My therapist often tells me that I wear the mask of rational thought and logic quite well. So well – many people would believe that is who I really am – including me.
When logic, reason, and rational thought fail, I feel lost, unattached, and adrift because I cannot hide behind that mask any longer. Feelings and intuition and such always have to fit in box and be categorized right – so I know what to feel, think, and do, right? When it can’t, I often let that undefined shapeless and endless hole swallow me. It feels like drowning — and struggling to the surface just to get air and a clear rational thought in… to provide just a moment of sanity. Just when I struggle to get to the surface and think I may be able to tread water long enough to get out of it – another wave takes me under for another dive.
I am told that one of the worst things one can do in the water – is fight. It is the fight that takes us deeper and deeper and deeper and pushes off help when it is there. It is only when we surrender we float to the top of the water or allow someone to help us. Except that isn’t my first thought. Often that realization that surrender is the only path forward only comes when we are beaten, battered, and torn from the fight.
I tried so hard the last day to find a way to make New Speedway Boogie work…because one way or another, this darkness got to give… One way or another, this darkness got to give. As much as I fought to make that work into how I feel, not one version met me where I was at…sorry Pig! Every song I played to meet me where I was at… fell flat. Song after song after song. Scrolling through my infinite albums. Fighting and struggling to make a connection to show me just how I feel.
Until this morning in the shower, I remembered a particular version of NFA @ Lockn. Then I remembered that there was that moment — where time stood still – and what was right wrong or whatever (including Bobby’s technical issues lol) just faded away. To just be present with others that were seeing what I was seeing - harp and all.
Love is real — Not fade away.
When there is a glimmer of spiritual fitness left in me – the feeling of true love usually takes me to Meher Baba:
“Love has to spring spontaneously from within: It is no way amenable to any inner or outer force. Love and coercion can never go together; But though love cannot be forced on anyone, it can be awakened through love itself. Love is essentially self-communicative…Those who do not have it catch it from those who have it. True love is unconquerable and irresistible; And it goes on gathering power and spreading itself, until eventually it transforms everyone whom it touches!”
As I sat down at my computer this morning with my office mate-- i opened a tab with the lyrics to New Speedway Boogie and what I was looking for all that time – was right there. It just needed that reminder of love to frame it –
I spent a little time on the mountain
Spent a little time on the hill
Heard some say, “better run away”
Others say, “better stand still”
Now I don’t know, but I been told
It’s hard to run with the weight of gold
Other hand I have heard it said
It’s just as hard with the weight of lead
Who can deny? Who can deny?
It’s not just a change in style
One step done and another begun
And I wonder how many miles?
I spent a little time on the mountain
Spent a little time on the hill
Things went down we don’t understand
But I think in time we will
I say it all the time – time takes time. What do we tell every newcomer – we will love you until you can love yourself. It seems so trite and well Pollyannaish. FUCK YOU YOU DON"T KNOW HOW I FEEL insert hissing possum meme Even when we learn to love others unconditionally, we still have trouble loving ourselves and allowing others to love us. Ego clings to that idea of the self it needs to survive and we become so scared to let go and let love. Ego convinces us that we cannot change, that things can’t change, that we are what we are. Even when confronted with an example, or even a God marker, we put it in its box, categorize it and explain it away. LOOK HOW ENLIGHTENED I AM I AM LOVING AWARENESS — proclaims the ego while it continues to feed us the poison that kills our souls and entrench itself. It is that fight to kill the ego that takes me to Ripple and particularly this part –
There is a road, no simple highway
Between the dawn and the dark of night
And if you go no one may follow
That path is for your steps alone
While that path may be for me alone, the day I hit bottom, I was told that I can’t do it alone. Blocking myself off to others, to love, and putting it all on my back to figure it out in a logical rational manner will not going to save me – yet still try to do it every time.
Where does that leave me – the fuck if I know. But somehow I know that I am right where i am supposed to be right now.
For all of this ramblin …
And there are no harps – but how about a Chris Robinson?
