Specter

It's 1:30 Am and I am bound and determined to sleep in my own bed tonight. The snow is falling softly enough outside that I can't tell whether it is itself a drowsy dream, the whole outer world muted by the storms still going on inside me this evening. I am unconsciously falling back on one of so many mantras which we feed the students--that I must feel this pain fully, breath it in and back out through me so that it becomes a part of me, that the next time I feel this I know that I can sit with it and breath with it and overcome. The specter of past lives and experience sits flat and heavy on my chest tonight, yet surprisingly none of my escapes seem to be helping and I am flattered to be left to my own emotions for this night of hazy reflection on the horizons. I love the light that brings winter storms, pink dim and somber with the hint of that burning freedom that will come with the clearing of the clouds.

So I had a fling. So much more than a fling that I can feel his presence with me, that I wake to the realization that there are months between us with the ache and trepidation of starting out on a long and wild journey to some place untouched and untraveled. My previous 6 days pale as they fade from view, yet clarity seems to be seeping in through the cracks and mortar stones the longer I sit here in this place and acknowledge what an experience this was. I sense the temptation to hide tonight behind these words, though I reach simply for the right ones to write this experience, sear it into the most top layers of my brain is I have seared it into my flesh, and begin the process of turning it round and round to see what I can learn from it.

He came unexpectedly, when I was not looking. I sensed him before I knew him, like a ghost crossing the path in front of me, raising the hair on the back of my neck. Or the warm updrafts we get even still hiking at evening in the desert, like the hot exhale of some desert creature breathing sage down my spine. He brought to me a childhood on a northwest Montana ranch, farmboy revolutionary sensibilities, and a particular enjoyment for reading poetry and western tinged prose aloud. We sat by the river long past dark and listened to the torrent as I told him of my paths and passions, and we talked of wilds, and of saving the world. He took me to bed, and to the mountains, and we laughed it seemed for 6 days straight. He told me my honesty was sexy, and pierced the space between us with those eyes and shit-eating grin. We lay and watched the light return to the day around us, and I never once stopped to wonder wherefrom this blessing, let myself greatfully adrift till this departure day.

And now the clock has since struck and turned me back to a pumpkin, who dare not tempt fate yet with boisterous dreams of another ball. I am switching shifts at work which means we will work opposite for a time. Which means I must again bolster my faith in the universe that things happen as they shall and as they must. I confide that my convictions in the world right now are as paper thin as the air outside my window. The specter of our paths crossing again makes me want to do irrational and impulsive things--to have this albeit external good return to my life I would risk more than is healthy.

I know my work for the moment is to stay in this place. To breath through it and with it and sit next to it and stroke it, though running or dulling the sharp edges seem like the best course of action. Being in a heart space for so many running days was such a relief I hope to hold on to the ghosts of this experience for a while, and to explore the dark spaces which remain to haunt me.

I will do this, I can do this. I have wanted nothing more than to be the person who can risk with out fear, and love with the wild abandon that I so crave for myself.