Forests and Piss and Jelly Fish Growth

I heard that plants grow in a similar pattern as a jelly fish’s tentacles move when it swims. The plant will grow a little bigger and then shrink a little, grow and shrink, grow and shrink. I feel shrunken. For the the time being. Until the season comes when I grow big again, only to shrink again and then grow and shrink and so on and so forth. A pattern of death and resurrection. Light and dark. Lost and found. Neither bad nor good. Just nature’s habits that naturally stick to creatures of nature, animals that are in denial of who they truly are. 

Have you ever held your heart? Aside from pledging allegiance to a bloody flag when you were small, when was the last time you thoughtfully and lovingly pressed your palm to the walls of your soul? When was the last time you made that connection? I like to hold myself in that position. I like to remember that I am transcendent and timeless. 

Today I went trespassing onto land that is rightfully mine anyways. It’s rightfully yours too. I sang to butterflies and green hues lit up my eyes and the trees covered me from the drizzling rain. I felt at home in one of my many homes. From the streets of Asheville where it’s conventional to be unconventional, to the streets of Houston where it smells like piss and men’s voices yell out for your number and mothers blow bubbles for their daughters on trains and old women walk to the convenience store to buy fish. From Asheville to Houston to Shelby where the dogs keep getting fleas and none of us can hear the other and we laugh when the other farts and flip each other off when we’re being made fun of, to the forest where it is still and quiet and primitive and the pine needles and spiders give permission to exist in your Truest form; to listen to your intuition, to embrace what lives in the forests, the quiet places of your own heart.

When will my eyes cleanse me with holy water? When will this well be emptied so it can be filled again? When was the last time you held your palm to your heart? What is a home? 

An Excerpt

…though even here, just that one word, “aside”, makes me shudder, for what is ever really just put aside?-and you’ll cary on, eat, drink, be merry and most of all you’ll sleep well. 

Then again there’s a good chance you wont. 

This much I’m certain of: it doesn’t happen immediately. You’ll finish and that will be that, until a moment will come, maybe in a month, maybe a year, maybe even several years. You’ll be sick or feeling troubled or deeply in love or quietly uncertain or even content for the fist time in your life. It wont matter. Out of the blue, beyond any cause you can trace, you’ll suddenly realize things are not how you perceived them to be at all. For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were. You’ll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you,more importantly shifts in you. Worst, you’ll realize it’s always been shifting, like a shimmer of sorts, a vast shimmer, only dark like a room. But you wont understand why or how. You’ll have forgotten what granted you this awareness in the first place. 

Old shelters-television, magazines, movies-wont protect you anymore. You might try scribbling in a journal, on a napkin, maybe even in the margins of this book. That’s when you’ll discover you no longer trust the very walls you always took for granted. Even the hallways you’ve walked a hundred times will feel longer, much longer, and the shadows, any shadow at all, will suddenly seem deeper, much, much deeper. 

You might try then, as I did, to find a sky so full of stars it will blind you again. Only no sky can blind you now. Even with all that iridescent magic up there, your eye will no longer trace constellations, You’ll care only about the darkness and you’ll watch it for hours, for days, maybe even for years, trying in vain to believe you’re some kind of indispensable, universe-appointed sentinel, as if just by looking you could actually keep it all at bay. It will get so bad you’ll be afraid to look away, you’ll be afraid to sleep. 

Then no matter where you are, in a crowded restaurant or on some desolate street or even in the comforts of your own home, you’ll watch yourself dismantle every assurance you ever lived by. You’ll stand aside as a great complexity intrudes, tearing part, piece by piece, all of your carefully conceived denials, whether deliberate or conscious. And then for better or worse you’ll turn, unable to resist, though try to resist you still will, fighting with everything you’ve got not to face the thing you most dread, what is now, what will be, what has always come before, the creature you truly are, the creature we all are, buried in the nameless black of a name. 

And then the nightmares will begin. 

Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

Remember

It’s so hard to meet yourself in your own pain and hold yourself in its presence. It is an obnoxious friend who will never let you forget that you loved. And I think that's okay. I never want to get over what it was like to sit across from God on the bus and watch Her blow out Her candles for Her birthday; eat beside Celeste at dinner and listen to her talk about how dry the macaroni is. Language will never explain how it feels to be known, to be entirely accepted, even when you're in disagreement, even when you're pissed. I am so afraid of knowing what my Deepest Self feels about these people and the life that we gave one another.