recorded, then transcribed: where-the-wild-things-are-050907.mp3
do you remember that story? i do. mostly hazy, of course, but the memory of the feeling of it, strained through the various happenings of my life, blending and mixed down until it isn’t so much a memory of the story as the feeling that remembering the story brings.
this will be, i fear, a bit of a ramble. perhaps a wild one. i have no idea yet. it isn’t planned. of course, nothing i put here is. it’s all la brea, stew, pushed in all willy-nilly like stuffing a trash can with attic cast offs. not even waiting to see what happens, really. just shoving it in and leaving it there. my own mulch pile from which stars only knows what will grow.
sometimes a beanstalk. sometimes a monster. sometimes several. sometimes, sometimes, a flower.
anyway.
somehow, ‘where the wild things are’ showed up tonight. or, what’s left of it.
where are the wild things? do they roam free? do they stride restless, hungry paces in mental cages, hoping, oh hoping, someone is fool enough to get close enough to be….
it’s all a parade at the moment. mental imagery gone mad. the phrase being enacted in a hundred different ways, across easily as many themes. a suprising number of them much more exotic or erotic than expected. damn.
but where are the wild things? the heedless, careless, free things? the things that are as they are because that’s how they are things?
ah, i remember now. the boy got sent to his room without supper. angry and petulant, he invades the forest of his mind and conquers all the wild things, becoming king of the wild things. but then, realizing he was still alone, and still hungry, he went home. and when he got back, he was allowed to have supper and i think perhaps it was even still hot.
sometimes i feel as if i’m in that forest. well, my own version of it. hah. i’m reminded… there was a dark forest in the canyon. i really should go back and see what’s happened there. sigh. not ready yet. perhaps not for some time. perhaps never. but then, there were no wild things there. unless you count me.
the irony is, i’m no wild thing. if anything, i’m caged. by myself, of course. this, a recent realization. well, ok, perhaps not so very recent. i’ve been writing of woods and cages and freedom and its lacking for a long time. it is kind of hard to swallow how completely i had duped myself.
gulp. ick. bitter, that.
i feel like that boy. what was his name… matt? mack? ah. max. his name was max, wasn’t it?
isn’t it funny how, no matter how wild we wish to be, when it comes right to it, we all just want to be home… with a hot supper and the comforts of knowing it is home?
i’ve written a lot about home too, over the years. took a while to realize it wasn’t ‘some place’. i’m not sure i really realize it yet, because i still oscillate between feeling like it never mattered and feeling like i’m still looking for it.
perhaps i’m just looking for myself after all.
i keep thinking i’ve found me, but then i see i’ve only found part. there are too many parts, i think. and too many that i’ve spent entirely too much time trying to pretend didn’t exist. metronomic, really. swing, batter! hah. i’ve labeled a good many over the last two years or so… feeling like dawrin in the galapogos. as if i don’t know them and must study them. as if.
but oddly, i don’t really keep track of the labels. they change anyway. let’s see… i’m actually thinking about it now. hrm. the gatekeeper, the projectionist, the bhain sidhe, the bodhisattva, eyeore, she…. hrm. i know there are more, for all that even these have nebulous boundaries and often flow into and out of one another.
doesn’t matter, of course. just a way of trying to keep it all within the boundary known as ‘me’. or to have a handy reference for when i see them peeking out of others. a few have ‘proper’ names… and only exist in certain places/spaces. let’s see… khyriana, shandala, myela, and quite a few more.
i suppose i could be a freakshow if i wanted. maybe even if i didn’t.
in this moment, i have the feeling that i want very much to be queen of the wild things. it will pass, of course. but in this moment, i want to stride fearless and somewhat volcanic, look everyone straight in the eye and dare them to say a word. i want to walk into a room, swing a slow look around, settle on someone and say, ‘you. yes. you. come on.’
timely fade to black. heh.
actually, i want every day to be like that. not exactly like that, but like that in the ways that count. fearless. free. willing to risk. willing to dare. to care. to share. to be there. just because i can. and just because, too.
wonder where the one is who will take that dare.
somewhere.
i still believe.