AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Today it’s raining. The desert is at last getting her due after many thirsty months–her flesh and bones are finally being nourished by the soggy gray clouds dumping their guts all over her dehydrated  body. I’m sitting in Starfux, and boy is it bustling—I can barely keep my head tethered to this screen—the training of my attention to this particular stream of consciousness is a hulking challenge. At least fifteen different conversations are happening—coffee is being made, money is changing hands, phone calls are being answered. Blablablablayadayadayadacacklecacklecacklewooshwooshwooshclickclickclick—just life making noise—and the movement of sound is rivaled only by the movement of bodies and coffee cups and lids and cell phones and—ten thousand things slicing up space— you get the idea—everything is moving and this everything is moving fast!

But I’ve been slowing down and getting still. It was decided that it was time to distill my life down to the essentials, decided that I would now ask myself a really big question, and in asking this question, I would devote most everything to realize it fully. I would take away all of the things that take me away from the answer.

The question is this: What is most important to me?

One interesting thing about this distillation is that it began without my doing anything to make it happen. Better said, whatever I’ve been seeking in this so called “spiritual quest” is beginning to show itself, and in doing so, some things that have been hiding it are falling away without much effort or thought. I honestly don’t know what is happening. And at this point, I honestly don’t know the answer to my question, not wholly,  and not without sounding like I understand, which I don’t. Maybe what’s most important to me is authenticity and truth, because this is what feels most real and true. But I’m not ready to throw in the towel of contemplation just yet.

A couple of weeks ago, in the middle of contemplating …what is real?… I came up against a huge wall of fear. I understood in a very real and non-mental way that I had no idea what was “real”.  The thoughts pinging round my head were just protecting me from sliding down into the hole that contains the unknown. Then there was the clarity that my life was just right, and in fact…my life wasn’t MY life at all, it was just a life…LIFE. And the I that has been hell-bent on this and that happening, and this and that not happening, wasn’t even REAL…

Maybe.

And.

But.

What does feel real is this screaming that lives underneath everything else.

Of course I often believe the story teller’s stories— but less and less I do. And I am aware of this scream all of the time, even in the cacophony that is Starfux… I am aware of a scream at the very bottom of my belly. A blood curdling scream. It’s not new, I’ve been aware of it for a long time. I don’t know what it is…maybe it’s the core of the made -up-me that realizes it’s being found out. Maybe it’s the self that is screaming because it can’t get its way, and so it’s having an eternal fit. Maybe it’s the soul that was thrust into this body and has been lied to ever since. I really don’t know. But the scream is here. And I am here.

And what happened in the questioning is moving home and a lot of warm baths—a sesame seed oil- slathered body soaking in epsom salted water at least once a day–sometimes twice. A bath-o-holic has been born. Lots of quiet and lots of dog walking and dog cuddling and hikes in the desert —and lots of listening and writing and crying and reading and staring and sitting and spending time with people I love.  And lots of complex internal stuff —untangling and destruction and shit like that.  So I’m keeping to the simple stuff.

And it’s all okay. Better than ok.

At least for now…this is true…for now.