Where I've Been...

Unknown Artist

It’s the first day of fall. Yes, it really is! And though I’ve been back from my summer break for a while, now, I haven’t been back to my blogs. Truth be told, I was aching for an extended separation from technology. So, I took one. I’ve been doing the bare minimum, in that respect, i.e., sending and responding to important emails, taking care of educational and professional needs, and other such things.

On the personal end, I’ve just been so beautifully inside my world… so embedded in the realness of it. It’s almost as if I’ve been rediscovering the world I live inside… and the world that lives inside me. That’s not to suggest that these two worlds are separate from one another. They’re not. And so, I’ve been reconnecting with myself… and with my world. What a delicious dance it’s been!

How spiritually massaging it was to distance myself from my everyday existence, and take a break, for a while… only to return to that existence with freshly etched dreams and expectations. But, there’s just so much to do! So, while my break is truly over, I continue to inch my way back into all of the usual and habitual activities I like to engage. My coursework. My clients. My clinical papers. My students. And, a research study. But then, there’s room for pockets of free time, as well. There must be…

And so, on this first day of Fall, 2013:

I stop and watch the dust in the air swirl around… and settle.

I observe the leaves as they morph from green to gold.

I feel the cool nip of the morning air against my arms.

I smell fall... and winter in its trail.

I find pockets of empty space... and here I rest.

I allow the empty space to remain… empty.

I sit inside myself… and stay… for a spell.

I write… and write… and write some more.

I breathe… and breathe… and breathe some more.

I recline… inside the unknown.

I open myself up to the moment that is here… and now.

I lean into the enchantment this moment delivers… and it leans into me.

I am in this moment.

I... am... this moment.

As the ever inspiring and ever stirring poet, Mark Strand, once wrote:

Each moment is a place you’ve never been.

Now, that’s a truth!

Oh, and by the way… it’s lovely to be back!

Now, that’s another truth! :-)

On Excess... and Blindness

Star Maker, Les Edwards

You wander from room to room, hunting for the diamond necklace that is already around your neck. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi

* * * * * * * * *

Years ago, when I still lived in Egypt, I traveled to the Sinai Peninsula annually. Every November, for six years, I separated myself from the chatter of everyday life, went into the desert, and prepared for my climb to the summit of Mt. Moses. On the morning (or rather, the night) of the climb, I would wake up at 2:00 a.m., wrap myself in as many warm layers as possible, wear two or three pairs of socks, put on my hiking boots, and board the bus that would take me to the bottom of the mountain, where I would begin a cliff-ridden journey speckled with small chapels and other niches of worship, that would end at the top just as the sun was about to rise.

As I stepped off the bus and stood at the foot of Mt. Moses, there was never a need to look up into the sky to see the stars. Everything around me was stars! The sky was everywhere—humming against my cheekbones, rubbing against my skin. I remember the falling meteoroids, plunging to their final rest so beautifully, like a platinum firework. We like to call those “shooting stars.” But they are not shooting. And they are not stars. They are dying pieces of rock that sing their swan song as they fall into our atmosphere in an explosion of light, as if to say, I am eternal. Always remember me.

Here is an excerpt from my journal from the trip I took in 1998: Walking in the supposed footsteps of Moses, passing beneath the night shadow of what was believed to be the original burning bush, I never once stopped to think about the holiness of the place from that context. The holiness for me was in the heavens. And the heavens were not up there, but right here… enveloping me like a blanket. It was all so overwhelming—the brightness, the aliveness, the sacredness, the now-ness. How to take it all in?

Most haunting were the sleepless nights that followed, as that brilliant image lingered inside my psyche, knitting the tips of my darkest nights with interconnected haloes.

These memories called me outside again, last night, like innumerable nights before. And I stood at the step leading up to my front door, beside the “Welcome” garden gnome who perches there, my head craned back, my eyes scanning the heavens. The sky was so dark… the stars so bright. And I wanted so greedily to see it all. Every star. Every glimmer. Every dip. Every pose. Every eloquent and timid hue of purple. And silver. And black. And as I swiveled my head up and down, left and right, in my hunger to take in this immenseness, I realized the absurdity of my greed, and how insidiously it metastasizes.

Jorge Luis Borges once said that when he went blind, he became an insomniac. He’d slept all his life in total darkness, and now that he could no longer see, too much light danced behind his eyelids, haunting the receptacle of his absent sense, and stealing his sleep.

Ah, yes!

Last night, after countless insomniac nights… insomniac years… of searching the sky for stars, my neck sore from trying to support my ricocheting head, I walked out onto my front lawn, planted my bare feet firmly in the grass, and understood: The stars are there, even by day, even when I can’t see them. I need not search for them.

They are there.

They are there.

They are there.

And…

I can’t see it all,

Can’t do it all,

Can’t have it all.

And the beauty of it is that I’m finally… finally… perfectly at peace with that.

On Imagination... and Indulgence

Starry Night over the Rhône, Vincent Van Gogh

Who could be so lucky? The one who comes to a lake for water, and sees the reflection of moon. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi

* * * * * * * * *

What drew me to the kitchen table, this morning? And what pulled me away from it?

Every morning, before even the sparrows have awakened, I rise from bed and stumble in the dark from the bedroom to the kitchen. I fill the kettle with water, set it on the stove, and wait. In the instant before the kettle begins to whistle, I turn off the heat, give the water a few seconds to settle, and pour it into my cup filled with tea waiting to steep. Then, teacup in hand, I walk to my office, sit at my desk, and do my morning journal. Perfectly normal. Perfectly predictable. It was. Until this morning.

After I made tea, I didn’t go to my office. I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay in the kitchen and do my morning journal there. Who’s to say I have to do my journaling in my office? So I made a conscious decision to go to my office only to get my journal and my pen. I also made a decision to leave my cup of warm black tea on the kitchen table as bait. I was afraid something in my office would compel me to stay: a book jutting out from an otherwise orderly shelf, a research study edging out of my high stack of paperwork, my laptop, or—curse of all curses—my “TO DO” list, scribbled in ALL CAPS, as if no single task is more important than the other.

When I got to my office, I felt for the light switch. But at the last moment, I pulled back my hand. I didn’t want to turn on the light, after all. It was too early for all that brightness. I walked to my desk and turned on my desk lamp, instead. My cheeks smarted with quivers as stars exploded inside my head. I shut my eyes to dampen the visual noise. And then… I opened them slowly.

Colors danced on my walls—lucid projections of painted glass. Ruby. Amber. Emerald. Amethyst. Sapphire. As my eyes scanned the peacock-like landscape, I was distracted from my mission. The colors were living, pulsing with definition and absoluteness. I found it impossible to ignore this elaborate mosaic that was spreading out before me. An anxious voice forced its way inside my head: You’re here to get your journal and pen. But I swept that voice out of my field, pushed it behind my curtains—my oh so glorious curtains that had gone, by the simple flip of a switch, from taupe to Tiffany. A new voice nagged: Your tea is getting cold on the kitchen table, Nevine. Tea? What tea? Oh, and… your journal and pen. Remember? No, I didn’t remember. I didn’t want to.

Trees with forbidden fruit studding every limb and appendage were beckoning from my walls. The sepia-toned framed photo of my husband that hangs beside one of my bookshelves had become a silver screen, pearlescent with regalia. The enormous oil-on-canvas reproduction of Van Gogh’s Starry Night over the Rhône that dominates my main wall had taken on electric hues. And. It was moving! The water was rippling in cascades of liquid amber and blue topaz, tinged with the occasional shock of tanzanite. The couple standing on the bank of the river looked at me from behind the glow of a royal purple dragonfly wing and said, Come, Nevine. Come walk with us inside the audacity of this fantasy. And I said, Wait for me. I’m coming!

Was that a hallucination? One could say so, yes. And yes, hallucinations are, technically speaking, pathological experiences. But only involuntary hallucinations are pathological. And by the way, I’ve got my thoughts on that as well, but I’m not going there right now. So, what about the hallucinations that we choose to create by torqueing our inner psyche—those hallucinations that imbue our spirit with the magic of fantasy? Why is it that we indulge fully in those hallucinations when we are children, only to abandon them when we get older? Is it fair that only children get to play?

We set boundaries to what we can see… and feel… and imagine… and we call them norms. And then we do everything we can to bend those norms (because they stifle us and we hate them) without actually breaking them because then we’d be called abnormal. I acknowledge there are norms that should never be broken, and we all know what those norms are. In fact, they’re not called norms; they’re called laws. But, beyond the reality of everyday life, other possibilities exist, hiding in plain sight but never seen because we don’t allow imagination or intuition, but only inhibition, to flavor our perception. How many polarities are enough? And how many parts of ourselves do we marginalize when we inhibit a new thought, a bold passion, a daring beauty? It is ever so simple for us to lose touch with who we are when part after part of us is cast to the side and told, “You are not allowed.”

As I write this, I recall something Fritz Perls, the founder of Gestalt therapy, once wrote: “The very moment you get in touch with yourself, growth begins. This is the decisive moment—the difference between the old stale routine, always the same, in contrast to the discovery, which always means something new, adding something to your life, adding something to your knowledge, adding something to your growth. There is something in this world that wasn’t there before.” I am also reminded of something I read from Carl Jung, and which I always write into the first page of a new notebook or journal: “It all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are in themselves. Without this playing with fantasy, no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.” Thank you both, Fritz and Carl!

And what about my tea? I knew it would get cold, and I'd have to pour it down the sink. Later. I had the Hanging Gardens of Babylon teasing my lips with bulbous figs and grapes... massaging the hollows of my eyes with silver dust... breathing spectrum waves down the rungs of my spine... and clasping my waist in an unrelenting snare of metaphysical glory. Those gardens were calling me to indulgence in a haunting serenade, and I wasn't going to turn down that invitation for anything in the whole damn world!

On Writing . . . and the Gift of Silence

Detail from Woman Reading, Augustin Bernard d'Agesci

The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink, and clamoring to become visible. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

* * * * * * * * *

I love to write. No big surprise, right? I have a writing blog (actually, two), and though I am not a frequent blogger, I am very much a frequent writer. I write daily. My existence depends on it. My sanity depends on it, to be sure.

I’m a “processing” person. I like to analyze and think things through, and I write so I can find new ways of looking at the world. The human mind can only process so much in the split seconds it takes us to internalize a certain situation. Before we’ve had a chance to mull it over, it has already been filed away as “Event 99,” along with all the associations that go with it. So, what about Processing, and Understanding, and Insight?

There is something extremely satisfying and fulfilling in the act of writing, though I don’t think it’s the act of writing itself that satisfies. Rather, it’s the act of creating... recreating... from a unique perspective, having broken things down to their small parts. Hence: Processing. Understanding. Insight. When we create art, we give birth to fragments of ourselves. And, more often than not, if we have truly put ourselves into our artful self-expression, we don’t even have to claim it as ours. It will have “Nevine” or “Carl” or “Perpetua” written all over it, because it is bursting with the spirit of who we are.

We write. We paint. Fragments. We express. We create. Fragments. And as those fragments of ourselves are released, they make their way through the ether, seeking new resting, nesting places. Many times, they don’t find what they’re looking for. But sometimes, they do. This is when magic happens for the receiver. Magic is what makes something inside us, as appreciators of creative expression, smile and think, “Yes!” while reading a poem by, say, T. S. Eliot. Yes, he is my favorite poet. He always has been. He always will be. I read his words and they touch a part of me I sometimes wonder if even I have ever touched so intimately. 

I have similar experiences with my own work, especially when it comes to the creating part. Sometimes, my writing leaves me shimmering with its ease and beauty. Other times, I am up all night, with not a flicker of emotion or inspiration with which to put words to paper. And, to be sure, my reader will always experience my free or stunted flow, on one level or the other.

And just what is the point of this whole dissertation? The point is... four days ago I made a decision to take a writing fast. I told myself I would abstain, for a few days, from creative writing of any sort... just so I could see what it feels like. When my fingers itched for my favorite writing pen, I wrung them like they were saturated with water. When my head ached from an overflow of unexpressed thought, I told it, Silence, my head. When my muse came by for tea, I politely took a rain check.

I confess: This was an act of extreme masochism. It was almost physically painful, especially because I knew I had the choice to reverse my decision. But the truth is I felt that staying away from writing for a short while would be a good thing... because... when I am not birthing my own words, I indulge sensually in the words of others.

So I have been reading... and listening to music... and reading... and celebrating the beauty of others’ words... and worlds. But then, today... I needed my own words. I needed them more intensely than I have over the past four days. I needed the cleansing and cathartic power of their presence, and I decided to break my fast. But, oh muse! Oh, fickle one! She shunned me, just as I had shunned her. And words were not to be found! I asked her over for tea and crumpets, but she gave me her left shoulder.

I decided not to attend to her vengeful play, and instead, to read some more... just as I have been doing these past few days. As Joyce Carol Oates once wrote, “If writing is not available, reading is.” Indeed! I chose a collection of poems by Franz Wright. He’s quite the poet, truly. Winner of a Pulitzer Prize and all! Yet amazingly, because he is a poet, most people have never heard of him. Sad, eh? I picked up a copy of his God’s Silence at a used bookstore a couple of weeks ago, and I spent my morning in the company of his ethereal words:

The long silences need to be loved, perhaps

more than the words

which arrive

to describe them

in time.

Brilliant, yeah? And, can I just say? All the comfort... and confirmation... I was seeking.

As for me, as I await the arrival of words with which to describe my silence, and as I listen to the magnificence of Beethoven’s easy flow of creativity, here is my humble, muse-free contribution for today:

when my words

my voice

my spirit

are resting

their eyes

let the words

the voices

the spirits

of others

rise

In every limitless void, there is limitless bounty!

On Mortality, the End of the World, and Those Joyful Moments in Life

Couch on the Porch by Frederick Childe Hassam

Sometimes, I have to ask myself, Why do things happen the way they do? And because there’s usually not a clear-cut answer to the question, I just let it go and move along. But this morning… this morning was something else.

My husband and I woke up early. Not unusual. As soon as we got up, he flipped on the TV. Unusual. We don’t normally watch TV in the morning. But I guess this morning he felt the urge, for one reason or the other. And we sat together and watched the news. And a segment came on about the End of Days. This segment was not all news to us, though; we’d been hearing about this phenomenon for the past few weeks. Apparently, there’s a group of people who believe tomorrow, May 21, 2011, is the beginning of the end of the world… or the end of it… or something like that. To be honest, I didn’t really pay much attention to it all because I don’t believe in any of that drabble. The end of my world is when I die. Selfish, but true. But then, my husband turned to me and said, “What would you do today if tomorrow really was the end of the world?” And it’s funny that I took his question seriously, all things considered. But I did. And without a moment’s pause, I said, “I’d read. And I’d write. What would you do?” And he said, “I don’t know. I have to think about it.” And we had breakfast, while discussing what he would do. And he left for the day.

But it didn’t end there for me, because his question struck something inside me. Something… elemental. And I got to thinking, Well, what if tomorrow really was the end of the world? How would I go about today? And it came to me naturally that I would read. And I would write. Because there’s really not much you can do in a single day that would truly leave its mark. And so that’s just what I decided to do, today. I read. And I wrote. And I read. And I wrote. And I drank tea… but not just any tea… my favorite tea—Earl Grey with lemon slices. And for lunch, I cooked my favorite meal—angel hair with cherry tomato and garlic basil sauce. And with my lunch, I had a glass of dry red wine, which I sipped slowly while eating, also slowly. And after lunch, I watched Immortal Beloved. And by the end of the movie, I was ready for some fresh air, so I went out to my back porch and watered my plants. And then I grabbed a book and read some more, right there on my back porch… because by then, the sun had moved to the other side of my house, and there was an irresistible breeze swishing around like a ghost. And I listened to Vivaldi… and Albinoni… because Baroque was just the mood of the day. And when I felt saturated from reading and listening, I paused for a few minutes… actually, more like an hour… and did nothing at all. Well, that’s a lie. I did something: I thought. About Life. About Time. About Mortality. About my own End of the World. And what would I like for that to look like? And I realized that… if I had time… say, if I found out I was dying from a terminal disease but I had six months, things would be different than, say, if I just found out, for a fact, that the world was ending tomorrow. Because… if I had a terminal illness and a certain measure of time, I would want to travel to my favorite places… and spend time with my favorite people… doing my favorite things... and maybe… I would want to do something with which to immortalize myself… not literally… but… you know. But, given only twenty-four hours, I had chosen the more solitary experiences of reading… and writing… and enjoying some of my favorite things by myself. And… after thinking and thinking… I wrote some more. And before I knew it, late afternoon was here and my husband was at the door.

“How was your day, princess?”

“It was slow. And delicious.”

“Delicious! What did you do?”

“I read. And I wrote. Among other things.”

“Other things like what?”

“Like tea. And angel hair. And a movie. And just… nothing.”

“Well, that’s nice that you had some free time, today. But, really? You did nothing? I don’t see you doing nothing, Nevine.”

“Trust me, I did nothing.”

“Okay, you did nothing. But while you were doing nothing, your mind was buzzing at a hundred miles an hour. Right?”

And he pulled me close. And we smiled at one another. And here was another joyful moment in my day. But it wasn’t a solitary moment. It was a shared moment. Although, I have to say that today, having gone about things with thoughts of an end lingering… just there… I realized with full clarity that, shared or solitary, the most joyful moments in life are both delivered… and received…

solemnly…

patiently…

serendipitously…

one at a time.

Smallness

“What is the feeling when you're driving away from people, and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? – it's the too huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”       ~ Jack Kerouac, On the Road

* * * * *

Enchanted places… Do we find them? Or do they find us? Does serendipity act while we are most oblivious?

My husband likes to ride his bike on the country roads around our home. And he comes back with his eyes filled with the rolling hills, the thick wild oak trees, the open sky. And when I see his eyes, and when I hear him talk, I sometimes fear for him. Because the mind always asks. And the heart always doubts. And the spirit… well, it does fear. So, every time he gets ready to take to the road, I curl a little into myself. And as he’s leaving I go through the checklist: phone, sports drink, helmet, money, I.D., and When you get to the intersection, will you turn left or right?

And so, one Sunday morning, quite some time ago, shortly after we moved here, my husband took his road bike and went out cycling. I’m going down to the intersection and turning right, he said. And that was that. Except, about an hour and a half after he left he called:

What happened?

I had a flat. Can you come get me?

Where are you?

About 20 miles from the intersection, going north.

20 miles!?!

Yes, just make that right and stay on the main road, and when the road forks, turn right again.

Okay. I’ll be there as soon as I can.

I’m in a pebbled area on the side of the road. You can’t miss me.

I’ll be right there.

And I grabbed my car keys and flew.

Down to the next county. Down to the intersection. Sharp right. There, I saw signs for the river I had always known to exist but had never seen. And further down, to my left… the river. To my right… open country. In between… the occasional cactus. The occasional house surrounded by ground and sky. Complete and utter barrenness. Complete and utter…

Nothingness.

Beauty. Sublimity. Surrounding me.

I was alone. With water. With trees. With dirt. With sky. With nothing. With no one.

And the place… took me.

I wanted to stay. To see. To explore. But my husband was waiting for me several miles away. In a pebbled area. Out in the middle of another nowhere. Or the rest of this one. With a flat tire and a conspicuously red jersey and some really tired legs. So I kept driving.

And this very same situation repeated itself at least five or six times. And every time I drove by that place on my way to save my husband from another flat tire situation, I told myself I had to come back. To this road. To this place. Hidden… but wanting to be found.

And so today, because it is the last day of my spring break, and because it is the first day of spring (and on the first day of spring I like to be with life), I drove down that deserted country road. Over the hills and through the wild oak trees. On my way to nowhere. Because I wanted to stay… and see. And when I saw cows lazing under the burning sun, under the open sky, by the river… by the nothingness… the unbeingness of it all, I parked my car on the side of the road and got out. I wanted… I don’t know what I wanted. But I found myself watching the cows. And they watched me back with interest… and curiosity. As if they wanted to tell me something. And we just kind of watched each other for a while. And I felt the smallness of me. And it felt so good to be small in this vastness. It felt… humbling. And I heard in the background the silence that trickled from between the crisp and subtle laughter of the river. And I heard inside that silence the voice inside my head. That other voice that sometimes speaks, though uninvited.

There, in that enchanted place, the other voice told me things. About him. About her. About me. About you. About us. About love. About life. Things I never thought to think. Things that are told only in dreams.

The voice spoke. And I replied.

And Beethoven accompanied us from my car stereo.

But, after a while, I realized I couldn’t stay forever because… forever peels the magic away. So I waved goodbye. But I promised to be back.

And one day, when I leave here, the one thing I will take with me is that enchanted place down by the river. That road. CR 761 or CR 438 or whatever CR number it is… one county over. The road with a name unknown to me. The place that has taken me. The road. The place. Narrow and winding and uneven and going nowhere. Or somewhere. Does it matter?

Sometimes we have to stop trying to get to certain places and allow our spirits to find the places that truly enchant them. Or allow those places to find us.

I’ve got that country road tattooed beneath my skin and humming between my arms. I’ve got it droning inside the empty spaces between my ribs. I’ve got it in my hair and in my eyes and under my tongue. And that country road has my breath splattered all over it. It has one stray hair that detached itself from my head embedded in its cracks. Dead hair. Loose threads. Empty bottles. Rusty cars. Abandoned houses. Things once precious and dear and gleaming with life… now lost and forgotten… and alone. And things still alive: blue sky and wild oak and dry cactus and golden dandelion and flowing water. Flowing. Like the blood inside my veins.

We are places. And they are us. We are their vastness. And they are our smallness.

My gasps of bliss are ever emblazoned upon the air that rises above that place and tents it like a silent but turbulent and ravenous storm.

What if...?

Sunrise by Georgia O'Keeffe

I’m going back to school. Fact. Not a What if… situation. I’m going back to school today. Last Friday was my last day of delivering education and today will be my first day of receiving it once again. When was the last time I was a student? It seems like ages ago. And it’s taken me forever to make the decision to go back. But I’ve made it!

You see, there was that feeling. Do you know it? That nagging feeling that compels you, every morning, as you’re driving in to work, to ask yourself: What the hell am I doing? And why? And when will I have the guts to stop doing this and start doing what I really want to do? And when you find yourself stumped… not for answers… but for the courage to take the plunge… day after week after month after year… while the tears are sitting in your gut like a bag of heavy, undigested bones getting moister and expanding with every passing moment and threatening to make your gut explode… when you’re getting ready to make that last left turn at that last traffic light before arriving at the place where you work and you find yourself wanting to make a U-turn and go back home… when this happens… you have to give yourself pause, and allow yourself this thought: What if…?

For the longest time, I felt like a clock that had stopped ticking. And I watched the sun rise over my neighbors’ rooftops every morning while fantasizing about what lay beyond my safe and predictable world. But I never allowed my eyes to see because, What if I see and like? I was living an easy life knowing my fixed future and dreaming of taking risky leaps but never actually taking them because… I was afraid. And still, I am afraid. Because, the other side of: What if I take this giant leap and land in the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? is: What if I take this giant leap and fall and break my leg? But, what I fear more than falling is stagnating… and becoming cranky… and hateful… and resentful with the passing of time. I fear, more than anything in this beautiful life, being on my deathbed, and feeling regret that I didn’t allow myself the chance.

This is a world of sudden opportunities. And if you are too shy or hesitant or afraid to grab your opportunity when you see it… well, then. If you don’t open the door for fresh air, you become fossilized. If you keep trying to fill cracked glasses with water, they never become full. Exercises in futility become intimate territory. So I gave myself pause. And I allowed myself the thought: What if…? And I opened the door for fresh air, but a gale swept in and wrapped itself around me and would not go, even as I voluntarily tried to dismiss it.

And so, afraid or not, it’s time for me to sit on the receiving end of education, once more. And for the coming measure of time, I will be reading psychology journals and texts and tomes… and conducting research… and compiling and interpreting data… and analyzing and applying statistics… and working with clients… and pulling my hair… and writing papers until I drop… and writing… and defending… a dissertation. But, oh, what glorious joy bubbles inside my heart at the thought of it all! Because… I love science. And I worship the human mind. And at the end of the process, I will have my Ph.D.

I owe it to myself to do what I really want to do with my life. I owe it to myself to no longer be oblivious to my true calling. I owe it to myself to be as happy as I can be.

And I am smiling, with lips and heart and eyes. I am beaming from the soul out. Full smiles. Full beams. Without a hint of vacancy.

I’m off to my very first day of school. I’m off to the last leg of my journey towards becoming… Dr. Nevine Sultan.

And now that it’s out there…

Here’s to putting it down without fear or hesitation.

Here’s to making the affirmation and the declaration.

Here’s to opening the door wide to who I want to be.

Come in, storm, and sweep me away!

Lucid Delirium

"Blue Flower" by Georgia O'Keeffe

A languid whisper


roused me from my phantasy

to my cup of tea

into your enveloping delirium

In an iridescent emotion

obsessed with reverence


I smelled the hues of scent


that trailed
behind you

I sensed your presence

in my darkness (my lightness)

inside the vapid (illuminated)

chambers of my heart

Intruder – you dared!

Like the advent of an ancient

prophetess you glided through

the flesh of my awakening spirit 

leaving me aflame (ohhhhhhh)

afire and pregnant with vision.

* * * This humble poem is dedicated to my muse, who kept me awake many a late night these past few weeks. Her whispers tortured, shocked, and delighted me in ways I can't begin to describe. Most importantly, her presence allowed me to pull back from everything and focus on writing as I enjoy it most – with pen and journal.

Tokens of Awakening

I Am Earth by unknown artist

On this spring evening I am in my garden,

Remembering spring in that other garden

            that used to be mine.

Did I think it would last forever,

All the time that was, once upon a time?

I know it no longer exists for me.

I know Someone has replaced me.

But do I stop existing… simply so?

That soil bears tokens of my onetime presence,

Fallen hairs and nail clippings and

Champagne corks and lost buttons.

It is not by Serendipity’s Hand that

            these tokens are there,

But by the purposeful action of my hands,

And this while I contemplated the open sky

Of a single season that was Summer

And Autumn and Winter and Spring.

I opened up the earth for tender roots –

            Lemon and Daffodil and Lavender and Rose.

I opened up the earth for these, My Tokens.

I was Mistress, Master, Creator Without Rival.

I opened up the earth and the earth I opened

            no longer had a past.

And I know... ten years from now, someone

Will pick a lemon from this tree. Someone...

Or Someone Else… Someone That Matters…

Or Someone That Does Not Matter.

The trees and the flowers will survive my absence.

They have, already.

They have grown, and they have changed –

            placed in the earth by my hands,

            now firmly rooted in the ground.

And I am where I am.

I thought I knew myself, back then.

I thought I knew that image

            reflected in my glass door.

And the bushes and the flowers

And the grass and the sky –

            I thought I knew them, too.

I pretended I was setting

            each monument –

            each moment –

                       in stone.

But even stone erodes and crumbles

And becomes the old within the new.

i may blindfold the bushes

            but they will still find me

i may blindfold the flowers

            but they will still find me

i may blindfold the grasses

            but they will still find me

i may blindfold the skies

            but they will still find me

Is it my agitation that gives me away?

My delirious air of insecurity?

The devotion in my clamoring eyes?

The beating of my persistent heart?

Is it my cry, stifled and scarred?

Is it my ghost, silent and serene?

Move aside, she whispers quietly, My Ghost.

Move that I may see you better.

We have beautiful hands that with their beauty

Birth beauty in Beauty’s Womb.

I stand in the presence of thoughts

            filled with other meanings.

And I smile – because it is good to smile.

The soft and balmy air of dusk kisses my face

And tells me it comes for me –

            among all others it comes for Me.

And the labyrinthine smell of the breeze tells me

That the hour when I am most alone is at hand.

Can I encapsulate this moment

            in words?

            in feelings?

            in blossoms?

Can I describe it

            to Someone?

            to My Self?

            to My Ghost?

Shall I go inside, now?

But to linger with Earth... 
                                       is so divine.

I am neither refreshed, nor dampened,

            But rather, awakened,

By this Awakening.