BloGar™

I told someone once about 9 years ago as I was sitting in an office, petrified that I wasn’t in the right place, petrified that I wasn’t doing the right thing with my life, petrified that I wasn’t enough, that this song took me away.

It transported me to the grassy side of an Italian hill as the sun set over the countryside. I sat back with a large glass of red wine, fresh crusty bread and a soft summer breeze blowing up from the warm valley. I owned nothing. I needed nothing. I felt everything.

The song was written for Hannibal… hauntingly and stunningly beautiful. And still the same effect for me at it was then…

(A online translation tells me the English is: And thinking of her sweet, sleep overcame me. I am your master. See your heart. And of this burning heart, your heart. She trembling, weeping, I saw him then depart from me. Joy is converted to bitterest tears. I am in peace. My heart. I am in peace. See my heart.)

I believe in all that has never been spoken.
I want to free whatever waits within me
so that which no one has dared to wish for
may for once spring clear
without my contriving.
I want to mirror your immensity
I want to unfold.
Let no place in me hold itself closed,
for where I am closed, I am false.
I want to stay clear in your sight.
If this is arrogant, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
the way it is with children.
Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
These deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,
Streaming through widening channels,
Into the open sea.

-Ranier Maria Rilke

Reading “Eat Pray Love” has me on the verge of tears every second page. If I could write my thoughts they are the ones this woman has shared in the Indian section of the book. Truth gets me every time.

Liz Gilbert crams more truth into her journey to realisation in that Indian ashram than I covered in my months and years of personal development. The recognition of myself in her experiences left me reeling. The yearning. The inability to let go of that which needs to be let go of. The baseless self-doubt. The struggle to live now and here, and the overwhelming mental fatigue that it brings.

The steps that her New Zealand plumber-poet handed her for that tripped out trip to release literally had my throat tighten and something refuse to get the fuck out of my eye.

I bottle shit up like it’s an art. And as much as the plug shudders, it never gets blown out far enough to give me a real release. I really need to go and find myself again. I’m desperate to find that guy who had his peace on the waves, and the confidence to know that while some people fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, that doesn’t necessarily mean the pictures on each piece will match. And to know that it’s fine. And to know that it’s no reflection on me. And to know that I’m not lacking.

Gar-the-taker can’t help wondering how Gar-the-asker snuck back? How little hints of lies crept back into his psychology? How cracks of weakness were allowed to winkle away self-assurance? Laziness and excuses. As Liz says in “Eat Pray Love”, if you allow yourself to quit it gets easy to allow yourself to make a habit of quitting. So while it looks like I’m motivated with running and learning Spanish and blah de blah, the fact is at mentally I’m starting from scratch.

Thoughts become things, right? So choose the good ones, right? Like so many things that are simple, that is so easy to forget. In my anger at things that I perceived as unjust (one kick costing me a year and a rather large mental slide – excuse #1 among a list that I bought for a time), I came to believe that I ultimately had no control so why bother, right? You can train three times a day and still end up lying in a bed and not able to piss without it going all over you. You can love someone and care for them and that doesn’t mean there isn’t someone better for them (their pictures are blue skies, yours is an ocean scene). You can spend hours working to build a business for yourself, putting everyone else first, and still end up in a day job that feels like a substitute for your real purpose. You can spend months working on your purpose only to realise that you still feel like a 17 year old trying to figure out who you are. You can make all the right moves and still fall face forward in to a pit of shit.

So what’s the trick? Right now I think the trick is that there is no trick. The only thing we are here to do is to never stop working to get better at being true to ourselves, to be stronger, to have absolutely no regrets, to be honest in everything we say and do, and to shape ourselves until the “origamic” (new word) folding of us on our way from cradle to grave finishes with something we could never have expected when we were just a flat sheet of paper.

This bit of life for me feels like half way through making a paper swan or a little boat, when you think to yourself, “how the fuck will this ever be anything more than a weird looking piece of paper”? (Anyone who has made a dress will know that feeling: just before you turn it right side out.) And it’s a little bit like I’ve lost the instructions for what it was I was making in the first place, and who I was making it for… maybe some random folds will make it clear again? Maybe the next fold will show me that this way I can be an eagle, and if I fold this way I can be a…

Or maybe I’ll realise that what I really need to do it is go somewhere to unfold completely and start with a brand new set of instructions. “Origamic” metaphor well and truly exhausted…

And fuck Justin Bieber anyways.

I often wonder how the weather reflects a mood. I’m sure it’s no more than chance that this morning the clouds seem oppressive and gray, choking the view over the city and out to the horizon past the Harbour’s mouth. Past the heads I can see a sliver of brighter sky so I imagine being out there and not here. I imagine bright and not dull. I imagine energy and not this soul-tiredness I feel right now. Imagine just for once not being out of sync.

I decided to swim when everyone else stayed on the beach. I so desperately wanted to do things differently that I thrashed out through the breakers and for a while enjoyed the peace and excitement of being a kilometer off-shore with no easy way back.

When I waved to the people on the beach they’d catch me on an occasional glance over the water and wave back. I started to look around in wonder at the cliffs to the south, the rocks to the north, the huge blue sky and the growing swell on the outbound tide. The people on the beach lay on the sand and learned languages, new skills, became talented at all sorts of things. I swam about wondering how long I wanted to stay away. Such freedom out here – how long could I wait it out?

Time passed and my energy passed with the first few shivers. And as I knew it would, the time came for me to get back and start.

But then a strong rip gave me no way to get back to the beach. So I swam south to the cliffs and searched for a hand hold or a grip. Some way or any way to get out. Growing more tired with every rise of the ocean the holds I found gave way when I put my weight on them. And when I signaled my trouble to the beach, the people smiled and waved back…

Over to the rocks on the north and I couldn’t get a safe path in – the swell would have crushed my skull. I looked up at the sky that started to cloud over and I grew cold. And I didn’t know how to get back in. I couldn’t figure it out. The people on the beach began leaving together, smiling and distracted by their interest in each other they didn’t see my calls for help.

And as the day started to fade, I still don’t know how to get back in…

What an incredibly simple solution…

Hello there… are you really that bothered? We can do this all year…