For Sue

What do you think are the three most important things that help you create meaning out of your own existence on this planet?

Creativity

In the literal sense of creation. I have to make something that didn’t exist before. Something that is my contribution, uniquely mine – something that only I could contribute. Whether that is physical or conceptual, ephemeral, experiential… I need to take part in making something new. Adding to the world. It can be a new understanding or a new person. It can be an “immortal” masterpiece of art, or as fleeting as a comment that impacts one other person, which leads me to…

Connection

And boy did I fight this one. Because it’s so much easier to say I don’t need that. So much easier to believe I don’t need that… the messiness that comes with needing things from other people, needing to interact with other people. I’d love to be a Simon & Garfunkel song. I’d love to be a “rock, an island”. But I can’t. And not only because I’m human and so unfortunately unable to rewire myself suchly without the benefit of significant mental illness. It has been humbling and freeing to recognize and admit that I can’t. I need to create, and I need that creativity to be shared, to be witnessed, to be impactful. I need to add to the world, and I need to see & feel that the world has been added to… that people’s lives are different because theirs intersected with mine. And I need to be impacted by the people whose lives mine intersects with, because that is how I’m driven to create, to express, because that is how I…

Change

I have to see that things can be different. That I can be different. That creativity and connection make a difference.

I’m suddenly remembering a model I was taught once about what true communication is. Something about expressing yourself, sharing that expression and its impact with someone else, and both being changed by the interaction. In that context, maybe the one-sentence answer to your question is that I need to be in communication with the world. Which is a fascinating take that opens up issues around presence and mindfulness, skillful speech and responsibility for impact. What does it mean to truly be in communication, in this sense, with the world around me, and what kinds of personal work and practices support that?

Thank you for this question! Thank you for challenging me to think this through and begin to articulate it. My view is a bit wider, now, than it was when I woke up this morning. Plus I have new things to think about which, given that my brain is my favorite toy, is like getting a new game for my Xbox.

The Healing Arts?

A colleague of mine was recently asked to sit on a panel about the healing power of performance. In preparation, she and I bashed around a few ideas and came to a quick conclusion that, for me at least, was a little surprising.

We were both almost atavistically repelled by the use of the word healing in that context. I mean really. There were involuntary facial expressions. Of the eeww variety.

I’ll release my colleague and her own issues with this issue to the ether, at this point, with thanks for setting my mind spinning. When did I develop some sort of antipathy about healing? Who is anti-healing?

See, I thought I believed in healing. In hospice, we use that word a lot. We like to say that, while there is no cure, there still can be healing. Which sounds good, right? Sounds hopeful. Sounds like closure, and comfort and, really, I do still believe that’s true. I think there can be closure, and comfort, even in the absence of a cure.

But that closure and comfort no longer looks like healing, to me. Somewhere, in some dark corner of my mind, when I was busy not noticing, that closure and comfort started to look, instead, like change.

Transformation. That’s what I now think is truer. Healing is an ideal, a beautiful fantasy. When wounds heal, they close up. Preferably without scarring. When bones heal, they return to their original form and structural integrity. When charred mountainsides heal, the trees grow back. The more things return to their original form, the more completely healed we believe them to be.

But when my form is disturbed, is return to the original state really what I want? Maybe it’s because I’m sort of an alchemist at heart, but I’m all about solve et coagula. Dissolve and reform. REform. In my world, that’s growth. When form breaks down, under stress… whether that form is physical or habitual or prejudicial or reactionary… when form breaks down under stress, by all means, I need a new form! I don’t want to be healed. I don’t want to return to the integrity of a form that failed. I want to grow into a new form altogether.

And art? Well, I’m an artist, I suppose. It’s a hard word to apply to oneself. Never doesn’t sound presumptuous. But I am a performance artist. And a writer. And a photographer. I constantly, sort of helplessly make art out of the things I think and see and experience. If you agree that “making art” is a useful descriptor of the process I actually engage in, which is all about selecting and highlighting, polishing and manipulating, presenting a filtered facet of reality, and that I think of more as shaping.

But. BUT. There are a few things that have happened to me that catastrophically disturbed my form. Blew it apart. Avatars of dissolution. In both cases, when the whirlwind stopped blowing, there was no ME left. Nothing I recognized. I will never make art about either of those experiences. I won’t dignify them in that way. I will never allow myself or someone else to point at them and say “at least X came out of that”. Sometimes there is no excuse of the awful.

And I won’t try to heal myself in that way. I don’t want to be healed. I want to be changed. Scarred. Marked. Visibly different. I want a new form, not the illusion of an old form that failed. I want to honor and acknowledge the wake of the wounding… Turns out I’m not really anti-wound. Even though I have yet to learn to appreciate the pain involved.

We wound the seed to sprout it. We wound the soil to plant it. The forest fire that chars the ground makes space for new trees to grow. Death, perhaps the ultimate wound, is what makes room for new life.

I think what art does best is wound us. Breaks something open so that we notice, maybe change, at least aerate something… a belief, a value, maybe even just a momentary sense of awe. A response to beauty. An understanding about what is beautiful, and what is not, and why.

Is this healing? For the artist or the audience? I suppose you could make an argument that, in the long-term, it is… but it’s the healing of the bonesetter, not the balm. I don’t think artists have any obligation to be healers. I actually don’t think they even have any obligation to be good. I’m pretty sure the only obligation of the artist is to be honest. In the creation of their art.

In their lives… in any of our lives… I think we have more obligations than that. But honesty isn’t a bad one to prioritize.

So, to be honest, I no longer believe in healing. I believe in changing. Which actually feels more powerful and hopeful, to me. And I think I’d like to be an advocate of… even occasionally an agent of change, in myself, in my life, and in my art.

Not for the squeamish...

Lights up on a woman sitting center stage, on a toilet. The lid is closed. She sits forward, on the edge. Knees together, ankles splayed, elbows resting on knees and forehead in her hands. She’s barefoot. Wearing blue jeans and an oversized white man’s shirt.

The music starts. Leona Lewis' "Bleeding Love". She raises her head and looks at us. There is blood trickling down her face from the inner corners of both eyes.

She gets up. Begins to move. Sort of pacing. Rhythmic. Her shoulders swivel. Her chest begins to move, undulate, heave even. She turns to face the audience. Holds the collar of her shirt open to look inside. Looks back at us, in shock. Then rips the front of her shirt open. Blood is dripping down her torso from long razor-like cuts, symmetrical lines of three on each breast.

She tries to use the shirt to mop up some of the blood, pressing and patting. The resulting cover-up-and-reveal is almost coy. Disgusted, she balls the shirt up, throws it on the floor. Resumes her pacing, which is faster now. If you couldn’t see the fear in her eyes you might mistake it for a strut.

Her hips begin to move. Undulate. Then almost to jerk. She unzips her fly, slowly, afraid of what she’ll see. Reaches one hand in between her legs. Closes her eyes. Slowly pushes the denim down her legs, not wanting to know, even though she does know.
She steps out of her jeans. Faces the audience in just a bra and a pair of thong underwear. And blood is running down the insides of both her thighs. Too much blood for a period.

She falls to her knees. Turns her back to us as she fumbles through the pockets of her jeans, looking for the things she put there. Things she thought she might have to use, but hoped she wouldn’t. She reaches around, we see her fear-numbed fingers slowly unhook her bra, slowly ease the straps down off her shoulders…

Then she makes up her mind. No more stalling. With a bloody, victorious grin she whips her bra off and turns to face the audience. She uses the bra to tie off, then quickly shoots up something from a syringe she had in her pocket. Then she takes the razor blade she also had in her pocket, and makes two long, deep cuts in her wrists. In the direction that means business.

Blood pools around her as she sinks forward onto the ground. The music ends.

This is how I’d do burlesque.

The Red Shoe Sutra

Thus have I heard (and from a professional, no less): "You need more red in your life."

Just so it's clear, this from the modern equivalent of the enlightened being/guru, aka the therapist. Who feels I need both more of the energy of red (passion, power, pride) and the actual color (one homework assignment was to buy red underwear) in my life, in the wake of my life blowing up and all.

At first, it was kind of a dutiful thing. My new place is in shades of brown and cream, so red accents felt like a reasonable fit. During the Great Re-Nesting of 2010, I bought a red leather club chair (coolest part? It swivels!) to mark the transition between the living room space and the office nook (logistics of loft living). I also bought a faux-distressed, faux-red-laquer, faux-Chinese-medicine-chest entertainment center (Andover collection from Pottery Barn, for those of you who are happy I've finally gotten around to writing an accessories post). And my friend Brandyn salvaged an antique wooden birdcage destined for the trash, and spray-painted it red as a house-warming gift. So that sits on the entertainment center and there are a couple of other accents scattered about that I had pre-divorce that happen to be red as well: a garuda totem from Jakarta, a (supposedly active) Legba head from NOLA, some sari-cloth curtain panels.

So there ya go, right? A little red.

I did give the underwear homework assignment a try. But I'd like to point out how hard it is to buy intimates that are the *right* red. Being neither twenty nor trashy, I do not want valentine red. I do not want candy red, or maraschino cherry red. I want blood red. Black red. Wine red. I seem to be in the minority.

So I tried to fulfill the underwear assignment. I agreed (with myself) to keep my eye out for the right sort of red every time I pass a lingerie section. I purchased and prioritized some red accents for the living space. While I didn't really get this whole "you need more red in your life" prescription, I could at least take credit for being compliant.

And then, something happened.

The red shoes.

Things you should perhaps know first: I don't do color. My closet is a monochromatist's dream of black, white, and shades of brown. I don't put color on my nails (finger or toe). I wear very little jewelry and what I do wear is simple metal. This has always been true. Someone recently told me this is typical of women who've been sexually abused. I find that interesting to wonder about. But really, it's not angst-y. It's noticeable. People have commented on it, but I am not bothered by their comments nor do I feel restricted in any way. I buy and wear what I want... what attracts my eye. I don't see colored clothing, wish for it, then tell myself no, it's too colorful. Truth is, I just don't see colored clothing in the first place.

And sure, that's been becoming slightly more flexible in the last year or two. I have an Eileen Fisher sweater that some folks point out gleefully as pink, while I swear it's really just a slightly rosy nude. My workout hoodie might be yellow, but I'm gonna call it a nice, rich cream. That sort of thing.

But I do not have red clothes. I don't even see red clothes. And I don't really do shoes at all. My philosophy on shoes, for years, has been, well, they go on your feet. You walk on them all day. They should be comfortable, cheap, inoffensive, practical.

That began changing after my life fell apart. Apparently, when there is no ground under your feet anyway... I don't know exactly how to finish that sentence, but it sure changed the way I felt about shoes. Last winter, I could have written The High-Heel Sutra. Or The Boot Sutra. Or the advanced-practice text, The High-Heeled Boot Sutra. Last winter I bought my first pair of thigh-highs. And that was all, obviously and overtly, about power. About feeling powerful in a place of perceived loss of control.

That's also sort of stopped. Maybe it's just about practicality. How many boots do you need in South Texas? I mean, most of the year, I live in flip-flops. But the red shoes... this just keeps happening.

The first pair... red oiled leather Sanita clogs... happened early last spring. Just saw a picture of them in my head. And began to obsess. Fortunately, in the era of Zappos, I did not need to obsess long. The first time I wore them, my feet felt radioactive. But in a kind of cool way. And the world did not seem particularly phased by this change. I got one or two "hey, cool shoes", but that was it. Apparently, red shoes were something I could get away with, without drawing undue attention to myself. And they made my heart happy.

I really did think one pair of red shoes would scratch this dimly-understood itch, and they did for awhile. But a few months ago, I saw a picture in a magazine and was soon obsessively searching Zappos again for red Birkenstock clogs. These are flat slip-ons with a little cut-out, great for schlepping to yoga class or sitting (where I'm just gonna slip them off again anyway), or for late-night potty break walks with the dog.

And now I'm just giving up on thinking this might be a temporary thing, because the newest addition to my closet is a pair of red Dingo cowboy boots, ankle-high, with little zips and tassels. They've already danced at Dia de los Muertos, and went very well with skull-face makeup. So, you know, red shoes appear to just be this new thing I'm doing.

And last night, I started to think about why.

Red shoes.
Famously dangerous.
Filmic icons of obsession, ambition.
Powerlessness. Possession.

Red means stop.
Warning.
Caution.
Pay Attention!
This is Important!

Red is blood.
Pain and death.
See enough red, and there's no saving you.
Seeing red is anger.
Loss of control.

Red is inflamed.
Is Communist.
The exhaustion of the red-eye.
Getting caught red-handed.
Hell, we had to take this country away from the redskins.
Red marks every mistake on our schoolwork.
And nobody really trusts a redhead.

But...

A red-letter day is a good thing.
And red roses say something about love.
Red is blood.
It's life.
The color we want the newborn to be.

Red is big.
It's scary.
We're conflicted about it.
Because underneath all the metaphor
Red *is* blood.
It's life *and* death.
It's the color of bad blood... blood outside the body
Blood where it shouldn't be, is red.

For most of human history,
Red blood (blood where it shouldn't be)
Meant death.

But

Women bled, and didn't die.
Every month.
And when they didn't, it was because they were making life.
Making life from the blood itself...

Sure, we know now that isn't true
But we believed it longer than we've believed anything else
And some part of our brain remembers.

Red is the color of mysterious power.
Of triumph over death.
Of fear that does not diminish.
Of pain that does not destroy.

Red is the color of living through it.

I think
After great loss
We all walk through the world wearing red shoes.
Whether they *look* red, or not.

And we're back...

There was a storm last night. One of those sudden, clamorous, air-clearing, late-autumn thunderstorms that make way for the cooler weather that is finally, finally soothing sunburned South Texas.

It happened fairly late, but I was awake for it. This was Gabe's (the new dog) first such thunder-boomer, and turns out he's not a fan. He growled and barked relentlessly at the storm for as long as it splayed itself over our windows and balcony and metal-clad roofs and outer walls. Reclaimed urban architecture is a rich sounding board for wind-driven precipitation. And I'm in a top-floor, corner loft. So with all the water-music and the canine protestation, it was a wild and wooly (and noisy!) stretch of night for a stretch of time.

As I said, I was awake for it. And when I'm awake - still, and despite my best efforts on the cushion - my mind gets busy. One maybe-benefit of all the mindfulness practice I've done is that now, while it's getting busy, it's also getting busy noticing how it's getting busy, and noticing the quality of that noticing, and etc.

So I can tell you, this afternoon, something about what was going on in my mind early this morning while the storm blew itself out.

I was calm. (Sturdy construction, fairly recent rehab, no worries about serious structural failure). I was excited. (Because, really, I love big nasty storms. The bigger and nastier, the better. It's like mainlining electricity.) I was a little frustrated with the dog. And I was wondering how much damage was being done, out there.

Not "if" damage was being done. But how much. And with every arising of that thought, I'd notice another thought arising as well, reminding me that the damage was inevitable, and there'd be time to deal with it after the storm had passed. But for now, let the wind and water wreak their havoc and just lie down under it all.

Just lie down.

Which I did.

So in this story, the damage "out there" meant damage to my urban balcony ecosystem. Which is way minimal. Some cat food was spoiled. A couple of litter boxes were flooded. Some planters got blown around. Damage was minimal because I have put some thought into what is out there, and where it's placed. I've planned as best I can to minimize the damage that the inevitable storms will wreak. So when a storm hits, I trust my plan. I accept that there will be some damage anyway. And I just lie down under it all and wait for the skies to clear.

That's kind of how I've spent the past year. It's been a stormy one - although the storms have been quite various. In the early months they were terrifying. Roiling toxic-green emotional skies and wind-blows to the heart and stomach that sounded and felt like they were wrenching giant trees, still alive and screaming, from the ground by their roots. Storms I'd never imagined planning for. Storms so vast and violent I had no conception of what kind of damage they were doing to me. In those days, I would lie down under it all not because I trusted the process, but because I couldn't get up.

Lately, the storms have been... pyrotechnic. Sunshowers. Heat-lightening. Freak wind-gusts and flash-floods and sudden, surprising snow flurries. The emotional weather is variable and the terrain is changing all the time. New opportunities, new interests, new structures. Recommitments and deepenings. Healing is a complicated enough process when it takes place in quiet and seclusion. Mine, for whatever reason, is taking place amidst an explosion of color and sound and light. I am tempest-toss't from one shiny thing to another, and this, too, is a storm.

And I have been lying down under it all, while it has been doing some damage. Some of which is actually hard kindness; pruning away decayed relationships and rotted obligations. But there has also been damage to some of my commitments to myself. To the practices that establish themselves in the calm between storms - to the sitting & writing & movement practices that make me strong and flexible enough to withstand the big weather, when it comes.

This morning, I cleaned up the damage done by last night's storm. It was a simple enough procedure, if not particularly sexy. Just a moment-by-moment recommitment to the (mostly physical) work of putting things back where they belong. And, this afternoon, I'm extending that recommitment to include cleaning up the damage done by the storms of this past year. I smoked my last cigarette last night. I've come back to this space, today. I spent the weekend reconnecting with my meditation practice through art (truly my favorite type of meditation-in-action). I suppose you could call it an early New Year's resolution.

I just think I'm done lying down under it all.

Not that there is anything shameful or wrong or even unskillful in lying down and waiting for a storm to pass. In fact, I think that kind of lying down - in trust or without, in fear or resignation, on purpose or out of necessity - is profound mind/body wisdom. But the nature of storms is that they blow over. And when they do, it's time to stand up again.

To look around. To re-assess.

To rejoin the new-washed world.

Love is a Dark Place

Orpheus and Eurydice were married, and on their wedding day, she died. His grief wrested, from the gods. the secret of entrance into the Underworld, where he begged Persephone and Hades, the Queen and King of the Realm of Death, for the return of his beloved. He sang of love, and loss. He sang the unbearable beauty of the broken heart. And Persephone wept.

They told him he could have Eurydice back again. That she could follow him back into Life. The conditions were these: for the whole of that long, dark journey he would not hear or see her. He was asked to trust that she would be behind him. He must not, under any circumstances, look back. Not until they both reached the light of the upper world. If he looked back, they told him, she would be lost forever.

And the journey was long. Long enough to invoke doubt. And despair. But he never looked back. Not until he finally, finally stepped into the light. And then he turned, and saw her behind him. Still just within the shadow of the cave's entrance. He saw her, for a tiny, timeless second, before she said "goodbye".

This is a story of grief.

A long walk in the darkness, each step fueled only by the faith that, somewhere, somehow, the pain will cease. Or at least lighten. A journey begun in a time when the only way we can imagine finding the light, again, is to regain what we have lost. To have, again, our lost beloved, be it a person, a place, an innocence, a dream... to have again our lost beloved in the form to which we have become attached. Because any other form is unimaginable.

And so "don't look back" the gods say. Because they know (being gods - and therefore the incarnations of our own best wisdom) that looking back is all we will want to do. We walk forward believing, or maybe just desperately hoping, that we are returning in some way to what is gone. That we can return. Because without that belief, that hope... well, we can't even breathe. Much less put one foot in front of the other.

This is how we keep breathing.

If we make this journey looking back, we will never find the light again. Our eyes will be too full of darkness. Our fists closed tight around loss. We will be blind, and full of pain, unable to see a future, much less find our way to it. Unable to grab hold of joy, or even comfort. "Don't look back" the gods say. And because, being gods, they are under no obligation to tell us the truth (only to lead us to our own becoming), they promise us the unpromiseable. They promise us return, and reunion. An impossible continuity of form. Only that promise has the hope of making us strong enough to take the journey. They know that, one day, they will be revealed as liars but, when that day comes, our journey will be over. We will stand in the light of a new life, raw and angry but finally empty-handed. Vessels washed clean and made ready for filling again.

This is a story of grief, and the dark truth of redemption. Everything you love, you will lose. I promise you. I promise you. When we fall in love, we say goodbye. That's the bargain. And if you don't know it, or deny it, or just try not to look at it... that doesn't exempt you. This is the bargain. This is the price.

And so why do we do it? And do it over and over and over again? Because love is the forge. It is the crucible. The alchemical retort. The fire of love softens us, burns away whatever is not our pure, authentic heart. The water of our tears strengthens us. Shapes and refines us. This is how a tool is made. This is how we are made. This is the process that turns us into the tools, the gifts, the miracles that we are. This is how we do it.

Light and dark are not opposites. They are, in fact, each other's hearts. Light is the gift of the darkness. Darkness is the hard wisdom of the light.

And love is a dark place.

I am in love, for the first time in a long time (and maybe in some ways, for ever) in a way that is free of pain. Free of fear and anxiety. And yes, this is about a person. But it is also about myself, and my life. Hard-learned wisdom: that all three have to be true. The cost of entering into this dark place is no less than everything.

If you want to be given everything, give everything up.

So we step into the fire again. Each time we can love better. Love bigger. With clearer eyes and a clearer understanding of all there is to be thankful for. Each new love invokes, at times, the old. They all intersect someplace in the heart.

When we fall in love, we say goodbye. Someone asked me, recently, what it's like to fall in love and know this. I didn't think I had an answer, but it seems that I do. It's having all the sweetness of everything I've loved, and all the sharpness of everything I've lost, all at once. It is a sort of skinless expansion into ease and grace and gratitude. It is being unbearably, exquisitely open. It is being alive.

This is a story of grief, and the hard truth of redemption.

This is a story about why we keep breathing, and the impossible rewards of courage.

This is a story about the gifts of the darkness.

And this is a love letter from the Eighth House.

It's Simple

A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing no less than everything)
And all shall be well
And all manner of thing shall be well
- C.S. Lewis “Four Quartets”

My life is on its way to simple. Smaller space. Fewer responsibilities. Clearer priorities and less of ‘em. Fewer people in the mix, most of them not insane and, regardless, none of them mine to take care of.

You could say lonely. Some people would. But that’s not how it feels to me. It feels simple.

Which is not even remotely the same thing as easy.

This is something I maybe always knew, in some way (I’m betting you did too), but that really came home to me since working in hospice. I’ll get something said right away: I am not a “good person” or a “saint” for doing this work. I am, in fact, almost embarrassed about how much I love it. I can’t believe I’m allowed to be in the room where someone is dying. For a lot of reasons. But here’s the one I’m going to talk about today…

Because that space is so radiantly, life-changingly simple.

Gruelingly, grindingly, hard, too. Often. Especially in hospice because that is, essentially, a vigil. Long hours. The growing tedium of waiting for something that, when it happens, will be a shattering of everything that has been. And yet even with something so momentous hovering on the horizon, the waiting is unbelievably banal.

People are tired. Dirty. Together. With all that implies. Family tensions don’t magically dissolve in the face of the mortality imperative. Well, almost never. In fact, often, the existing dynamic just rachets up in the face of the utter loss of control that Death is.

When we are in uncharted territory, the familiar is comforting. Even if it’s the familiarity of discord.

And, there’s the other way in which this is hard. As much as we try to make it different, there is often some pain. Sometimes, a lot of pain. There is certainly the body’s struggle to keep doing its job. To keep breathing in and out. To hang on.

How many families have I seen flay themselves with that image, and their belief about what it means re: their loved one’s will to live? If he’s fighting so hard, maybe we’re not doing the right thing? Maybe she’s not ready? Maybe we should revoke (take the patient off hospice service as far as insurance is concerned), tear up the DNR, admit her to a hospital, help him fight…

I’m pretty sure that’s pointless self-flagellation. I don’t see any will to live in those last grasping hours. I see people I believe are ready to die, more often than not. Believe me, not ready looks very different. It’s hard to miss.

I see a mind and heart and spirit that just want to be free, or have already flown. And I see the body just doing its job. Right up until the last minute.

Because that’s simple.

Bodies are simple machines. Complex in form, but simple in function. We’re just circuitry. If you’re ever able to have your hands on someone at that final moment – not so much holding their hand, or resting your fingers on their shoulder, but really laying hands on their body, which I’m not necessarily advocating because it’s not always welcome or appropriate – if you ever have that experience, you’ll feel that death is an electrical event. And I’m not a doctor, and I’m sure I’m oversimplifying this, but that’s not really the point I’m trying to make.

Bodies are simple. Life and death are simple. One is a state, the other an event, but they are basically very simple things. Not much is required to maintain life. And death is just the moment when one or more of those requirements fails.

Minds, however…. Our glorious, baroque, impossible, incorrigible minds flood all the color and the horror into existence. What is beautiful, we make beautiful. What is terrible, we make terrible. What is beautiful to me may well be terrible to you. Nuances and digressions, schisms and meanders. Our own minds are hopelessly complex, half-seen, barely-understood, shadow-filled strangers. Truly impossible, then, to bridge that gap between one slippery, inconstant mind and another. Most of the time.

What can tame the mind – smooth it into a state in which it plays well, however temporarily, with itself and others – is simplicity. Put the mind in a place of one-pointed focus, either through trickery or overwhelm or discipline or terror, and there can be some ease. Not an easy ease. Not always comfortable. But a space. A clarity.

When everything else falls away, what is left is simply what is. And the mind, like an exhausted bird flying endlessly over a flooded landscape, will land in the only place it can and, knowing there is nowhere else to go, or even to plot or consider or plan about going… it rests there.

A condition of complete simplicity, costing no less than everything.

The end of a life is such a condition, at the cost of everything that has gone before it.

The end of a part of a life is such a condition, at the cost of everything that has gone before it.

This part of dying we do all the time. Often enough to have felt the fear, and the loss, and the space, and the rest. To have spun knowingly in this cycle, time and again, is to have the key to overcoming the fear of death.