Dancing Light

I think it's time enough to mark this one down as another unexplained mystery in my life.

I miss fearlessness. I miss risking everything for what I feel.
I can't be completely foolish now, can't close my eyes to the things they've been opened to - can't pretend things don't hurt or things don't hold significance for myself and others.

Can I be honest here? I can;t remember the last time I have been. The thought alone makes me smile. I can't remember the last time I straight-talked about how I feel.
And it is not that I ever speak the distortion of fact, it's simply that I have discovered new languages, newer and cleverer ways to say how I think and feel and it's quite a regression into old ways to go back to vunerabilty.

Yeah. That was what truth meant before - that was the ultimate expression of my courage; no shields, no weapons, no holding back. Absolute vunerabilty.

That girl - she is such a stranger, that strong one. I see her like I ever knew her name, or was her. I cannot walk beside her, let alone look her in the eye. I am a coward. She is too strong for me. I cannot feel; cannot allow it.

I am alone in the house. I started writing because I am not brave enough to be myself like I used to. Now there's Ego, now there's the fear of what people will think or define me as. I used to be so free alone - I used to display it as proudly as a soldier battle scars. I AM ALONE gave me invincibility. Now I slide closely to self-pity and despair. Gosh, now I feel embarrassed to be alone, as if it makes me less than others could think of me.

But I was thinking of somebody - and I think it's fitting to say some Body and not some One.
Yes, there was some Body that connected with mine a fortnight ago. It's so faraway now; it doesn't exist, and I knew that everything would escape me as everything has done before but I pushed on because I suppose a shadow of the girl is still inside me - however distant she's become.

Only, she will not remember. I choose for her.

I went through the motions knowing they would not last but thinking 'the show must go on', the illusions must continue to revolve, what else is the purpose of my being here in this body with these thoughts and feelings and these various means to express myself?

This is my youth. This is my time. I must do my best to understand and live this dream to its conclusion.

It just occured to me that I will not tell the story. I really thought I would, thought I'd be able to share a piece of my life like I've done countless times before so unabashedly.

Ha, I proclaimed 'the duty of art is to expose the secrets of human experience' some time last year, I think.
This year, this month, today I don't really feel like an artist, and to tell you the truth I haven't felt so for a very long time.

It's been sad to discover that life is not as mysterious as it first seemed to be to me, and more so people. There are no complications, no hidden things to be discovered or revealed - and even when they are they are sometimes not things [feelings] to be desired, honestly.

And so I don't want to know anymore - and I won't. I don't want to sit down and analyse, I don't want to figure things out, I don't want answers.

Still not telling the story :-)

A poem would ask questions, perhaps. A poem would shine out as a beacon in the world to say 'Dou you GET this?' or 'Do you FEEL this?' more bluntly than a dialogue would. And maybe answers would stream back towards me, mostly pointing at the obvious?

Oh, my gosh, I can't be dum anymore!!! It's not cute. It was dum to be fearless. It's time enough to be afraid.

Oh, well. I'm not alone in the house anymore.
I've moved from one room to another during an interim and I'm about to switch on a distraction from these so-called feelings, play a DVD or something. I told you, I get embarrassed to be seen alone now, even for the shortest while; I suppose every Body with some Body in whatever relationship or form is an adversary to my loneliness now, and I must keep face because I have lost the courage to be anything else.

That girl, how could I ever have BEEN her?

But I forget myself. I don't really want to know now.
Nope.

So yes, there will be no story to tell, no details; sordid or glorious, about my latest encounter.
I am not inspired; I am crushed, I loose faith.

The romantic dies, the artist lives on, maybe. It was simply time for the separation to become absolute?

The romance in the world, however, will undoubtedly go on. And I will indulge all of my senses in the foreign emotions that must become eventually unnatural to me. Soon everything will be One Stranger, soon I will not identify but touch through a looking glass.

And honestly? I CAN"T WAIT!
I am done with this.

Parted Waters, my brainchild, is a first part of a fantasy novel that revolves around the world of two young women.

They are sisters, twins in fact, and they are princesses, daughters of a great female monarch with an unquenchable thirst for power who seeks to rule and dominate all the kingdoms that challenge her rule.

The princesses choose different paths, one follows after love, the other after an ambition similar to her mother's, and the paradox of how identical they are in appearance but different in character ultimately determines both their destinies.

I've found myself engaging in political intrigue, mystical belief, adventure and suspense in the writing of this tale.
The characters leaped out of the romantic theme I had envisioned for Parted Waters and I was forced to oblige them.
It was a risk worthwhile, giving me a rich, multi-faceted plot with more magnificent detail to the world I created.

I think the story is entertaining, familiar, surprising and then bizarre, but this of course is my opinion.

I would like as many people possible to form opinions of their own of course.

I write what I like to read and look for in other books, and the writing of Parted Waters was in fact unavoidably influenced by the special impressions I got from the literature I have taken pleasure in over the years.

And I have enjoyed writing this book.

The fairytale I imagined when I was much younger has become a fantasy novel I am extremely proud of.

A dream has come true.

I am quite thrilled by this creation!

There is no shape. Beyond here is ‘shapelessness’.
There are no words. Beyond here is ‘wordlessness’.
There is no meaning. Beyond here is ‘meaninglessness’.
There is no time. Beyond here is ‘timelessness’.

We form these things here. We invent our definitions in this place.
And here, we are all artists.

The nature of one’s perception is the nature of the world formed by his/her personal psyche.
The nature of one’s truth is the nature of the colors, textures and patterns he/she has painted upon his/her individual canvas.

Painting. Sculpting. Designing. Inventing. Producing. Directing. Creating.
These are the occupations of all consciousnesses simultaneously.

This is simply what we do here.

What did you see? You are the inventor of the concept.
What did you hear? You are the originator of the tale.
What did you feel? You are the designer of the experience.

You invented the actor, the witness, the performer, the spectator, the comedy, the tragedy, the hero, the villain, the cornfield, the scarecrow, the instrument, the music, the song, the season, the reason, the pen, the paper, the buyer, the seller, the consumer, the birds, the bees, that you perceived good or bad as you know it.

It came from your paintbrush.

They are your concepts and you observe the role-play of definitions of yourself, the myriad of your personalities, the demonstrations of your understanding, your interpretations of life, your representations of feeling and thought.
This is the truth.
Everything you think is from you.

The world is a mixture of individual awareness, the compositions of unique and individual artists, and yet, its sum is your total personal awareness, for you dreamed your characters into being in the same way that other artists dreamed you to play parts in their masterpieces.
We are pictures within pictures within pictures ad infinitum, separate yet inter-connected portions of existence, every part exalting the significance and supremacy of the total individual identity, co-existing as multiple gods presiding over the multiple realms we bring to life.

So that everything you think here is what you truly believe exists.

The world is your world as you perceive it. It is to every artist what the artist intends. It is the artist’s truth.

See the world as you have never seen it before.
In it’s true form.
Know that it springs up inside you and your senses only perceive echoes and reverberations from the thoughts within.
You create the world as you know it from your mind.

Now when we hear of ‘shapelessness’ and ‘meaninglessness’ beyond this place some of us feel a sense of alarm. There is dread ‘at present’ for an existence without our trusted systems. Most fear an awful absence that waits for us beyond ‘our consciousness of the world’ and that it will snatch them into its void upon the ‘appointed time’ of their deaths.

Be calm, anxious ones.

We all are already totally immersed in the substance of life and existence.
We were, we are and we will be.
We are unfolding within it and unfolding it, creating within it and creating it, and perfectly comfortable within its layers and cycles. So comfortable in fact, that we hardly notice.
We are already held in the eternal embrace of the beautiful unknown.

The separation of your consciousness from the physical body you possess here will not separate you from existence. Death is a process within existence. You will be perfectly comfortable within and beyond this process and others to come in whatever nature the petals of your evolution may unfurl for you.
The lifetimes in the physical bodies we perceive here are only layers or cycles if you will, floating within the great space that you are a part of, and no one need fear that their minds will be ‘out of job’ and lost in nothingness beyond them.
You will not ‘lose your mind’ and see it ‘discarded without purpose’. There are ‘bigger jobs’ in existence to anticipate. Bigger jobs for you to employ your mind to in the creation of an ideal world right now as you understand these truths.
Definitions, by your standards, will evolve, and this is even left to your own choice, while the eternal substance of living and creating remains the same.
You cannot lose the world if you don’t want to. You are the world.

And what must be understood in essence is that there is no approaching future to be anticipated, as much as there is no dreadful reality of death to fear. You are more than your bodies, living or dead. Your existence is not limited to the cycle of your use of them or your other trusted systems.
The ‘future’ is already here; including whatever freedom you may begin to imagine, with perfect abandon, exists in ‘life after death’.
To realize this is to feel your beliefs about the world shift as endless directions and paths you may take with your ideas and imagination come into view.

I will repeat - the future is already here; including whatever you imagine exists after death. Everything ‘out there’ is here right now.

The great ideas you can conceive for your consciousness beyond your body and trusted systems are already available. Let your desires for this moment roam free. It is time already to reach for the entire cosmos and bring it here into your world. The universe is your limit.

Existence was, is and will be and you are a part of it.
You already exist in ‘shapelessness’ and ‘timelessness’ in the present moment. You are only mostly too blinded and absorbed by your present, and sometimes unsatisfactory, creations; that rejoice in the strength and vitality you give them, to notice.

So stop. Step back.
Look at the world around you.
You know everything you know about it because you know. You believe.

Step back further. As far back as you can go.
Look again.
Look at it as the gigantic outer shell of your mind.
See the brushstrokes of your thoughts holding up all of its structures.

You form the shapes.
You form the words.
You form the meanings.
You form the times.

Close your eyes.
Look inside yourself.
Look at your infinite consciousness as an energy that evolves, expands and unfolds.
See the truth finally, that you are living and creating from an Endless Source beyond your thoughts.

You are without shape.
You are without word.
You are without meaning.
You are without time.

You come here from beyond in this very moment.
Reach out and touch your true existence.
Never let go.

There was an amazing Victoria Secret Show at the Kodak Theatre, Hollywood.

The vision begins; a luminescent sign catches immediate attention.
For in the darkness above the rows of seated guests and against the backdrop of the brightly lit runway shine the huge golden letters S E above and X Y beneath.

No better hint at what is to come.
It is time to savor Victoria’s Secret.

A wide screen parts to reveal an emerging white-winged angel.
She drifts forward and rises up into the air above the catwalk.
She blesses SEXY as she glides up past the golden letters and out of sight.
Pause.

Caroline Tettrani struts out and the walk of grace begins, another model close at her heels.

Natasha Poly emerges.

Gisele Bundchen now moves powerfully across the stage, her long gorgeous legs swinging back and forth and out of folds of cloth.

The designs are immaculately detailed, each one sparking keen interest immediately as it glides out and down the mirrored floor.

There is a poignantly feminine style about the tailoring.
Some purple and pastel colors and then some satin and sheer fabric, glamorous and flippant at once on the exquisite dressy negligee outfit pieces fixed together.

Gisele comes out again. She looks magnificent.

These beautiful designs spiral from a collage of feather plumed petticoats laced only with the live Scottish bagpipe themed music that is playing in the background to the house’s trademark diamond cut curve of sexy and absolute couture.
‘So cute, you won’t believe there’s no lace’ comes to mind.

There are nicely perked brassieres trimmed in feather and naughty, barely there bottoms hooked up and sliding at angles across the girls’ behinds.

The flow is endless. It’s impossible to choose a favorite piece.

And then a choir appears in the glowing white panel of brackets at the centre of the stage behind the models.
The girls move on gracefully between the rows of mesmerized onlookers.

The musicians sing along to the music, swaying rhythmically in their white, long sleeved robes and raising their voices. It’s such a fully holy and unexpected sound. It’s perfect.

But there’s more.
Suddenly showers of confetti fall over the runway.

One can hardly notice the photographers and their flashing cameras now. In the shadowed front row Paris Hilton is delighted, laughing as she and a friend brush off confetti.

The crescendo has peaked.

The choir disappears into the white light.
Justin Timberlake’s Sexy Back starts to blare loudly from the invisible speakers.

The last of the winged and plumed models are striding out.

So soon it comes to an end.

Up above the lone angel that had ascended the heavens drops slowly downwards.
She lands silently on the long mirrored floor edged with sparkling light.
The angel drifts back through the doorway she and the girls had emerged from, drawing back the tide of beauty behind the large divided screen.

The music plays on as the panels draw together. The screen slowly slides shut and the light blazes out.

Only the golden letters S E X Y above remain.

An enormous absence is felt.

A spectacular display of the total art of fashion has just been witnessed.
Thunderous applause.

I have never had a ‘relationship’ in my life.
I know this to be true and now I tell the secret; the truth of my thoughts.

I say this because I discover that there are two lives I’ve been living.
‘What people think’ and ‘What Natasha thinks.’
And even these lives can be subdivided into ‘What Natasha thinks she knows’ and ‘What Natasha knows she thinks’ and ‘What Natasha thinks she knows about people’, ‘What Natasha knows she thinks about people’ et cetera.

Today the broad category of ‘What Natasha thinks’ declares that Natasha has never had a ‘boyfriend’, never ‘fallen in love’, never ‘met the right person’.

‘What Natasha thinks’ decided to come out of the closet with this thought because yesterday afternoon Natasha again told a lie on the phone to her friend when she said that she had a ‘boyfriend’. She repeated the impression of the lie to her cousin as well later that day when they were talking; deliberately implying that she had a ‘relationship’ with a certain person. She has been doing so for a while, actually, the same lie about a few certain people she has met in her life, and the lying has to stop.

No ‘relationship’ exists to her consciousness i.e. ‘What Natasha thinks’.
For when I say ‘lie’ I do not infer that it is untrue to the other lives Natasha lives e.g. ‘What people think’, which may also be a personality in the life of the certain person that ‘What Natasha thinks’ believes she lied about, and other lives around her.

‘What Natasha thinks’ has been generally skeptical about ‘What people think’ for a long time now, watching in quiet amusement as ‘What people think’ has done its best to define every aspect of Natasha’s life, placing things in little neat boxes supposedly identical to the categories of ‘everybody’, stuffing and squeezing as best it can, building nice little rows and piles.

Particularly about ‘relationships’.

Only, it’s been twenty three years now and ‘What Natasha thinks’ has had enough.

What is all this rubbish; ‘boyfriend’, ‘girlfriend’? ‘Going out’? ‘Seeing each other’?
Gosh, and ‘marriage’, the treacherous illusion that binds the people both in it and out of it in silent longing, confusion and anxiety; those outside wanting to get in, those in not quite sure what it is they’re doing except keeping the ones outside unsure about what it is.
For goodness sake!
I’ve lied about having ‘relationships’ just because everybody’s lying about it, at least to the understanding of ‘What Natasha thinks’, when frankly, I never believe these emotional soul binding links ever exist for me or anyone else.
And I’m not a bitter, dried up, cynical old woman. I think I’m quite young actually. And happy. And prone to fall in and out of lust, prone to grow fixated on certain other persons for a period of time, burn hours on the fuel of significant company, touch touch touch, talk talk talk, gaze into each others eyes and glow …
So there have been synchronicities, me generally feeling a certain emotional link to a certain person who perhaps was generally feeling a certain emotional link to me at the same time.
And I say perhaps because I know that I personally have been particularly deceptive about the nature of my attachment when I have had the ulterior motives of boredom, vulnerability, pressure to conform to some hoax relationship dangled in my face, or the manipulative plus of the nature of the experience attached to such an attachment at the time. Say I was standing atop the Eiffel Tower looking down at a spectacular view and this drop dead gorgeous guy draws me into his arms and kisses me deeply. Why not, then?
‘What Natasha thinks’ has also always been acutely aware of when these emotional links have not been mutual, when she or the other’s emotional link is unplugged. I watched a tennis match on television this afternoon, and later in my head was scoring the points in a text message exchange I had last night with another certain person in my life.

A to B ______ Call.
B to A ______ No Answer.
A to B ______ Text; Hey babe.
B to A ______ Text; Hey you.
A to B ______ Text; Miss you.
B to A ______ Text; Hey you.
A to B ______ No reply.
B to A ______ Text; Hey you.
A to B ______ Call.
B to A ______ No answer.

A; YOU LOSE!
B; YOU WIN!
???

Last week ‘What Natasha thinks’ was wondering whether the fact that Natasha’s ‘boyfriend’ brings her breakfast in bed was ‘romantic’ because ‘What people think’ thought it was ‘romantic’. Did her ‘boyfriend’ think it was ‘romantic’?
‘What Natasha thinks’ believed Natasha and her ‘boyfriend’ were basically just living out episodes of their lives that encountered and aligned with each other. Just living. No need for the drama of definitions and little boxes to chuck it into with the rest of ‘What people think’ says experience is.

I have lied because I’ve been afraid about being judged about the attachments I leave undefined, knowing it will immediately be placed into a box, knowing that ‘relationship’ is the most superior of definitions by ‘What people think’, and an attachment that I choose not to label as a ‘relationship’ will be assumed to be not as good as a ‘relationship’, and woe betide me if I’m getting a friend or cousin’s ‘relationship’ dangling in my face at the time.

And I say all this referring to my own inward struggle because ‘What people think’ is a part of me. I generally don’t give a damn what people think. ‘What people think’ is a part of myself I wrestle with. A part that I will call the orientation of my reasoning from experience and education in the world. A part I see so vividly in others because of my own turmoil. The reason why when my ‘boyfriend’ brings me breakfast in bed I’m scanning and hoping I don’t see his ‘What people think’ reaching out to embrace mine.

Am I crazy?

I do like my ‘boyfriend’. I miss him so much when we are apart; try to imagine what he’s doing at the moment. But he’s not my ‘soul mate’, not ‘What Natasha thinks’ defines as one, at least, and I don’t believe we have the emotional attachment relationships should, or are portrayed to entail.

‘What Natasha thinks’ is an extremely idealistic personality.

‘What Natasha thinks’ extending to the sub category ‘What Natasha thinks she knows about people’ just sees people all around Natasha lying to themselves and making do, having ‘boyfriends’ and ‘girlfriends’, getting ‘married’[!]. It sees right through their words and actions to the layer of ‘What people think’ that Natasha has discovered within herself.

‘What Natasha thinks she knows’ believes that boxes don’t exist, things that are just are, and the only important definition of human emotions and their links should be ‘happy’.

‘What Natasha knows she thinks about people’ is that if everything depended upon the box ‘happy’, there wouldn’t be that much reason for hoaxes, won’t be that many ‘boyfriends’, ‘girlfriends’, ‘married couples’, and perhaps quite a few genuine boyfriends, girlfriends and married couples.

‘What Natasha knows she thinks’ is that up to this moment, the happiness and comfort she has found within her own self has been unequalled, and only complemented, by the happiness she finds with her ‘boyfriends’. She finds definitions of relationships tiring because they have implied finding companionship, completeness and purposefulness that she already has alone.

In fact, relationships have halved her; induced her to feel lonely and incomplete, company always rivalry, often unwelcome change; cutting out parts of herself to make room for the new person. And then after the series of ping pong matches somebody wins and somebody loses, the players shake hands, and the invasion of Natasha’s life is over for the time being. She wins, she loses, the points even out as the years go by, she grows more and more complete in privacy, ‘What Natasha thinks’ more and more offended by intrusion when it comes, more and more irritated by what it leaves behind.

Can people get married feeling like this?! Then they make a game a long series of games that can only become a war, or worse, a drag.
Unless one person chooses to be incomplete; a role that grows impossible for me.

When I see ‘couples’, I see one party playing well and the other playing badly and the both of them knowing it, and every other ‘couple’ knowing it along with them. Over and over again. Maybe switching roles once in a while, falling out of routine, but for the most part one winning, one losing, streak.

‘What Natasha thinks’ doesn’t believe Natasha has ever had a ‘relationship’ because it has never merged with an identical personality in another. She has never been one half of a team because she has not yet found a certain other person that knows what she’s playing for, and is in fact what it is. Hence the assumption that these mergers [what true relationships should be about] are not existing. Not for me, anyway.

‘What Natasha thinks’ always knew and identified the certain other people in Natasha’s life for what they were; ‘What Natasha doesn’t think’.
My partner is, and will be, my innate twin. We will not complete each other, we will mirror each other. I am already complete.

And so I have never had a relationship in my life.
I’ve had plenty of good and bad games. I’ve had good and bad opponents [if they’re not for me they’re against me] I’ve recurrently called ‘boyfriends’ as I lied to myself and others.
That’s all they really were.
My opponents; the challengers of ‘What Natasha thinks’.
And it’s great to have that out of my system.

May 17, 2006.