True, happiness did visit upon him for a spell, righting some wrongs, but it wasn’t meant to last. Kind words of thanks, warmth, truth, friendship – all good things and they were his for a time, but then the sun dipped low and winter dropped its icy veil. One day he looked in that murky middle mirror separating the past and future, the one of perception, and saw not just one visage but two.

While Jake noticed the extra countenance as his Shadow, he was at first not sure what to make of it. He joked about it, as if he knew what it meant and everything was fine. He shrugged it off like a duck deals with water on its back. Yet on the inside, it slunk past his ego to nag and gnaw at his inner self.

It has been said that the entire world is a mirror, and that what one sees outside is a reflection of one’s World inside. Thus Jake perceived the nagging and gnawing as being outside of himself, and one day he jabbed and grabbed hold and lashed at it. But the mirror smashed and his claws grasped at the thin air behind it. Someone recognized his familiar cry, catching his hand and holding it fast until he could once again steady himself.

The mirror, once whole, now lay broken on the floor, shards glinting in the half-light. He scooped up a few of its broken pieces and recognized parts of himself in them. But there was something else there too and, now reduced to manageable sizes, he could finally see it for what it was. The lens of the broken mirror revealed his Shadow for the truths it represented, for another side of himself that he had pushed away.

Only now he realized he’d had it all backwards. The unbroken mirror, its surface at once both visible and invisible, betrays and distracts by reflecting an orderly but superficial lie. Clarity of depth is sacrificed for greater clarity in two dimensions. Like white light through a prism, the pieces only tell part of the story.

The Man Jake had seen in the unbroken Mirror wasn’t a Monster, he’d been a Shadow of a Monster. Now Jake must become neither; or rather, he must become both and then some. For the only way to truly be whole is to reconcile with one’s parts. Rather than run from it, he needed to take it all in, become won with it. And so he did.

He sensed he would need this to face what was soon to come.

This was part 2 in a series.
Part 1: A Monster That’s Eaten Alive by a Ghost.

Someone was operating on me – against my will – quite Hannibal Lecterish. They had sliced my abdomen open and were trying to pull out my “intestine”. The incision was (from my perspective) just a little below my ribcage, just a little left of center. The “intestine” was actually like the ribbon tape from the inside of a computer, or a bandage – it had been placed there before, it wasn’t human tissue. But I didn’t want it removed.

This was a nightmare type of dream as I kept saying “no, no” and was really fearful and really didn’t want them to take it out. It was one guy, not sure who it was, and he had an assistant.

Earlier there was something about a violin, I wanted to learn to play. It was the same violin my dad had in my youth, with a string missing.

In real life when I woke up: I feel like I would like to play the violin. I love the haunting sound.

I didn’t re-read these words for about a year, although the “No, NOOO!!” part and the vision of the ribbon tape bandage being pulled out of me remained. Recalling that I had a cold and ate chili 2 nights in a row before the nightmare, I tried several times having chili doubles with hopes of creating a similar experience, but to no avail. Even when I was again sick, I could bring forth no sequel.

(Why would I want to relive a nightmare? Morbid curiosity, wanting to get more clues on what it means, and I have always had a thing for horror movies… Why not?)

A year later, I found myself reminded of this dream by some current events: I had another dream of being stalked by the Terminator, followed closely by my involvement in an event called Cyber Glitz and also hearing a friend had to have his appendix out. Then words from a song a few weeks ago pushed me a step further to looking back into my dream diary.

I had forgotten the part about the violin, but now that started tugging at me, and I became consciously aware of any mention of the instrument. Then the day before yesterday a friend-I’ve-never-met of a friend-I’ve-never-met of a friend-I’ve-never-met of a cousin* shared a YouTube link of someone playing. A trivial thing, but it was the last straw.

So yesterday I said, “why not look on Craigslist and see if there are any used violins for sale?” There was one in Arvada. Cool, that’s not too far away. I feel an urge to go for it. So I did. I called, and arranged to meet the gal selling it shortly after 4. At this time both of our understandings were that it was in good condition, just needed rosin for the bow.

On my way over there the gal calls me to tell me she’s sorry but she found there’s a string missing. She thinks her little brother was a bit rough with it. Wonders if I’d still want it. “That’s actually perfect,” I reply, saying I’ll explain more when I get there. The missing string wasn’t the same one as on my Dad’s (iirc) but nonetheless… I did manage to wrangle a sizable discount on said violin, enough to cover most of the cost of a new string, rosin and a lesson book.

So far, the only sounds I can get to emanate from this wooden and wire contraption are comically frightening instead of haunting like I intended. The damn strings are too close together and my bowing sucks. (I’m a Baumann, not a Bowman.) But, I’m only on page 8 and I’m still young… I mean, this little kid learned piano and is only 2 years old! If she can do that, what can’t I do?!?

* I HIGHLY recommend friending friends of friends or relatives that you don’t know but feel a certain connection with based on the things they say or do. This particular chain of friends is quite interesting to me and the only one of its kind among my Facebook friends.

“Discovered the other day that Beth doesn’t cower when involved with selfish children at the sandboxes in the parks. She hangs right in there, quietly knowing her rights. One little girl had a mass of toys and wouldn’t share them. Beth gathered some twigs we had been using as candles on a ‘sand cake’ and gave them to the little girl – all that she had – and the girl threw them out of the sandbox. It was touching – as have been other recent expressions of sharing Beth has been showing. Am glad to see her strong little spirit and that it’s allied with gentleness.”

I got to overthinking about this from all sorts of angles. Unsolicited twigs, ungrateful little girl. No wonder I sometimes get reluctant to give them out to people. But then, who wants a whole load of twigs anyway? That’s mighty rude of me to dump them in someone’s sandbox like that. There are better twigs out there, toys even. I probably should keep my twigs to myself. Or ask first. Or at least have the sense to spread them around a little, maybe a twig or two won’t piss you off like a whole bunch of them, maybe you’ll be indifferent enough to allow me to put one in your box. Dead detritus from living trees. I myself will pick them out of the volleyball court with my toes between plays.

And so in a sense I’ve conditioned myself to expect that no one wants my twigs. I hesitate to promote them. I underestimate their value. I try to keep them in my own sandbox. And so I go off there and sit quietly playing and building things out of them, things that I like, that I find pretty or interesting, never expecting anyone will want or understand the new things I fashion from the unpopular twigs. No one will want to play in my sandbox, why would they? It’s just me and my twigs in there.

Then every now and then someone expresses an interest in them and I get confused, disturbed, like my mind is struggling to divide by 0, or take the square root of negative 1. Does not compute, it’s too much, irrational.

Why? Maybe because if someone starts wanting my twigs, starts playing in my sandbox, starts gathering up their own, what does it say about me?

I don’t know. I take myself too seriously sometimes. That was a long time ago, I’m not the same little girl. Maybe I’ve turned into the other one, shellfish. Maybe she’s turned into me.

Sometimes I can’t see the tree for all its twigs.

It’s not about believing it, or choosing to believe it, or even wanting to believe it. It’s rather an observation.

Twice in the past year I’ve found myself drowning in negative thoughts. The Law of Attraction would seem to imply that only more negative things would come my way during this time. But, these times were precisely when some wonderful people stepped into my life and, with time and a little effort on my part, really cheered me up. I didn’t ask for them, it was more as if they fell out of the sky unexpected, at the right moment, with the right combination of traits.

I suppose I could thank these people directly. One of them already knows, she is family and I’ve told her. But rather than single anyone else out publicly, I think I’ll be a tease and keep who those other people are to myself. That way, maybe even more people get to wonder if they’ve put a smile back on my face.

Besides, I’m pretty sure it would embarrass them.

photo by John Maushammer

Interesting word, cleavage. It is derived from the word “cleave”. From the Free Online Dictionary:
cleavage: The act of splitting or cleaving.
cleave:
1. To split with or as if with a sharp instrument.
2. To make or accomplish by or as if by cutting.
3. To pierce or penetrate.

The other morning one of my cats, for some unknown reason which strangely seemed to not be related to food, woke me up way too early, and somehow launched me into a series of thoughts which eventually drove me from bed to my laptop. One of these thoughts was a joke I wanted to make about Adam and Eve – I can’t quite get it quite right, which is fine because I shouldn’t make it anyway, but something like:

“The Bible says that God made Eve from Adam’s rib. Don’t you think it would have been easier the other way around?”

Wanting to make sure I fully understood the scenario, I went to re-examine the story of Adam and Eve on Wikipedia (yes I know it’s not the Bible, but whatever), and found myself comparing a few passages from the Eve page.

God decides that “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a companion fit for him.”
…
And the rib, which God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
…
“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”
…
An old story of the rib is told by Rabbi Joshua:
“God deliberated from what member He would create woman, and He reasoned with Himself thus: I must not create her from Adam’s head, for she would be a proud person, and hold her head high. If I create her from the eye, then she will wish to pry into all things; if from the ear, she will wish to hear all things; if from the mouth, she will talk much; if from the heart, she will envy people; if from the hand, she will desire to take all things; if from the feet, she will be a gadabout. Therefore I will create her from the member which is hid, that is the rib, which is not even seen when man is naked.”

So by implication, God decided it best to create a woman who will hide, and not even be seen when man is naked.

And so it seems we’ve got a situation here where a man will be “cleaving unto” a woman who God has designed to hide and not be seen when the man is naked.

It’s hard to know exactly what “cleaving unto” should really mean in this context, although whenever I read it it evokes a visceral reaction something like “get OFF me”. But that could have something to do with another cleave-derived word: cleaver.

Of course the story does not end there, or begin there, and there are other parts in between (such as Lilith… well, depending on what you believe and/or choose to believe). I just found it interesting to ponder the combination.

That morning I decided I wasn’t going to post any of this out of fear it might – as my friend T.C. likes to say, and sometimes do, if he feels safe – “irk social conservatives”. “Irk” is another interesting word… and is too light for me in this case; “fear of death” really cleaves more unto why I hesitated to post it. But today being National Cleavage Day (clEVEage? I know, I think too much), I thought of it again and decided I’d bend my rule.

Weighing heavily on my mind lately are thoughts of people who seem to have wished for such an escape. To have wiped away the pain of rejection, of mistakes, lost time, of vulnerability, of yearning… is that preferable to not having the emotional experience, to not risk of being ripped apart, leaving others to clean up the mess?

What of the choice (is it?) of whether to rip? What of the choice (is it?) of whether to put one’s name in the race in the first place? Should one avoid such inevitable conflicts by simply turning the other way, trying to save face?

I must remember, it is not all dark clouds and tempests. Sometimes no one falls into the pit of despair. And for some, the sun shines brighter after the storm. I was one of those people. But I stood alone.

They say the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but inevitably the parts come undone. Why can’t the unwinding of the parts be greater than the previous whole? That’s what I want, for ALL parts. Does that ever happen?

I’m keeping a lot in lately, timidity veiled as kindness, fear of failure or success, frustration, elation, disappointed reassessment. Last time I felt this kind of deepened emotion I ended up lashing out in my confusion and introspective feelings of defeat. Thankfully someone heard my cry then. Thank you, again. I hope I can be more constructive, more creative, this time.

I was skiing, someplace I’d been snowboarding before. My sunglasses wanted to fall off and without them I couldn’t really read the signs, but then decided I didn’t want to bother with them anyway. I ended up somewhere familiar, but then I found out the run turned into a whole bunch of jumps. At first I was trying to back up and let others go ahead of me, thinking I would go walk back to another run. It was difficult backing up though and I decided instead to just give it a go. I went, and the first jump wasn’t too high, but then I landed and the surface was ripply. I did not fall though. There wasn’t a lot of snow but the plastic or whatever beneath the snow was fine to ski on. There were more jumps ahead and I had a choice to veer right for different kinds of jumps, ones I’d done before while snowboarding. I was heading there but then decided to go back left to where I hadn’t been before. The next jumps on the left were even bigger than the first one, the first of these was really tall. But I managed it. I wondered how, why wasn’t I falling?

Side note: I haven’t downhill skied in years, preferring snowboarding now, and I never did any jumps on skis. Last winter I snowboarded a dozen or so times and started teaching myself jumps. I haven’t been to the mountains yet this winter.

Even though it was quietly and I told no one, it doesn’t seem to matter. As always, the question: “did I bring this to myself, or did I just see it coming?”

I’ve been learning to expect these things – if I even expect them – to come later, have a delay. “Patience is the companion of wisdom”, the sign said. This time, however, it came way sooner than I was wanting, and in a way I never would have expected.

But this confluence of events is one I know I must act on. I wrote of “righting a wrong turn” earlier this month. Well, perhaps that wasn’t a wrong turn after all. Maybe it was to line me up for this. Like it’s all part of some master plan. Every thing happens for lots of reasons. What becomes of it is not up to me, but that’s not important; the important thing is I recognize it and act; ride the wave.

Steve Jobs described situations in his life that prepared him for future events, saying “you can’t connect the dots going forward … you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” I still like to argue that you can connect the dots, most of us just don’t see the pattern well enough, or let preconceived notions of certain event’s meanings cloud our judgment.

A phrase popped into my head today, I haven’t the slightest idea why I thought of it, but I know it has meaning. I.e, I know this is either a “dot” or a connection. A particle or a wave. I just can’t figure out whether it’s the original one or the opposite that pertains to me. Or, both.

No vision, all drive.
All vision, no drive.

Everything happens, not for
one reason – that’s simplication.
But for many, all at once -
dreams’ overdetermination…

or is it:
Predetermination.

For what the future left behind,
present quietly concealed,
abidingly taking time while
vain, the pasts are revealed.

This world is so riddled
with word and with name
but anagrams are showing,
homonyms are the same.

The fire I did not start
no spark no fuel no light;
sure, clearly, it’s not visible
hiding there in plain sight.

With gravity of observation,
Four’s waves did thus form
and merged with those others’
to create the perfect storm.

Lessons from the frog
last, thinking it could hide
insecurely in the bathroom
but doors flung open wide

now once again encountered
this time she’s wearing red
why should I try to hide
what those other people said?

The sun of rocks and stones
had it backward, but no less
his timing was impeccable
for the future’s not addressed.

If there is such a thing as a wrong turn, I wonder if I made it when someone dangled a carrot in my face and I chose the stick instead. This was not long after I made a comment about wanting “more carrot, less stick”. I have noticed before that things seem to happen according to what has been said. Maybe I disobeyed this principle, making a wrong turn.

Can I right the wrong? I think I’ve been given enough signs in the last few weeks to suggest that I am going that way. Dreams, where a portion of it comes true within a few days later… three of those. Synchronicities that have meaning to me personally. I say trivial peculiar things and then see them manifest in metaphorical or symbolic ways. I speak of things I’ve realized about myself and then stumble upon them elsewhere. Feelings of intuition that are followed by observation.

Quite a few people have noticed the gray cloud hanging over my head since Thanksgiving and I’ve appreciated the support and advice they have given. I’ve taken some of it. Some of it just doesn’t fit me, and I’ve realized the importance of recognizing this. While I’m mostly out of my funke now, I’m still feeling rather shy and self-doubtful… in part because my shadow has caught up to me, bringing to the surface some aspects of my personality that have been dormant for the past year or so. How my shadow’s return is related to all of this I haven’t yet figured out.

In times like these I suppose some might suggest I look to my inner compass. But when the poles keep moving around, it is probably the worst advice to take to whether this storm. A weather vain is of more use here. Because also, I have consistently found that many of the best, most meaningful times of my life have happened when I’ve stopped trying to control things and just ride like the Wind.

ashes to ashes