In the book Inside the Victorian Home, Judith Flanders quotes a nineteenth century English nursery rhyme about laundry. I found it interesting enough that I feel compelled to share it here.
They that wash on Monday Have all the week to dry They that wash on Tuesday Are not so much awry They that wash on Wednesday Are not so much to blame They that wash on Thursday Wash for very shame They that wash on Friday Wash in sorry need They that wash on Saturday Are lazy sluts indeed
“i feel the wind
the wind
it touches me with a cold cold creeping dampness
it feels like i've just left the shower
but in fact I'm heading right into one
it's the rain
i look at the sky
it's not blue
not green
not grey
but something else
it's something you can't duplicate in a photo or a painting.
it's just the rain
it's the clouds
and the rain
and night sky with the city
it's the rain
i feel the first drips on my face
it's the rain
it is the rain that will come
it is the rain that is coming
it is the rain that is here for me
behind the tree and wrap and bow in the light and in shadow i know the devil in december
no chimney does he creep down late he sits in front and starts awake i know the devil in december
grins and screams he knows the way no jolly laugh no fucking sleigh an abomination with anger deep lies and secrets come to reap generations of traditional sin an abomination beneath skin in the basement below the rooms i know the devil in december
Is God benevolent or malevolent? Does God love us? Is God wrathful?
These questions are fitting to ask of some man with a flowing grey beard that lives in the sky, but they are unanswerable as to God as All.
God is not only the sky above and the ground below and all that dwells in those places. God is not only everything we can touch, God is more.
God is all creation all destruction. God is life and and God is death. God is the bleeding wound and the passionate kiss. God is the roar as well as the silence.
God is all beliefs and doubts. God not just the concept of heaven and hell, but the concept that there is an above and below. God is the ideas we think as well as the air we breathe.
God is all emotions. God is all love and all hate. God is all benevolence and all malevolence. God is all wrath and all forgiveness.
God is our mathematics and our law. Our fears and our courage. Our arts, our poetries, our languages and the metaphors behind them. The truth as well as the lie.
God is energy and matter. God is the motion of the falling rock as well as the rock that falls.
God is the Happening that is the Becoming. God is what was, will be, and has been. God is even that which is not, has not been, and will never be; if what is not, has not been, and will never be is but thought.
God is the All of Everything, the Universe of Universes. This is why there can be nothing greater than God. No threat needed, no coercion. There can be none greater than All that Is, because anything else is simply part of the Everything.
I saw my therapist yesterday. I think I am going to start seeing her regularly again, at least for a little while. My head is clogged up and I need to let a lot of things out.
There was a time I used to let things out more here on LiveJournal than in my therapists office. I tell her things I tell no one else. This is a sign of my trust of my therapist, even while I have a extremely low opinion of the mental health system in general.
I'm very lucky that I have access to a therapist that I don't have to worry about overreacting and having me locked up. She has professional standards that she must adhere to – but if I say something that might potentially get me trouble, I always have a chance to backtrack and "clarify". Without this, I doubt I could be as open with her as I am.
My therapist is the only mental health professional I trust at this point. I will not see a psychiatrist and I will not live on psych meds. My therapist knows this and has accepted it. She may not agree with the decision, but she will not force her opinion on me and she knows better than to badger me about it. That I have found such respect a rarity in the mental health field.
Perhaps in time I will return to writing more here. Unlike in therapy, these days I am more cautious how I put things online. Perhaps I should begin writing poetry again. Perhaps deeper into metaphor is the way to go. Or, perhaps edited stream of consciousness. Or something else, perhaps. We shall see.
it is important to see the beauty that is not there the glory that never was and never will be the things of light and mind and hope more real than reality the heaven that isn't the peace that cannot come this place we inhabit is not a tranquil place it cannot be made so
it is important to remember what is not never was and never will be because
if we do
perhaps
what is not never was and never will be will remember us
more and more i find that years are short and months are long a few weeks ago so far remote a distant time in a distant life but a decade past only just yesterday i expect to see those faces around the corner even those which have turned to dust
in cambridge centuries ago general washington gathered his troops he chose an elm standing old and wise under which he rallied his troops to take back boston town in cambridge common that elm still stands and if you asked it might explain that years are short and months are long
barefoot in a tattered dress i go with tearstained face i walk and walk and walk some more i keep moving still i do not mind my feet streetsore near worn to blood one more step, there may be gore and thinking the sidewalk should soon be red i see it purple now instead ...how odd ...how strange a purple sidewalk — a bit deranged who has painted this here and now my feet fresh paint i fear where might the culprit be? i look up above me the tree mulberries! ripe, just waiting for me the lady of tree say take as i might please and so i do barefoot in a tattered dress i return with berrystained hand
i am still picking up the bread crumbs left long ago haunted forest and horrors of the dungeons dark the way was planned my return to frankenstein i am still picking up the bread crumbs left long ago a dream which is not a dream a fairy tale which fairies do not tell they do not know the monsters in the candy walls are drunk with lies
stumbling through the lost days moving between sleep and wake never finding either i hope again to taste the universe to find that brief flash against the darkness
the pains deepen and my thoughts again knot in loops the threads of the world are frayed the needle cannot be strung i feel the nothings touching me my breath lost to the empty decades
the demon in the mirror repeats her message "no one is coming to help you no one can save you their world is not your world forget the distractions and go where you must go"
lake playing allemanda from sonata no. iv op. 5 by vivaldi on the violin
In my journal, I've aways formated my intentional poetry like this. The subject and the body of the post contain the title of the poem, and the entire body has a margin indented from my standard posts. I also have made it a habit not to include current mood and current music on posts containing my intentional poetry, believing it important for the poetry to speak on its own. Often I write stream of consciousness posts with many line breaks. These end up looking like poems, but were not intended when written to be poetry. Maybe they are unintentional poems, maybe they are streams of mind glop, maybe they are both. I do know that I never considered that they might be considered poetry until people started talking about my stream of consciousness posts as poems. This isn't something new, but it is seeming more inescapable now and I'm beginning to wonder if they in fact in some way are.
dreams lived in my daylight white-winged bubble-bug færies drifted up in a slight breeze i drew in on my chocolate cigar they danced in the grey smoke and then they were gone
across the seasons the leaves have piled heavy for the long dark so predictable as to seem inevitable but i still remember i almost caught the vision and then they were gone
i follow the demon path ration and reason has no place in my stories ghosts sing contradictions the barbs of their words pulling on my neck i wander in search of what cannot be until luna abandons me to dawn the daylight facade is a distraction and i see past it now in spite of the shine of lies the fallen gather in the passageways under the city i believe the songs and my queen still drives the trains i look in her windows as she pulls into the station the evil i see is my reflection
mellow
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awake
melancholy
exhausted
exanimate