i think i will be saving these entries for the evenings from now on, as it never quite seems there is enough of interest upon waking to set here (unless of course, thoughts from last night are distilled and ready for pressing to the page). i reserve the write (heh)… day or night… as i might. hah. i’ll stop there.
the last few days have been spent in Focus. the swell of it is surprising in its strength. something big, i mean really big, is coming. i’m excited for it. not at all scared. which is nice for a change. whatever it is, may it be embraced for the learning it brings.
mind wandering. i permit it. morning meditation done, and the cats are playing with their new treehouse in the living room. i smile for simple joys and the magic of a rope-twined scratching post. sumatran black satin. i sip its savory thickness, light cream and sugar, just shy of insult, floating through its sediment and oils.of late, the music is set to ambient/trance, a favorite internet station. the tones and melodies fill this place and i am reminded that peace lives here. always has. moved in when it discovered i was going to, made sure there were no cobwebs in the corners. i smile. the universe loves me. dralas whisper and caress lightly, i feel them in the currents of the air conditioning.
i have of late, an urge to take up sculpting once more. it seems interesting to me, for i have not thought of sculpting since the day the interest in it was ripped from me. it is, of course, one of those sad memories from early life, that i held to far longer than i should have (until now, apparently). the events that layered together to make that moment something that could keep my hands from creating for 30 years is hard to express without many more letters than it deserves.
a sculpture i had created, which was submitted and likely to win regional art award, was stolen from the storage area of my high school and smashed before my eyes as i sat, stunned and horrified and unable to reach in time to do a thing, upon the school bus.
the one who stole and destroyed it was a girl named Gwen. strange how i still remember her first name, never knew her last. she was one of those ‘sex, drugs, and rock n roll’ types. miserable, insecure, violent for the ways she lacked the feeling of being loved, belonging, etc. i could see it even then.
she hated me for being smart. for not needing (or appearing not to need) others. for my smile. for the sense that i had the things she did not. she hated me because i had a father and a mother and a brother and sister and a new-born baby sister. she hated me because i lived in a nice neighborhood.
i thought it ironic, even then. she didn’t know the truth of that pretty little house in the ‘nice area’ of town. she didn’t know i always wore sleeves to hide the bruises. she didn’t know we’d only moved into that house to escape the county who was looking for my father. she didn’t know my ‘mother’, ‘brother’, and ‘baby sister’ were strangers. or that my sister and i were locked each day in the basement. or any of the other things i endured while in that house that i will not mention here.
she just saw the traditional house, family, life. and hated for the thought that i had more than she. and while she could not take what she perceived i had, could not make it her own, she could at least ‘show me’ how it felt to live as she did, and ‘make me care’ enough for her in that moment, even if it was (to her mind) to only feel anger and hatred. i suppose she was still at that place where such things were welcome and sought because they were better than apathy.
sitting on the school bus, thinking about how much i did not want to go home, i heard my name shouted over small distance. looking out the window, at first i did not see her. she waved again, color arms in the crowd. focusing, saw her terrible, shark smile as she slowly reached down and raised one hand… letting me see what she held. waiting for me to recognize, savoring the horror and fear on my face.
grinning feral angry proud, she dashed it to the cement and it shattered into a cloud of dust and clay and glaze… i did not feel the impact of it on the cement. what concussion i held had arrived in the moment i looked upon her, giddy, excited, angry… willing to do anything to be noticed, anything at all.
of course i wept. but i saved the tears for after the evening’s abuses at home. no sense wasting them when the eyes could only cry so many. laying bruised, sore, and injured in the dark of the basement, the spiders sneaking over my skin and me too broken to brush them off, i lay quietly weeping for it all.
now you see, that story is a very sad story. the memories it brings are very sad as well. i weep, because it was a very hurtful time and so much of it was just humans hurting and not knowing any way to deal with it but hurting others.
i wish i had not had to hurt so they could feel like they mattered. and i wish the hurt they set into me had not lasted as long as it did. and i wish i had never had to know how it felt to be hated for the flimsiness of appearance when all of life is illusion. ironic. really.
the statue was of a horse. it was a magnificent thing, no pride in it, only light wonder for how the universe had permitted me to shape it so perfectly to how it appeared in my mind. during those years, i was just about crazy over horses. they seemed so free, so noble, so capable, so beautiful. they floated over the ground… they screamed delight to the sky and the wind answered them and gave them invisible wings and air enough to never strangle on their wishes, but fly ever to meet them.
the horse i shaped was one such… captured in giddy mid-gallop, exuberant arched neck, nose mid-way toward the sky, the clarion call unheard to all but me. no name in that moment, no need of one… though i always thought it a wind horse.
i think on that now and smile, having found these many years later a much deeper meaning and knowing of the entire concept. no coincidence, though… only confirmation…. and comfort.
but yes, i consider sculpting again… and think perhaps to take a local class, and see if the universe would once more send its grace through my arms, my hand, my fingers… i would, i think, rescue that wind horse from memory, lift those glazed grains and restore them.
but then, perhaps i already have…