the city, the sea

"Shall I tell you
what it is I have learned?

It was Love who leaned down
and circled you in her arms.
Love who gave you life,
not me.
 
It was Love who made hunger fade
and pain disappear,
while I stood helpless.

It was she who understood,
that even the most wormed fruit
taste sweet,
when shared with another.

And wasn't it Love,
that I had taught you to shun,
for fear,
you would lose interest
in me?

What kind of God am I?"
(from the city, the sea - C.Tribe)

The problem with change is that no matter how strongly you are committed to it, the business of actually making it work is messy. There is a kind of awkward stage when you are molting one behavior and trying to learn another when you feel like you have no idea what you are doing and just feel as if you are doing everything badly. That's normal.

It's when you feel like you truly have a grasp of what you are doing that you should be careful. You may indeed have a handle on things, but you may also be back on familiar ground, which is why it feels so secure, and that may not be where you want to stand.

I am driving myself batty as I struggle to make the change of the past few months stick and become a habit in my life. Things were much easier when I was unaware of all the goings on in my head about the whys and wherefores of my choices and actions. The world seemed much simpler. Now, it is a daily thing - this peeling back another layer of the onion skin of me - I have a mental image of scales falling off a building yet not enough have fallen off to fully let light into the windows.

And I have been struck by how frightening one person's process of change can be for another. I think we zoom along with a kind of lack of awareness about how strong our interdepencies are, thinking we are so completely self-sufficient and individual. But we are intertwined, sometimes in good ways and sometimes in not-so-good ways.
Speaking in tongues again.

I know I am almost done with my manuscript because I am getting sick of looking at it. Reading and re-reading one's poetry only has a thrill for so long. I am anxious to get back to the City but there is a great deal of caution wove into that as well.

Each stage of the City seems to demand a sloughing off of scales in my waking life.

If only it were warm and bright outside I think I would do better at the getting through.


c.2011. Cassandra Tribe. All Rights Reserved.