For the rebels and the misfits,
the black sheep and the outsiders.
For the refugees, the orphans,
the scapegoats, and the weirdos.
For the uprooted, the abandoned,
the shunned and invisible ones.
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It is said that before entering the sea
a river trembles with fear.
When the business man shoulder checks me in the airport, I do not apologize. Instead I write him an elegy on the back of a receipt and tuck it in his hand as I pass through the first class cabin. Like a bee he will die after stinging me. I am 24 and have never cried.
Once, a boy told me he doesn’t believe in labels. So I embroidered the word “chauvinist” on the back of his favorite coat. A boy said he liked my hair the other way, so I shaved my head instead of my pussy. While the boy isn’t back, I learned carpentry. Build a desk. Write a book at the desk.
The “night sea journey” is the journey into the parts of ourselves that are split off, disavowed, unknown, unwanted, cast out and exiled to the various subterranean worlds of consciousness…The goal of this journey is to reunite us with ourselves. Such a homecoming can be surprisingly painful, even brutal. In order to undertake it, we must first agree to exile nothing.
Stephen Cope
Measure the walls.
Count the ribs.
Notch the long days.
Look up for blue sky through the spout.
There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep, and still be counted as warriors.
Adrienne Rich
This is the story of a secret. A secret kept for decades, one I had buried so deep I didn’t even know it was there. Many of us carry secrets: things we were told not to reveal or things we simply couldn’t–for fear of judgment or reprisal or, worst of all, for fear that if the people we love found out, they’d see us differently. Sometimes we keep secrets to survive. Then a moment arrives when the usefulness of the secret expires. Keeping it becomes the thing that hurt us. We have to tell.
The next planet was inhabited by a drunkard. It was a very short visit but it left the little prince in a profound sadness.
“And what do you do here?” he asked the drunkard quietly sitting among a collection of bottles both empty and full.
“I drink,” answered the drunkard mournfully.
“Why do you drink?” queried the little prince.
My hope for humanity?
That we remember who we are. That we start to listen. To ourselves and each other.
That we learn to meditate, be present, be still, and soften into our authentic selves.