Lighten up Already!

"In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river, it was always hungry. In that land of beginnings, spirits mingled with the unborn." (Ben Okri, The Famished Road)

Freedom, I think, extends in all directions. I look beyond the incredible and the unknown, and there it is. Through barriers and prohibitions, taboos and dangerous frontiers. It is a wild and dangerous space out there. I imagine exhilaration and baulk. I suffer for it. I stake my fiercest claim to the walls of prisons in the mind.

What is the difference between me, you and the circumstance? Can I see it? I hear what I want to hear; I see what I want to see. Irrespective. Feels hot just to think of it.

It is hard to have the courage of the open sky, to let go of the other and of the circumstance and set sail down that river - not on your own, but on your own merit. Without borrowed clothes: my husband the big cheese and my daughter the big hope; my son the big doer and my son the big thinker. All of them, all of us, deep feelers. Not a criminal among us! What makes it so? The prison walls of the mind?

The hungry river is the only gateway.

"Phlebas, the Phoenicioan, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you."
(T.S.Elliott, Death by Water)

Or again, as TSE would say, "These fragments I have shored up against my ruin": it is like sweeping autumn leaves in the high winds; it is like sifting out the chaff; it is like paring down and minimalising: you are always aware that any moment now, it all has ultimately to end up in the bin.

Lightening up the load is a beginning. First, I want to throw away fake memories. The first to go whould be the ones that simply prove that I have existed for so many years; the next will be the bits and pieces that prove that someone noticed I was there; after that, I will throw away the clothes that no longer fit; then go the things I dislike; by then I should be able to discern what I like but don't need. And so it should go, throwing out the garbage thread by thread, crumb by crumb, tears, smiles and all... until all that is left is me = small, unimpressive and bare. But real.

See the curls around the forehead and the pouty lips? See the strong eyebrows and the upturned chin? See the puffy cheeks and the scored temples? Who would ever do anything for me without expecting payment? Who would ever chase me for an autograph? Who would ever sacrifice a chicken to my image?