Mary Oliver's poem "Wild Geese"

[greenstorm]

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

This is the poem I was looking for. It's very beautiful, but right now it doesn't seem very true.

I wonder if resignation is in order here, or if I should fight to change things? I generally think I will always be alright with the final product, but maybe that isn't true in this case. Maybe I need to deliberately choose the place I want to be and then go there.

How do you choose these things? Just picturing situations in the future and thinking, that one's good, or, that one's bad doesn't work; you can't get a comprehensive picture from a situation just from the inside of your head if it hasn't happened yet. How do you decide where you want to be? And I guess, what does it matter anyhow, since you rarely get where you want to be by your own choosing.

The Mission Folk Fest is not this coming weekend but the next. I'm scared. I'm only half sure I'm going to go. What would it mean to close that chapter of my life so completely, or even just to put it aside for a little bit? Would it be a betrayal of myself out of fear of the pain Kynnin can cause me, or does it only make sense to retreat in that way as well?

Apparently he's always been unhappy going to the fest with me. This year he is willingly going with Mouse, and camping. He'll be everywhere there. I do not resent her in any way, but the idea of seeing them there together fills me with a sort of dread. It highlights the fact that every time he went with me in the past was a lie, that where I thought he was appreciating being with me and watching me in my own element he was really bored and resentful and wishing I didn't do the things I liked there.

I probably need to go. It will be okay in the end. I'm still very afraid.

Comments

[echo2oak.livejournal.com]

First ****HUG****

Second... that's a fabulous poem, very evocative. But what struck me is the underlying theme of how life goes on even when we are suffering and in despair, that there are still songs to sing, dances to dance, plants to grow.

Swil Kanim tells the story of an elder of his tribe asking Swill to join him and listen to the oldest tree in this area. Swill went up there and all he could hear was the creeking of the trees. He was disappointed, thinking that he was clearly missing the message the elder had to say. Finally, the elder helped him hear the music around him, the creeking of the trees, the birdsong, the highway buzz, even his own breathing....

I was at a woman of Color dinner recently and the main speaker said that whenever her grandmother got to feeling blue, she would put on her best dress and her favorite shoes and dance salsa in her living room. We danced that night, in the aisles between tables, swishing hips, arms raised and smiles. We couldn't help but smile, and suddenly I felt in the moment, right there, beyond worry and care, happy to be alive and me...

From what I've read of other's comments, that's the sort of thing this Festival offers, a chance to dance, to celebrate survival and a new life, to listen and experience the music of your life, of the life that surrounds you and permeates you.

Pain may come, it is part of the dance. Joy from memory might come, it is part of the dance. You are part of the dance, and you are the dancer. May your feet drum the beat that is your own, unique truth.

[greenstorm.livejournal.com]

I've always been strange enough that I've felt the need to veil some of it lest I make others very uncomfortable.

I guess they can just deal with a bald girl waving her arms around and crying in public this year.