I believe
That the voice who speaks in poetry
and half word meaning
Is the ghost who goes on breathing
When my body
Is long buried
I believe the whispers in the shadows of my mind
I tune in and find a pen to write to
From
Will be around when I am long gone
They were born before my fingers had unfurled
Before my mother gave birth to a girl
Before I was name
Body
A date on the calendar
On the grave
In some other century
We are more than we know
transitory
flow
Listening
To the voice
That belongs nowhere
lives somewhere else
Before and after
This place
Beyond time
Beyond self
And it will spin yarn into cloth that have nothing to do with the rules we follow so egregiously
just to go out in the world
This world that doesn’t exist
It spins on the head of a pin
Stitched into a moment of time
Which feels real because we label it “mine”
But in fact
We own nothing
Are nothing
And weren’t really here the whole time
Because we are prisoners
of a thinking mind
Rather than anchored
In the plane of reality
*I caught myself on the way to work the other day, thinking so hard about something else that I had arrived and was unlocking the door before I noticed the sunshine on my face and thought “whew, just stop, I’m here”.
I constantly have to anchor myself. Stitching big looping stitches through my day. The gaps between – trying to decrease the time my needle spends poised in the air, and then digging it in fiercely, and being aware of the moment lost sometimes several minutes apart.
I am improving. I look back on my life – the blurry times, that zoomed past. When the kids were little. When I was so busy that the needle just floated above.
I have these anchoring moments thankfully where every detail of my sons on that day, a particular hour, an event, stands out with chrystal clarity. My heart dug those stitches deeply.
I was there then, wholly there. I can smell, touch, feel that memory like it happened a few minutes ago. I hold those precious memories like fragile glass. Tuck them away in my mind.
And now, the last few years – so many are there to join in. Not because the memory is fresher, more recent. But because I’m here now, moving on the surface of my life, living it far more intensely. Here in reality, so it turns into memory.
I don’t know if anyone else experiences this but I do wonder if some of the plague of dementia is not a result so much of people forgetting, but rather, through busyness or distraction, not laying down memory in the first place.
Guess I’ll find out.
Header photo: The window Kalbari national park. Very well stitched memories of a trip up the western Australian coast with my husband a couple of years ago. Hiking and snorkelling and seeing amazing scenery.
Beautifully expressed, Kate!
Thanks Camilla 💕
Profound contemplations on life, legacies and our unknown fates.
Thankyou MM 😊✨
Kate, as always, your words speak to me….at JUST the right time. Lately I’ve been VERY MUCH “laying down memories”. My sweet Mom, struggling with her memory; yet, so distracted by…life, worry, (of me, Dad, future). My sons have moved …again. Memories hit my heart and the tears flow. The smell of the gym floor when I go to school takes me to a specific ballgame. A song comes on and I’m riding in the Jeep with my youngest son–top and doors off. A look on a students’ face takes to a specific time with my oldest son. Cancer? The unknowns? New prognosis and diagnoses? Middle-age? I can smell and touch—fell the memory like it was yesterday.
Your words are perfectly stitched–you do own these memories for they’re in your mind, sweet sister. And they live, in different ways and be “resewn” by all who participated.
Kate–daily I have to anchor myself. I’m a deep well. Because I’m “deep” I act quite dumb with my adult kids. Go figure? I can’t tell them all the DEEP things I think, feel, and learn daily. To most people, I would seem….crazy.
I want you to know what a blessing and treasure you are to me.
Love, Karla
XO
Haha Hi Karla lovely to hear from you. I was chuckling thinking of acting dumb with adult kids – yep I do that too – they have a great sense of humour and we have a lot of fun. Memories are such strange things. Without them we die to the moment and walk through life as a fresh slate – I’m glad they don’t work that way. Despite the things I don’t wish to remember – I guess I wouldn’t have learned a lesson properly if I couldn’t remember how I learned it in the first place. That said, I’m trying to live more from my heart and less from my head when I am able to do so – daily life requires a lot of brain work, we forget to use our heart.
And I’m rambling
Would love to sit down with you one day. I think we would go through multiple pots of tea!
Take care lovely 💕
I’d love to have tea with you, my friend. Perhaps a ZOOM tea date is in our future Kindred Kate.
It’s always so good to hear from you. Your words are wise. I’m in the same place my friend.❤️💚❤️
I forget we could just do zoom – of course – we should organise!
Sip sip hooray!
“I’m here now, moving on the surface of my life, living it far more intensely.” Kate, your existential meditation puts me in mind of quantum mechanics. Which sounds a bit geeky, I know. But it seems to me you’ve wrestled with the fact that, while there are literally infinite layers to our lives, “the Present is the point at which time touches eternity” (C.S. Lewis).
Yes Mitch, and that’s a beautiful quote, thankyou for sharing
Life is a supernatural process, orders of natural selections, that fit into the expressions, manifestations and energies of God’s perfect love.