…my sanctuary, my home in words.
I write because it gives me a clearer way to see the day — to see life. The world feels like a movie, one where, as I mature, I increasingly see and feel how the writing is bad, the audio is too loud, and the characters regularly and inappropriately go off-script. That version of the world is not up to par for me. When I take advantage of the ability to access each component of my existence through letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, and whole narratives, I take hold of the ability to create my reality. I take hold of the ability to reflect the reality I see to those who don't understand my vantage point; the ability to reflect the reality I want to see, changing my scene at any moment — writing, acting in, directing, and producing my own movie of life. Writing allows me to channel the poetry of life into the poetry of expression; where there are feelings and thoughts, there are the accompanying words. And where there are words, there is power, there is life.
Writing is another sense altogether.
I write to reconcile my outer and inner worlds. Many times, there is an ongoing story occurring in my inner world that the me of my outer world has no knowledge of. I'd find myself in a moment of calm (or amidst a personal storm) with a pen in hand or the keys of the keyboard yielding softly or violently to my fingers. I'd be simultaneously present but deep in thought, deep in the inner world: surveying, investigating, returning to the ever-evolving and dynamic life existing within me. I'd half-mindedly reach my hand to my water flask and somehow feel the lukewarm liquid gliding down my throat, all while immersed in the parallel poetry of the inner realm. So, when I write, I channel. Each penstroke or keystroke triggers an incremental opening of the door separating the outer and inner realms. We can call this "The Door of Twilight". It mimics that point during nightly hibernation when I drift away from the light of day and into the cool, nurturing remembrance of night, of the subconscious. The Door of Twilight pulls me towards her as I submerge my conscious identity into her oceans — oceans of curiosity, wonder, and amazement flowing right to and through her threshold. Her oceans are her powerful expanse of love. And like love does in conscious reality, it draws me in, instilling a tint of fear within the sheer beauty of its embrace. I glide forward, elegantly wrapping my legs around the dense and cold water, blanketing me, all while a separate, completely unrelated, scene persists in front of my physical eyes. I appear distant to passersby, like I'm in an alternate world.
And I am.
Because as my bladder becomes fuller from each creamy sip of bitter coffee and refreshing gulp of water, my mind remains on the flowing path to my destination through The Door of Twilight. Mosquitos commence their lunchtime on my sweet and sticky flesh and I arrive at the door, prepared to enter through a portal of understanding, discovery, and healing. Smells and sounds trigger visual scapes to crystalize before my inner eyes, scapes melding memory with imagination; creating a vision for a manifested reality, only if the energy is right; if it's ready to produce; if I’m ready to yield.
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I’ve found an effective workaround when attempting to describe what feels impossible — especially when the feeling itself is novel to me. When I cannot describe the situation that generates an impossible feeling, I re-create it. I enter into an intuitive space and consciously cross the threshold through The Door of Twilight, set on painting the picture I see, in real-time. Do I get caught up on words? Yes. Do I have to search through my understanding of self to locate the most apt translation of my spirit into human language? Into English? Yes, I do. This happens with frequency, naturally. But my inclination to express persists and language abides, tickling me with its words aplenty and context and connotations alike. Language taunts me and dares me to play, experimenting with the transmission of ideas and experiences into a form digestible for other humans. Language challenges me to take an ordinary beam of wood and transform it into a riddle, a support structure created from the essence of physical life — mother earth. It contains curves and ridges, shadows and light, to remind of us the chaos of life — the inherent uncertainty of it all. And in all that, we are supported; we can create multitudes and be created in multitudes within our respective timelines. Language calls for that interpretation of a simple wooden plank.
And I honor the call.
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The translation of spirit into human language is both a game and a responsibility. Many times I experience feelings and receive intuitive nudges that I cannot make sense of with my present abilities. If I cannot make sense of my emotions and desires, I begin the illumination journey, consistently attracting situations into my life that only serve to reinforce my unknown wounds and longings. Then I write through the expedition. I write through the pain. I write through the tears and revelatory junctures when my cries dissolve into verbalizations of laughter and mirth. This translation of spirit is my responsibility to myself — my weightless ascension relies on it.
On some level, then, language is a tool to validate the experiences I can't explain. And written language offers a healthy distance from the legendary force of the unknown, the boundlessness of unending possibilities. In this space, in this distance, I relax in the knowing that working with words is a slow process. While inside the inner story or the imagination, I look up and around me; I lick the walls and stop to see if I recognize the flavor. I breathe s l o w l y, and close my eyes, hovering in space inside of myself. I effectively stop time and manipulate what makes the most sense in order to express a narrative that shakes my entire kingdom of creation with resonance. With all this space and time and intention applied to the act of exploratory thinking, then performing those thoughts vis a vis writing, you'd think I've blazed enough trails across my brain to have captured myself in some semblance of completeness.
Think again.
The writer's mind, my mind, is a mind that stops at no sensible restriction to cohere the DNA of life, representing a full-bodied experience. The writer's soul, my soul, is a soul intensely animated by the everythingness, the essence, of life — what I call "love". Deep exploration and authenticity await in my sanctuary, my home in words.
