Take Me to the River

More often than not, when I visit the water, its unstoppable motion and infinite gurgles take me to a place in my mind that is peaceful. The phenomenon of water itself overrides my heady turmoils, my rants of self-deprecation, the seemingly continual aches and pains within my physical being.

Water is a vehicle for tuning out the cacophony of the barrage of information with which I am hit every day. There is only so much of computer networking that I can face or in which I can even participate.

Paradoxically, the computer is the tool I need for promoting my interests and my writing. Look at this blog for heavens's sakes.

If I remove myself from the currency of cultural time which happens to be technological, I truly deny the essence of human evolution. Whatever is going on out there beyond my immediate reach, I can bring into my environment somehow through this machine. Yet the drawback of this machine is that it takes me away from human contact, which, as a social being, I desperately need.

Granted a state of hermit-tude aids in focusing, concentration, and a chance for introspection can happen in no other way, I can spiritually die if I do not break the solitude and breathe the air, tread on the ground, listen to the birds, smell the flowers, let my fingers get numb, perspire, bump into people on the sidewalk. Whatever is there for me to do.

I am seeking an intimate embrace.

The embrace that comes from the poetry of feeling closeness to myself.

The closeness of the one I am with. Stephen Stills meant his lyrics: When you're down and confused, Love the one you're with.

Yet, if I can inhale safety and love without the presence of anyone, I am in the intimate embrace I am seeking. I am in The embrace of God. God never wavers in His Love.

God takes many forms but I am with Him always. Just as the memories of those whom I love accompany me all the time. I can take them wherever I go. They experience whatever I experience.

I can go to the stream; I can go to the river; I can go to the ocean; I can stand in the rain.

I am close to my true self, which is endless, unprotected, intangible, uncontrolled, a simple project of awareness. With or without the water.

copyright 2011 Lyn Horton

Where The Calm Lurks

And let us pray:

Oh, Holy Father, where are we going? And how are we reaching our destination?

Can You help us to find the greatest of all solace which is along the thin line between Light and Shadow, between the Material and the Spiritual, and the Known and the Unknown?

If what I ask is a truly substantial question, how is it that its relevance dissipates so easily?

Is it for the reason that I do not care? Is it for the reason that I am overwhelmed with the burden that being on earth rests on my shoulders?

Herein lies the poetry that is the closest to the realization of my soul. The words come through like the water flows.

The stream of words that captures the evanescence of my thoughts. How some thoughts are meaningless and others when expressed have enough coherence to communicate to some one else.

I offer the words; the reader receives them.

I cannot find the secrets of the brain without being a scientist. I cannot determine how the mind works without practicing some other vocation other than the one of writer or visual artist.

But what is knowable is that I can read this and make sense out of it. I can be happy with the simplicity of the meaning of the words, which in some ways is sheer nothingness.

Being compelled to write the words is the key to their power.

It is as if I were drawing a line to add to the other lines which make up an entire drawing.

No word that I write has not never been written before. Not in the same context. But in conveying a similar idea. That I need the words to give meaning to my existence, whether that existence is indicated in detail or as an overview. Nonetheless. Here and now, I am writing prose, construable as poetry, sentence after sentence, phrase after phrase, word after word, letter after letter. In silence.

The music is in the background.

So is the snow falling outside of my studio window.

So is the love in my heart.

copyright 2011 Lyn Horton

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copyright 2011 Lyn Horton