Know thyself. Accept what you are. If you don’t like it, try to change it, but first you must know what it is you wish to change, and thus accept the constant that is you. The universe does not owe you a favour. It does not owe you love or wealth or happiness. It gave you life. What did you give it? What have you done with this great gift? You have squandered it. Wasted all those hours, those days. Waste nothing further. Know thyself. Accept what you are. Change the very stuff of life for the betterment of all.
So there I was in Co-Op, which defies being in at the best of times (they must scour the country to find staff so impressively unhelpful and unfriendly) when my boss rings. The meeting we cancelled wasn’t cancelled as far as one delegate from Birmingham was concerned, who traveled all the way down only to find no one there. So this morning I was at work from before 8, trying to find out what went wrong and why he didn’t receive the email everyone else did about the cancellation. I could not. So I’ve learnt something today. Sometimes shit happens.
My mind is an open book, letting all bane be washed away. Three women sit round a campfire at night. Ambers flicker across their tanned faces. I sense a familiarity, and one turns, revealing herself to be my grandmother. Then, in my other grandmother’s house, Horus stands in battle armour, each eye a wide unblinking ruby. He stares into space, to where we see only a blank wall, but where he sees a doorway. He does not move, and yet moves ever further forward with each passing moment that he stares. One droplet of water resounds and I wake up.
I just asked him, flat out. I always do things like that. I think everyone has a healthy fear of rejection, but I just play chicken with the concept, accelerating head first towards it and forcing it from my view. Just be direct, to the point. Sadly, though once a brilliant flirt, this tactic means I rarely have the patience for it anymore. And I wouldn’t be so direct if I didn’t think I had a good chance. We both thought it was odd - moments like the past year had never happened. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t worth it.
You commited suicide. I don’t know why but the world was just getting to be to much for you. You felt as if even the people that sincerly wanted to help you were only making things worse. But now you’re back because you have a mission to fufill that you never got to finish before. So don’t give up, you’re here for a reason that you don’t know about yet.
It is outside each witching hour, perhaps attracted by the strong scent of god in my house. Sometimes at night I can hear it, trying to get in. Sometimes it topples the pennies by the window, others it hisses within the pipes. One night it even woke me with a salamander’s screech from the small window behind the god himself. Electric eyes are upstairs, burning red in the dark. The foxes were first dead, then bold, then tame. But I am in no danger. These are only shadows of the darkness I have passed through, unglimpsing. I will not fear.
Lust is a vampire. It rolls up your soul behind your eyes and possesses you. You watch. This is all you can do. The demon twists you in a sickly humiliating dance. Love is gone, logic is abandoned. All you are permitted is thoughtless selfish feeling. The first time you let the vampire in, and you do let it in, the easier it is for it to come again. There’s a reason why you don’t invite vampires into your home. When it’s over, there is just the shame. Just the self hatred, as you return to your damp cooling flesh.
God is nowhere. Then they fashioned him into clay, gave him a face and feet and hands; left him with the flesh in darkness till flesh turned to dust, the dust settling on god to be dispersed in a breath - a person, a life, gone in one breath. After time immemorial he returned to the sunlight, to me, passing from flesh to flesh. How many hands have touched him? How many lives lie in the dust upon his eyes? I am just a name, in a long list names, all to be forgotten. Asha renu. God is now here.
Summer is over. The sun still shines but you can feel the chill in the air like a sorrow behind a smile. This morning’s damp scent of the earth reminded me of mornings at my father’s – sitting outside in the chilly mountain air with only a cup of fresh coffee to heat your hands, looking out at the sunlight as it moves over the distant valley. Or of university - afternoons spent on the beach, looking across the endless water into the future, the past - moments washed ashore like the countless grains of sand. This breeze brings something timeless.
