Exiled into Memory

bones and beads

standing stones

are sentries of the passing

as the sand and rain

wash the slates clean

the river floods

thunder throws me back

to center

deeply

driving me down into the cave

that lies within me

where I silently leave offerings

to the Old Ones and Ancestors

and those of future days

drawing memories

on the walls

of my mind

Relics

Chains

"I can still hear you saying you will never break the chain...." Fleetwood Mac

The clouds move in and the day moves on into the late afternoon. There is little going on at the moment, and I am left to the company of my thoughts. I am traveling in my mind back, as I always do, to the beach. I need to walk the cool sands and feel the wind wash my body of the anxiety and stress of the week. The green grey water is thundering up to the cliffs and the foam washed over the rocks and sand. I sit crosslegged on the cement-pitted platform at the Sutro ruins and pull my sweather-coat tighter around me, head bowed into a big, wooly buddha ball. There are grains of sand blowing past me, tumbling like tiny boulders into the cracks and valleys of the damaged concrete. Rust bleeds out from the the old rebar and bolts that held the girders in place at the old bath house. It runs done the bones of the concrete, spilling out onto the rocks below. The wind is picking up, howling now at the sandstone to the left of me, wearing away the packed sand wall and tiny caves with it's watery breath. The sea spray flies carrying the gulls that are crying out the message of rough water and the arrival of the first storm of autumn. Part of me breaks away and cries with them, keening.

Here is the next task. I am at my desk once more, back from my mental hiatus. The need to go to the place as a child runs to it's mother for safety and comfort. I've done it for decades now...more times than I can possibly count. In this time, I let the sand slip through my fingers in the wind. It's time to say good-bye.

It was difficult to collect the thoughts I wanted to write. Difficult because me heart bleeds with it everytime I try. Raw and open and still bleeding....my blood flows into pools painting pictures of things from the past...a magic mirror changing and shifting in the tidal waves.

I think I have found it, again.

The words flowing and pounding against me, out of me, mouth open with the taste of seaweed and salt on my tongue....screaming with the voice of an albatross causht in the wind and suddenly being pulled upwards on the drafts

I am bound to this place as surely as if I were anchored in the rocks...waited down with chains of my own making that slowly turn to rust welding themselves to my bones.

Collecting pieces of the pictures in my head along with sand dollars and pebbles that will go into a jar on my side board in the desert. I long for the sea and the City. Long to see the ghosts shifting through time on the streets before me, before the shops and houses I walked on years before and walk on now.

I cling to the small bits of glass, stone and shells like a rosary to spell over and over...a lifeline to who and what I was and most surprisingly, still am....slowly releasing into what I will become and where we will be again. I am obsessed with it....only admitting it now....as a lover that has run away out of desperation and aching for return. I have run away too many times in my life and now realise I need run no more.

Acceptance is strange and familiar...looking at yourself in the mirror and seeing the child reflected back. My child was curious and bold, unafraid of climbing the dangerous rocks and walking the edge of the Marina walls while my Grandmother screamed out in warning. The sea was always below me and before me....the grand tightrope walk.

I went back to the hotel room that night sick and nerve shattered...wishing silently that I hadn't come this way...it was foolish and silly....throwing up all the years of fear and insecurity....purging my body and soul of the constant running from who and what I have always been....running from my Grandmother's boogie man...the wino in the bushes....running from self-imposed pain and my own reflection. I shed it off me as a skin and looked at it in wonder.

Why?

Habits die hard when you finally cut them down. It writhed and clawed out from within me as my stomach churned and spasmed in pain. A beast within tearing its way out one way or another...everything subsiding once I looked at it and ran my fingers through its fur and called it by my own name. I accepted my beast.

Exausted, but at peace, I fell into sleep next to Tony wrapped in the soft weight of the bedsheets and his scent. I drifted into sleep like a child.

I am going back on my terms....unafraid to climb the stairs and unlock the door of the house on the Marina that has always been mine....but only....only...if I wanted it bad enough.

The child is coming home.