Home is where the hurt is

1993.

I am sitting on my bed
staring at what used to be a favorite painting.
It is my first day back from rehab.
Nothing would ever be the same again.
My eyes follow the lines and colours in the painting.
I know that it is beautiful. But I can no longer feel it.

It took me seven years
before I could once again feel spontaneous un-logical joy
when looking at a piece of art
and another five years
before I felt the joy of being alive explode
inside my ribcage
and radiate into every cell of my body.

Some days,
after reading through too many academic text,
my neurons loose new footpaths
and I return to that place.
A place where logic dots his i and crosses his t.
Where systematic analysis takes love,
the smell of dust after the rain,
magic and meaning
and flattens it until it becomes nothing but a line on a page.

It keeps me awake at night.
My brain feels hot.
It mechanically moves from option to option to option.
I concentrate on feeling my heart,
on feeling me loving me.
Wanting to be with me.
Wanting to be me.

I follow a shadow dancing under its leave.
It leads me back to not having to know.
To spaces in my brain where nature has not been domesticated.

There where the sunlight fades away into night
I will soon go and hunt
for the last remaining piece of me.
My home.

Home used to form itself around me.
My eye could find the moment
when furniture, cloth, art, lights and empty space
felt at peace with one another.
I was enfolded in their stillness.
Now I feel the absence of this stillness.
My things merely co-exist.
Like strangers at a conference
they share a common goal
but do not always know how to fill awkward silences.

Outside in my field, every element is at peace.
Silence moves through dancing grasses,
changing skies,
tall trees
and reflecting, reflected light.

Next to me a ray of white winter sun illuminate white tree trunks.

Behind me fields recede into a blue absence of sun.

In the distance orange fields are filled with purple shadows.

I find myself listening for sounds of danger.
Not too long ago
four people were robbed in this field at gunpoint.
The pounding of my heart are fueled by fear
as well as the intense pleasure of the moment.
My sense of self beats a rhythm.
Optimism, fear, depression, joy and yearning.

Unwilling to surrender to trust, my past and future
seem like strangers.

The beauty of now I love with a fierce longing.

Here I am just who I am.
The path home starts here.
Inside this moment.