Water of Words

I was cut down again today. This morning, I helped a friend, and I felt my conscious self dissipating, like a wind-blown dandelion on a summer day.

Dandelion florets float in the warmth of the sun, and my brain melts into a pure stream, so that it becomes a droplet indistinguishable from all the other droplets that mingle as they make their way to the sea.

This morning, I wrote and, in so doing, helped a friend. This morning, writing came together with friendship and earnest camaraderie. This morning, I was immortal.

But then, as always happens, I was cut down. I took my eye off the ball, forgot my car keys...I wasn't strong enough to contain that part of me that wants gain, recognition, independence from holy creativity and imagination. I struck out.

I became a series of fragmented, isolated, icy, and thick raindrops that the clouds of my own misery poured down on another person to ease my pain: the pain of knowing that I'm unemployed, that I'm slowly dying of cardiomyopathy, that my wife was raped multiple times, that I feel so unknown and so unappreciated, that I've worked so hard to learn, be earnest, be true to my spiritual and ethical code.

I cut myself down because I insisted on reminding another of my vast and superior knowledge of writing and books. I made a power play - the play for achievement that led to the prolonged death of my heart and all the inauthenticity and bad faith that birthed it.

I cut myself down because continuously weaken at the threat of going unrecognized...of suffering in silence as my friends fall asleep around me. I suffer in silence as my waking dreams - which gain reality and purchase on my soul in all the waking moments when I strive for control - convince me that the sleepers around me don't recognize my despair, much less their own.

Yes, I am in despair. I admit it. But, in my freedom, I don't need to create it. Instead, I have to surrender my soul to a different form of creation: the holy imagination manifested in the written words that are saving me from myself right here and right now.

Let me forever be a droplet in the water of words of which I'm a minor and humble part. Let me help my family, friends, and others explore the hidden recesses of their souls through my minor and humble words. Let us all flow together on a rhythmic river of communication until we mingle as one in the sea.