Category: Short Stories (Page 27 of 46)

“Leave me alone!” I screamed from beneath my layered blankets. “Just go away!”

They wouldn’t. They just kept pounding at that door, never giving me a moment’s peace.

The Voices are maddening. I want to fly. They tell me it’s too high up there. I want to sing. They tell me I’m way off-key. I want to smile. They tell me there is nothing to smile about.

Fuck them. When the hell did I give them control, anyway? I don’t remember, but everywhere I look there are signs of who’s boss. The clothes I wear, the way I talk, the words I choose, each of which I’ve pretended to choose for me while really doing so for them. Even the walls and doors are methods of their control. They own me, and I’m just starting to see it.

I hide under the thick blankets I pretend are parts of me. I relish in their warmth, in their thickness. Here, the sounds are muffled and the light dimmed. The darkness rules, and sometimes we are fooled into believing that there is great security when we simply cannot see a thing.

Yet, those layers I heap upon my fearful self for protection are nothing more than shackles to hold me down. Some may judge the clouds a place where fools play, but I find the very ideas that holds us firm to something nothing more than a prison. Some may find my notes and words much to their dislike, but I find heaven in that release. They may find my smile reminds them of a long-lost friend, but I surely have no need to pretend I am saddened in the departure.

Thus it goes, on and on. The Voices pound away at the door over and over again. I’m beginning to think they don’t want me to open it, they want it shut. Maybe they don’t want me out from under my cocoon. Maybe they want me to add even more layers to the shroud.

I laugh hard as I somehow see the walls to the layers I’ve embraced. How limiting they are! They’re weighty, almost suffocating in their pressure, and I marvel at how I never have seen them this way before. I could feel their weight and struggle under their pressure without ever truly seeing them. I sit and stare at nothing in amazement.

I reach out to push outward, and get pushed back. I thrash and flail against these surly confines only to get more entangled in the mess. I feel the rush of anger as I scream and yell, only to be deafened by the noise of my own turmoil.

Finally, I become exhausted, and have no choice but to sit there, still. I have no choice but to breathe. I have no choice but to stop the fight.

In the stillness, I finally stop focusing on the nasty shroud I have entangled myself in. I just want to rest, to sleep, to let my dreams take me somewhere I’ve always wanted to go. I want to be, there, with you – the absent traveler who may be entangled in a prison of her own.

Someday, love, but for now I have some work to do. That work looks much like nothing. A realized man’s virtue is that he never, ever, stops.

In the dark hell of my own design I surrender. My fight has left me no choice, and the war is over even if the battle has only just begun.

My eyes open again, and I only see the darkness that has befallen me. I move nothing, and I just sit with three eyes open, at peace with what I see. Perhaps this is the end of me, perhaps it is only the beginning. Maybe, it is both happening at the very same instant.

Somehow, I see a light. Like a beacon on heaven’s shore, it’s there. My eyes are brought to focus on this star, intensely feeding on its promise, completely open to the cause of its design. Was it always there? How did I miss it? Could I have been so focused on the drama, on the chaos of my stormy seas, that I overlooked the very method of my own rescue?

A flash, a crack, and the sound of rolling thunder.

“How sweet the sound…was blind and now I see…”

The twinkling light grows larger with each peaceful breath I take.

“Do nothing,” something inside me says, “just do nothing.”

I listen. I sit. I breathe. I watch. I allow. I do, nothing.

The light continues to grow. Bit by bit the darkness surrenders too. I wonder if the darkness could fight back, if it could overwhelm the light just in its size and experience. It seems, though, the both the darkness and the light are not experienced curses by which we are enslaved, but wonderful teachers of which we must experience. Neither exists without the other, and neither was born or dies to suit a need of human ego. They are in perfect harmony, allowing us all to focus on which we want to experience.

In our focus they grow. In our observations, they live. In our dedication, they thrive. Neither grows on its own but exists in the power of our own attention, in our own intention. Love the light, and find it difficult to see the darkness. Worship the past, and miss the present moment.

Do the opposite, well, you know. You may have your doubts, but it’s hard to argue this truth.

Finally, I am ready. One deep sigh and I stand, shaking the cobwebs from my legs and letting the blood flow once again. Another deep breath and a chuckle, and it is time to leave this place.

Wait. Where have all the layers gone? I hadn’t noticed their departure. I look around and see tiny remnants of them strewn about my sacred space, but nothing of real substance. Somehow, and some point, they have gone.

I notice the voices again, somewhere outside the door. I laugh at the knowledge that I had almost forgotten about those pesky intrusions on my holy moments. I notice they aren’t silent, but they are now murmurs and not shouts. Those last vestiges of a past that’s still a part of me, but not me, have surrendered themselves. They now work for me, not I for them.

Just as I’ve seen the kinship between the darkness and the light, I now see the friendship I have with my voices. I’ve given them names in our relationship. Fear. Doubt. Uncertainty. Anger. Love. Kindness. Joy. Desire. Revulsion. Guilt. Acceptance. Each of them has a value, and has led me someplace wonderful. Each is worth listening to, yet none are my master. Instead, I’ve mastered them, understanding that in accepting their advice I am going to learn a lesson only warriors are able to learn.

Everyone receives these lessons, but only warriors sharpen their swords with the textbook.

I’m gone now. If you are looking for me there, I apologize for my absence. Follow the signs you see until you find me here.  If you care to look, offer me your hand to dance. Or lend me your voice to sing. Or kneel with me in the hallowed spaces of a lover’s church. Whichever you choose, be free about it, and leave your layers at the door.

I sit, wandering around the trails of my own mind. What am I searching for? Where can I find it?

Lost, perhaps, but maybe not lost at all. Sometimes it helps to be a rudderless ship on the open sea, just allowing the wind to take you where you need to go. Sometimes it helps just to breathe when the stress of resistance becomes too great to bear.

The Art of Doing Nothing is not doing nothing at all. It is the active work of the enlightened, and it takes serious practice. It takes active participation in surrender. It takes fucking balls.

I’ve found that I was once way too afraid to practice the Art of Doing Nothing. I believed I had to act out, to be actively engaged in creating the life I thought I wanted. The problem is that I never really knew what I wanted. I just thought I knew.

Where once I sought security through strength and violence I now find them in peace and love.

Where once I sought happiness in wealth and materialism, I now find them in myself and in simplicity.

Where once I sought love in your approval, I now find it in my own sense of joy.

Where I once thought I knew what would define me, I now know I am beyond definition.

There is such a peace in that place of surrender. You watch the little things fall away, then the big things until, finally, you reach the place you were always destined to be. You find your home, your palace, your place of peace, and you find that it looks very little like you imagined it would.

Yes, there still is fear. When you have something to lose you fear its departure. Yet, when that thing is taken by the Great Wind you realize that nothing worth holding on to truly wants to be held on to. You realize how awkwardly irrelevant your fear was, and how beautifully constructed things are in your surrender. Things seem natural, pleasant, and happy.

How often did I resist this change? How much suffering did I create in this resistance? How much joy have I found in surrendering, in letting go, in the mere observation of a process to which I participate by Doing Nothing?

How often was I consumed by the fear of standing in the very space I now call “home”?

Yes, it seems silly to me now. I am at home in a place I once feared, happy in a space I once thought hopeless, consumed by joy in a place I once fought hard never to visit. I can only guess the fear I feel now in where I may be going is equally silly. I know this, yet embrace the experience as a matter of personal growth, not personal criticism. There is no need to criticize that which was created perfect, a Sequoia was not born an earthly giant, but a small seed. The small seed was not, however, imperfect just because it had not yet reached its full potential.

It was perfectly a seed. It was perfectly a sapling. It is, now, perfectly itself as a tree.

We are all works in progress, but we have to surrender in order to become works of progress. Sometimes progress is in the realization that we need to stop grasping and need to start letting go, that we need to stop resisting and divert our energy toward the commitment to surrender.

You will have to work very hard to surrender. You will have to develop strength you never knew you had. You will suddenly see how little you actually accomplished before, and you will see how much you get done when you simply stay out of the way.

You will be afraid. You will be very afraid. Old voices and conditioned behaviors will arise, and you will fear what happens when you let go of them. You will start judging yourself as they judged you, and you will feel shame in the act. Pay attention here, for you will learn a lot of how little you love yourself. You will understand your own self-loathing and the poison you swallow that makes you feel abandoned in your glory, and lonely in your suffering.

You will not like this at all. If you discover that you don’t love yourself here, you have to admit that those you need to love you must not have truly loved you either. You learned this self-loathing from them, you didn’t create it on your own.

Forgive them, for they knew not what they did. They loved you in the way there were taught how to love you, and you learned to love you in the same manner. Perhaps that’s the original sin, that we are born to learn love from those who likely never learned to love at all.

Believe me, it is easy just to embrace the status quo. It’s easy to just be like everyone else, both creating your own drama and becoming absorbed in the drama of others. There is nothing I’ve ever done as hard as this transformation has been, but I can promise you it’s been worth it. Where I once spent hours actively engaged in the life I thought I wanted, I now spend that time actively letting go, in active surrender. Where once I tried to do everything, now I Do Nothing.

I still hear the voices judging me. I still hear their voices telling me what to do, how to do it, and that “failure” is not an option, albeit something that is easily attained in their judgment. Then, I sit still, and Do Nothing. Invariably I realize I cannot answer to them any more, that my own life and health are at stake, as is my own sense of sanity. I must remain resolved to my own journey, to the symphony of music I dance to, and to the absolute love I have discovered in the process.

So, to that end, I let go. I love you, and wish you could let go, too. Maybe, someday, you will see.

Don’t get confused. The Art of Doing Nothing does not mean you just give up. Surrender is not an act capitulating to the whims of magic outside of the Universe that is you. It’s just the opposite. It’s finding your true path and sticking to it. It’s in removing the brush that clogs your route. It’s in knowing what brings you joy, and Doing Nothing to get in its way.

It’s in love. Complete and utterly in love. It is in being in a relationship not only with yourself, but with your joy. It’s about putting your joy first, in whatever version that looks like now, and in being aware of the slight deviations that will take you off course. Love, that awesome Wind that, once filling your sails, will never let you down. You’ll see…one day I promise you will see.

While I can’t seem to wear the label of “Christian” with any real sense of truth, I can appreciate the Master who led a crazy band of followers through the streets trying to change the mind of those whose ideas were creating great suffering in his world. I can appreciate the man who stood up to the self-inflicted notions of the “powerless man” by showing others their own power through the discovery, embracing and expression of the love that exists within us all.

I can understand the reaction of those whose power was built around their being special, or “chosen”, by the mightiest creation in their universe. I can understand their fear of man’s self-discovery, and the realization that Jesus was trying to teach that no man has true power over those who live the Love within them.  I can understand their wanting to rid this Jesus and his message from the mindset of followers who thought they needed these special “leaders”.

I can also understand the mindset of those people who would eventually, and rather quickly, turn their backs on this enlightened soul. There is great fear that can be seen when exposed to the truth of your own power, and the realization that there is no heaven waiting for you outside of the one you create for yourself. There is a great unease that exists when you realize there is no great “plan” save one, that everything happens for you and not to you. When you realize you are solely responsible for you, your feelings, and your well-being, you also realize that you have no Great Protector, no Great Overseer, and that you are not a chosen anything. In your ordinariness you can realize just how special you truly are.

When you are used to grasping that ladder of faith, letting go of it can be a scary prospect. Seeing the world around you is often easier than having to live within it, especially when you are so used to the rut you pretend to climb out of, but never truly leave.

Those that climb out are, invariably, crucified by those who only see the walls. Others are threatening in their state of liberation, and we want to vilify them for not living in our patterns, in our belief that we were born into great chaos instead of great order.

I wonder, what would it look like if Jesus had a blog, or a Twitter account, or a Facebook page? What would he be saying to his followers? Would he be roundly rejected by those around him? Or would he use humor to prove his point?

How many of his modern-day followers would unfriend him, or ban him, or call him out on his ideas?

I’m sure he’d have a few ardent followers, most of whom live vicariously through him. He’d be their “canon fodder” (purposely mis-used) so that they could agree with his ideas without ever owning them.  Much like Peter, they would ensure they have plausible deniability when pressed for their allegiances.

Yet, what would be some of the things he’d be posting about? Here are some ideas, some are meant to be humorous, while others more poignant…

1. I saved a prostitute from being stoned today. I guess someone wanted a refund. #ThingsWeDoAtTheGOPConvention. #MaryMagdeleneWasNOTAProstitute.
2. I just raised Lazarus from the dead. He’s so pissed. #72VirginsAreReal.
3. I turned water into wine. Single moms everywhere now love me. #BabeMagnet #eHarmonyMyAss
4. “Peter is mad that I think Mary is da bomb. My God bro, relax. #BromanceEpicFail.”
5. I went to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray. I was done, the guys were all asleep. I guess turkey for the last supper wasn’t a good idea. Plus, there was a marathon of the Bachelor on. Can’t blame them…
6. I loaned Judas 70 pieces of silver like two years ago. #Deadbeat.
7. I had a member of my flock yell at me for feeding a starving man today. Apparently, feeding the poor teaches them to be poorer. #ThingsIDidNotKnow.
8. I learned about the Inquisitions today. I’m considering changing my last name since these morons are using it without my permission.
9. Dear Joseph Smith, I didn’t say “wine” was bad. I said ‘WHINING’ was bad. Drink up, my friend.
10. I was just kidding. Jeeze, why don’t you just nail me to a tree or something? #ThingsYouDoNotSayToPontiusPilate.
11. You know, I cured a man of leprosy 2,000 years ago, yet I can’t get rid of these damned bed bugs. WTF.
12. Scientology,  and other jokes we like to play. #HeavenlyPranksters.
13. God promised not to kill humans with a flood again, so he created Monsanto. And fossil fuels. And Republicans. #ThereIsAlwaysALoophole #DickCheneyForEmperor.
14. I survived 40 days and 40 nights in the desert without food and water, but I’ll be damned if I can survive one Big Mac meal. #SquirtsThatHurt.
15. Global warming IS real. Soon, I’ll have to part the sea just to get my mail.

We all know someone who is eternally broken. Languishing in a pool of despair only she can see, we know her well, and we honor her often in our absence.

She’s focused so often on the wounds that now she gazes at them as if any sign of healing is a miracle. Perhaps she’s picked at them for so long that the scab brings wonder. Perhaps she’s grown to love them so much that she now challenges them with the same sordid acts of contrition she demands of any other lover.

You know those acts well. You’ve used them in various states of your life. The endless descriptions of every tiny fleck of dried blood falling away. The countless words used to describe the miracle of an unanswered itch, of the one-time-in-a-million when she disciplined herself not to scratch.

You know she’s not healing at all. Much like a baby in the womb pretending to breathe, she is pretending to heal. Her smile is a fake one, her joy an act she’s learned to practice throughout the years. You know she’s spinning her wheels in the mud, and although you hope with all your might for traction, you know her rubber is certainly nowhere near the road.

In your love you allow it, but in your mind you’ve stopped listening. You know that when she finally finds the bedrock lying at rock-bottom that her wheels will take hold and she will be, finally, moving. The bedrock, that wonderful place at the lowest spot of your experience, is rough for a reason. You can’t slide on the gravelly plain, and you find all the traction you need to finally begin building the rest of your life. Your feet and hands find all kinds of holds, and you will not slip because there is nowhere left to go.

Yes, rock-bottom is a  wonderful place I no longer fear. I visit there often if for no other reason that the Sun looks brighter, and the air is so clear that breathing becomes effortless. It’s awesome how light you feel when you have nothing left to lose.

The Never Healed fear that place. She loves her scars, her wounds, her open places of suffering. She only knows herself as them, and they keep her from knowing the truth of who she is. Lying naked on the rock-bottom you can’t help but see yourself. Much like sky diving it’s scary until you’ve done it. Then, somehow, you love your nakedness, and the way the Sun feels on those places you once hid from view. You stop loving the white-lined proof of your painful past and begin loving the warmed flesh around them. You stop seeing the dark skies and find the stars that darkness allows you to see. You stop talking, and in that stilled silence you find the beautiful music that was always around you.

That’s why the Never Healed saddens me so. All the pretending and iteration drives me mad. Silence…I desperately need silence from you. Not because your words are so insanely maddening that I want to scream, but because silence is the sound that bears the most wonderful fruit. I have no need to hear how wonderful your dance is, I simply need to see it and, one day, dance with you.

I do love her in my own special way even if I need to distance myself from all of the kicking and splashing she’s doing to prove herself worthy of my attention. I want to tell her that thrashing about is not swimming, and that she’s never going to get to the shore that way. I want to tell her that all of the energy she is wasting fluffing her feathers would be better spent plucking them away. I want to tell her to shut the fuck up, and that the healing is not about the story. The story is about the healing, and it is one that sometimes takes forever to write. I don’t want to read an unfinished story where the cliffhanger ends in the middle of a misspelled word.

I don’t say a thing. I just sit and read and listen and curse my patient mind. Actually, I laugh at it. I once saw her as a starving person whose Universe gave a plate of food. All she could do is pick through it, looking for the bones to choke on, all the while complaining about how hungry she is.

Ah, well. We’ve all been the Never Healed  at some time in our lives. We’ve all been so blind that we need to describe how wonderful the landscape is even as we run into every wall we’ve created. We are, in essence, them and they are, forever, us. We shy away from getting wet as they thrash about, and we curse our ears in the words they use not because we are healed ourselves, but because, at some depth of understanding, they remind us of who we are. We are all scarred, we are all storytellers, we are all desperately searching for something. We are, often, nothing more than the weakest parts of us hoping that, one day, we will be something more.

Once again, I’ve hit myself on the bedrock of my life. Oddly, this place doesn’t create scars, it heals them. I’ve left my clothes somewhere, up there, and I have no desire to find them. I just want to lay here, for a minute, and bask in the pleasure of this place and know, too, that there is something awesome about being Never Healed.

Laugh with me, please. Or at least stop crying. 🙂

I sat in my aura of self-content, basking in the sunshine that dove its way past my window. My warm skin gave way to the sweat born of heaven’s gaze, and I smiled broadly at the warmth received, a warmth welcome after such a harsh winter’s game.

Then she whispered.

She whispered tortured pains of a million days ago, creating words that suffered again and again in persistent swirls of melancholy. Through the battle-tested armor the tides of hidden flames burst through. Words flew like daggers through the air, disturbing the bright sunlight with their shadows, landing everywhere.

She had learned to cleverly disguise her pain, standing firm against her own judgments by sprinkling sugar it its salty sea. She could smile though the agony, create masterpieces in the refuse of a long field of dreams, and bandage her wounds which such skill that even the worst of them looked healed.

And then she’d whisper.

Gone were the joyous words of a peaceful mind, replaced by the viper’s venom as the little girl in her sought vindication. In the throes of agony created long ago by a Child who had no choice but to make them, she spoke. Her tears cradled the Little Girl as her mouth swore oaths of heated vengeance. Vengeance that she reaped upon her older self.

Her body broke down in the undercurrents of such distaste, her heart gave out in the storm she only pretended was over.

So, I smiled. I was happy to meet this tortured, angry Angel. I had always suspected her existence, but now I got to meet her in the flesh, in the shattered pieces disguised as daggers on the wall, their shadows distorting the awesome spring sunshine.

So, I smiled. I did not fear this broken Little Girl, who often disguised herself as a Woman I no need, nor desire, to fix. My smile was, to her, like a cross to a hungry vampire, causing her to dive deeper until, suddenly, she could only sink to the roots of her despair.

Then, she whispered.

She whispered words of truth, her choice made to forgive that Little Girl; the Little Soul who chose their words of hate. The Little Mind who blamed herself for those random acts of violence. The Little Heart that beat strongly against their sworn oaths of  savage belittlement.

She could not forgive them. They were forgiven the moment she forgave herself. The Little Girl had taken their punches, their torture, their savage words of hate and made them hers. The Woman let them go, and then that bars around her fell, sounding like chimes lightly dancing in a summer’s breeze.

Then, she whispered. 

Never in the annals of human hearts have such beautiful words been uttered. Never in the history of mortal man has a soul sung so loudly. The world around her became her playground, and as she lost the things that bound her to the places of wartime battles, peaceful fields of surf and sand were found.

And I smiled. “It’s nice to meet you, Little Girl, my what a beautiful woman you’ve become.”

She whispered in her laughter words now echoed in her song. She let go and took flight…

I’ll see you in the spring.

Photo by Tom Grasso

Sometimes we believe that destruction is a bad thing, that it is painful, hurtful, the end of something. Yet, as an incense stick proves, utter destruction will release a sweet fragrance. It can be our practice to find it, embrace it, and allow it a sense of its own eternity.

We can, always, choose to not focus on the burning but on the release. We can, always, choose to not grasp the fiery end of transformation but just let it be, and then focus on the wafts of sweetness that are always there in the change. We can, always, choose which end of destruction to embrace; the end that burns us or the end that reminds us of heaven.

Your choice. Your life. Your experience. Enjoy it. In joy.

Peace.