(recording available: the-nameless.mp3 )
read on for the words….
i’d like to say i didn’t know from the start. that i didn’t know any of it. i’d be lying, of course. you know how you meet someone and without knowing how you know, you just… know? if you’ve never experienced it, then you cannot possibly understand, and if you have, that’s all i need to say.
i knew from the moment i had more than letters that it would be this way. it wasn’t the first time i’d met like this. not the first time i’d felt a sense of possibility. not the first time i’d believed. not the first time i’d opened my mind, heart, and bones and simply said, ‘yes.’
but it was different. and it wasn’t until i experienced the difference that i could admit that it was the first time. and the last one.
i don’t know why i try to explain. bad habit, really. but i have to try.
there’s a certain tone, a kind of true pitch, that it has. across all layers or levels, you can find it everywhere. and everywhere you find it, it’s the same. at first, you don’t believe it. so you look. all the time. you look for it with that skeptical brow arched and saying to yourself, ‘i’m wrong. of course i’m wrong. it won’t be here. just wait and see…. eventually i’ll have to admit it.’
then, over time, you notice. you notice that you’re consistently finding it. that, in fact, you don’t even really have to look for it. it’s like magnetic north; the pull of all you are and ever want to be just swings you gently, surely, and certainly to it.
it has nothing to do with circumstance or happenstance or where you are or even where you’re not. it’s who you are, it’s how you are, as organic as breath. it doesn’t matter what you used to think. it doesn’t matter what you used to believe. it doesn’t matter all the things you told yourself were true, or false, or unknown. it settles in your bones, and from them, sings soft, sweet, sincere.
you don’t try to deny it. it would be like denying life. and you don’t care about all the things that get in the way because there’s nothing in the way. it isn’t about reaching or holding or having. it’s already with you and the moment you realize it, you know… it always will be.
it’s funny how i always thought it would be ‘this way’ or ‘that way’. it’s funny and sad how much time was spent tormented and suffering trying to imagine, then create, then grasp it. it never worked. and when it arrived, none of that was needed. it’s kind of beautiful how that works. you get the chance to laugh at how silly you were and how much you cut yourself up when it was so unnecessary.
sometimes, it feels so rich and pure that it makes you cry. kind of like seeing old people holding hands, leaning into one another. or watching a child’s face light up at something new and amazing. it’s a kind of wonder, really…. i find myself quite often marveling softly, quietly awed by it.
i don’t know how it feels over time. it doesn’t matter. i know how it feels now. like everything in life, remembering isn’t being and neither is hoping. there’s just the now, and as odd as it may sound, it’s always right, always enough, and always sufficient.
does it matter than i do not tell you what it is? do you think you know? meaning is always where you find it, of course. i’m content to outline its shape and refrain from trying to speak its name. i begin to think the ancients had the right of it…. there is power in the true names and sometimes, refusing to speak them is a higher honor than trying to claim it by the invocation.
there is no need to invoke…. it is here.