcrushing beauty into art.

Lately, as this seems to be the interim period, as it has been for a while now, between one segment of my life and the next, I'm brought again and again- I seem unable to stray from it for too long- back to this love. I walk around in a cloud, everyone around me feels miles away, and as often as I can, I sit on my heels next to my bed, unintentionally genuflecting, my face in my hands, sobbing. And listening, over and over, to Jonie Mitchell, Nina Simone, Alison Krauss, Van Morrison, Bjork, Ani Difranco, singers who, in my book, are speaking for this immense love.

I happen to be stripped absolutely bare right now. I'm a wide open wound. I have no identity in the world, I'm not a student or a stoner or a massage therapist or a mother, I don't really have anything that feels like "home", I'm not sure what I value, what I want or where I'm going. I'm not on a "path", I'm lost in the woods. Unarmed, so everything seeps in and pries me open. I feel like you almost HAVE to be an outcast or a hermit in some way in order to keep that connection alive. Or at least never fully compartmentalize your life to the point that there's no wiggle room, no voids unfilled, no passage in.

Inclusion on a large scale tends to water things down, bring things to a lowest, or at least lowER common denominator. To appeal to the widest possible audience, things tend to gravitate toward "pretty" and pleasing, easy to follow, not gut-busting, tear-you-eyes-out fucking beautiful.

The world is dangerous with mediocrity! Drop out of college, don't send your kids to kindergarten, turn off your tv!

If I can find a way to manifest this massive beauty, create something outside of me this beautiful, my life will be a success.