KBCO: Flash Non-Fiction, Episode 1

Re-posted from Meditation Masters Facebook page

Re-posted from Meditation Masters Facebook page

KBCO
I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the music. I didn’t tell the others either. I like music, right? It was easy to capitulate to endless KBCO. I’d make it okay because there is no music I won’t listen to, but here we are. You looking at me and me looking at you across the therapist couch and all I can say is I’m sorry. I’m leaving you, not because of the music, but in a way it is about that, isn’t it? I’d be pissed, too that there wasn’t a chance to show me you could do Lavay Smith and the Red Hot Skillet Lickers. Except we both know you couldn’t. I’ve got that bad habit of picking men that only do their thing – and I follow. It’s not their fault as it isn’t yours. You didn’t tell me to be putty picking up your patterns. I just did it. I should’ve made you listen to Buckwheat Zydeco and Willie Nelson or told you folk music sort of sucks when I’m happy. I want KC and the Sunshine band or maybe some Barry White. Or forget all that 70’s shit and let’s just fire up the Awolnation or Atlas Genius. But that look would come over your face and you’d wander off to a bookstore or coffee shop or down to the basement. So I never turned it on. Stupid really, you were gone anyway. Don’t you see? You were never there. I was afraid you’d leave. You wouldn’t love me, so we stayed with endless REM and Fleetwood Mac until I was ready to chew off my own self-imposed chains. It wasn’t intentional that I had no faith in your ability to hear my tunes. It just became obvious that whenever I sang my own song, it seemed to be a tune you didn’t want to hear.

Work in progress from the Front Range Writer’s Group, Marj Hahne host

For Juan

Melt II: Photo by Noelle

Melt II: Photo by Noelle

Melt: Photo by Noelle

Melt: Photo by Noelle

Did you know that when you take a photograph you can be in no other moment than ‘Now’. I learned this from my friend Juan. Our conversation began in a very dark time of grief. I could not find a haven from my sorrow and anger and I certainly could not stop my mind racing in an endless search for answers. He suggested I take pictures with my cell phone as I hiked the foothills near the Rockies. That it would help settle my heart and mind, if only for a moment. I did not own a camera, had not taken a photo in more than twenty years and had, in fact, jettisoned most of my personal photos in the previous year. But I had no where else to go. My rage was so great I couldn’t engage in much of the art that had filled my spirit until then.

So I began to take photos of grass and summer flowers. Most of it not very good. He’d coach me and give me ideas and my work grew. Yesterday, as I looked at these two pictures on my iPad and saw the moment caught so perfectly in this “Now”, I thought of my friend. Stay in the now and you will heal, he said. And I did.

Those drops floating in mid air, Juan, are you.

Negative

Sunset: Photo negative taken by Noelle

Sunset: Photo negative taken by Noelle

The Dalai Lama is quoted as saying, “Sometimes the best thing to ever happen to you is NOT getting what you thought you wanted.” Spiritual evolution comes when we begin to see that the negative events of our life are actually the good things. That these same things, places, events were providing us an opportunity to see the world and ourselves completely differently. That they are meant to strip away our illusions, mainly, about ourself. When you can see beauty and motion and grace in negatives….well…then you are really onto something.

Home

If pain, sorrow, regret, confusion or fear are appearing in your present experience right now, do not turn away, do not use the labels ‘dark’ or ‘negative’, do not assume any kind of cosmic deviation or ‘sin’. For these are sacred and intelligent life-movements, all, undivided from the vastness of creation, waves of the limitless ocean of Self. They are your beloved children, all, forgotten movements of yourself, longing for your warm presence – a moment of undivided attention. “Remember me!” they cry, one last time, and will you ignore them today? Or will you finally accept your birth right? Will you remember that everything you long for is already appearing, disguised as everything you reject?

Will you remember that you cannot be anywhere other than Home?” ~ Jeff Foster

Dead

Winter Sun: Photo by Noelle

Winter Sun: Photo by Noelle

Dead is the soup, no more potatoes on the board
Dead is the Shalimar soaked scarves on the door
Dead comes the memory of smashed pots on walls
And broken eggs still in cracked dishes on the floor

Dead giggles down hallways where she chased
Little girl hiding in winter boots and grandma’s lace
Dead comes the warm paper skinned hands
That kneaded the bread and rolled pie dough with cans

Dead are the winter nights as black as coal
Christmas light watching sipping her coffee cold
Dead are the secrets each of us carried
Dead is the garden of our arguments parried

Dead am I as cherished daughter
Dead is the place called home by lake water
Dead comes her call from decades now past
Dead are my longings for safe sail and mast

An anaphora (repetition of phrase). A work in progress from The Writer’s Church, Boulder, CO. Hosted by Marj Hahne

Torn Asunder

River bank collage in gold and purple: Photo by Noelle

River bank collage in gold and purple: Photo by Noelle

I did not understand the loss
Not the switchbacks in direction
Nor the unfulfilled need

I did not see the change
Or the push of the envelope
The strain to see

I hated the destruction
Crushed and laid barer
Than the hull without its seed

Down to bone you left me
Naked and exposed
Winds of confusion whipping me clean

Standing in dirt
Vines sprung up, wrapping
My naked bones with leafy tweed

Vines bore flowers that brought the bees
That pollinated my blossoms
With your divine beads

Which grew ripe and colorful fruit
That attracted the birds that took up
Nests in my mind to feed

Laying eggs of inspiration
All babies learning to fly
And then I knew I did see

Such a deep appreciation
For having been torn asunder
Destroyed and sanded to a reed

I was never the hull
Always the seed
And in muddied dirt You and I grew me

Little Gem: Joy and Sorrow

From flood to drought: Photo by Noelle

From flood to drought: Photo by Noelle

“Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”

― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Rain

Image re-posted from The Mind Unleashed Facebook page

Image re-posted from The Mind Unleashed Facebook page

Rain falls hard drains tick and rattle
Branches whip the window so bold
A frenetic heart beat, steady
In the closeness of the house
The sound is a chaotic symphony
That does not grace within
Tick and rattle, pitter patter

Cracking thunder
Light washes a dark field
Water rushes the stones
My chest fires back an adrenaline shot
Deep into my vessels it flows
Who is a storm now
My belly creaks
My breath shutters
Tick and rattle, pitter patter

Shadows dance
Trees sway, not lovers
More women thrashing wheat
In fields of silver rivers and
Matted grass
Leaves stick to the pane
While rivulets swing around them
Wild Celtic women
Dancing around a leaf alter
Tick and rattle, pitter patter

I am the rolling thunder
I am the relentless rain
I am the mad lightening that strikes the heart
And jolts my spirit awake in the
Wildness of an eternal dark
A mighty storm
Tick and rattle, pitter patter

Marbles

Tunnel River Marble: Photography by Noelle

Tunnel River Marble: Photography by Noelle

I feel the edges of my thoughts
A blind woman reading brail
Stretching them further
I feel the thinness
Emotions never go as far
As the first stone thought tossed

There’s no pulling back
Once thought escapes
Electric charges fire into a
Neuro net sky
Frankenstein’s monster lives
And like his maker
I, too, love and hate
What I create

I turn inward
Withdrawing the great sustenance
My attention
Each thought suddenly a marble
Rolling around on the floor
Agates
And crystals
Real blown glass

All colored to a feeling
A place or time assigned
Catalogs lay open on gray matter tables
A jeweler placing an order
Fiery anger
Melancholy blues
What is the hue of the day?