Juxtapositioning

“The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you
Don’t go back to sleep!
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep!
People are going back and forth
across the doorsill where the two worlds touch,
The door is round and open
Don’t go back to sleep!”
— Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

I stand at the threshold of a doorway. It calls to me, this door into my future. If I stop looking I can see the starry brightness of the path just on the other side, the path that leads into the unfoldment of my destiny. If I cover my ears I can hear the earth sighing in breathless wonder. If I cease breathing for a moment I can feel my body expand in joy, each cell’s aliveness coursing through me and beckoning me into the brightness that covers my face.

The way ahead became clearer tonight. I have been two days in a fog that shrouded me in suffocating fears. Tonight’s moonrise dawns clear. I am not an island. Once through the doorway, I will see how there are hands waiting to take mine, to receive the gifts I hold, and to offer warmth in exchange. Once through the doorway I will see the way clear, my path, a piece of the larger destiny that awaits, and I will know where next to place my feet and in which direction.

I think that’s all we ever know.

I have been afraid because I haven’t remembered to use old patterns as a marker of my wholeness. I was afraid that I erred, afraid I was making poor choices, afraid my past pain would be repeated. But old things can be friends. Allies. I can gather them in. Use them to be whole. Let them give me strength.

I stand at the threshold of a doorway. Tonight I dance through.

Girlfriend. I never thought past the age of 17 that I would think of wearing this label as having won something amazing and awesome, but there you go. That’s how life works. Sometimes you come back to where you have been (only it’s way way better now). I am totally loving being a little bit high school. And yes, I have a boyfriend and he rocks.

We own one item jointly. Well, it’s technically mine — a small black hardcover Moleskine notebook, previously written-on pages ripped out to create an open space of possibility, written in with my burgundy and gold Mont Blanc rollerball pen — but we are creating the contents together. In it are many of the secrets of our couplehood awesomeness. Evidence of our co-created experience. Inspiration for further exploration. I am keeper of The Book, and several times a day I relish slipping my forefinger beneath the slim black elastic that binds the pages together, stretching it slightly to widen it, then allowing it to rest beneath the bottom cover while I press the book open to add the next entry. Gratifying.

What may be even more interesting about the life The Book is taking on are the themes that are slowly emerging from within its contents. Without revealing details of our secrets, I can tell you that some of our commonalities are so … unusual, rare, singular … that almost the only seeming explanation for the path that led us to meet is the D-word. Destiny. I can barely utter it without receiving an eyes-skyward glance, but it keeps coming back. Mocking. Inviting. Opening.

I’ll be honest about destiny. I believe in it and yet I don’t, not at all. I believe we each have a potential, a story, and it is up to us to find out what that is. Sometimes we are able to and sometimes we are not. Lives are lived and loves are loved, regardless of whether we find what our true story is, but if we do? When we do? That’s when the magic happens.

I want the magic. I know it is possible. And it is unfolding, within me and around me — I know it is. I can feel it. I want more. Is that my destiny?

There is a boundary between the worlds. I know, because I have been there. Crossed it. Danced at its edge. Sang it songs. Breathed in the fire.

Approaching magic can be a little like approaching a wild animal. Breathe too quickly, too loudly, and it coyly disappears into the mists, trailing its song behind it. But if you’re too wary, too uncertain, too unlike yourself, it vanishes entirely. Approaching magic has to be done with, well, magic. Magic attracts magic.

1 + 1 = 3.

I know all this because I have been there. The wet wild woods of the Olympic Peninsula enveloped me in its embrace, leaving me gasping with shared delight. Mountain and forest gave way to wood-strewn pebbly beach and then ocean: a vast plain of undulating waters marked by towering tree-topped sea cliffs and rocks that jutted jaggedly into the enfolding, flowing wet of the waves.

For three days we breathed. In and in. We sipped red wine and talked about everything — all that mattered — in front of the fire while the endless surf pounded outside. We walked down the beach in the cold winter wind and stood watching a pair of sea lions playing in the cove at the far end. I imagined they were lovers. We ate and laughed and played. We discovered and delighted. We drank in the essence of our creation.

Shh, I have a secret: my lover is magic.

I am being courted by magic. I first knew this as a child when I immersed myself in worlds drawn with words, my rainy autumn Saturdays spent in the company of cats and paperbacks. I have felt magic in the closing of a door, a seemingly random event that exploded my reality, knowing at once that forever the world — my world — had changed in that one moment, and that everything to follow would be different as a result. I have felt magic in my breath, my disintegration, my transcendence. I have made magic for others, long years spent creating worlds that others could walk in. Fly in. I have loved magic since I learned what breathing was. I have chosen to live in a world where it exists, and magic loves me back, just as passionately, just as perfectly.

1 + 1 = 3.

It’s a cruel blow to find out that you’ve been hiding something from yourself, perhaps for years, and that you have — intentionally, mind you — set up minefields, mazes and mirrors in order to avoid getting to the bottom of the whatever-it-is that eludes you. Not that any of this is a surprise, but I am just good enough at what I do, just skilled enough at self-discovery, to trick myself into thinking I have Done Good Work and as a result, veer off course from going deeper into what lies beneath.

A lot of the anger I feel as a result — TRICKED! — is at myself.

Self, you suck. Self, you are too good at what you do. Self, WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?

I know that this is all about self-preservation. I get that. There is a layer waiting there that scares the bejesus out of me. And dammit, no one — NO ONE — is allowed to see it. Least of all me. But I have to say, I am tired of the charade. Am tired of expending what probably amounts to 90% of my energy maintaining this facade. Am tired, just tired. Can see through the mists, a little, just enough to want more.

There is a light.

I keep using the cliff metaphor — standing on a precipice, waiting to jump or fly into the unknown-but-awesome — and it totally works here. Here I am, again, at the edge of the unknown. It scares me. It beckons me. There is a promise that OH MY GOD this will be better than anything else (so far) has ever been. I know all this without a doubt. I know it and my feet keep inching forward. My heart says yes, yes, a million times yes.

I speak in metaphors. You understand that, right? I code my words here because it amuses the hell out of me to do so. I love how words slide around in their juices, warmly, wetly. Words like kisses. Words like caresses. Words like forgotten rainbows behind rain-soaked skies.

This is a time of creation, of birth. I can feel that, and I feel the life that pulsates under the moist mossy trees, neolithic ferns and flowing volcanic rocks of my twilight world. There is life beneath my feet, life within my veins, life in the drumbeat of my heart. The ancient songs call to me, calling in a song of creation. What comes next sets the scene for much to come.

Waking from the dream, breathing into being.

I am poised, yet again, at the edge of something magical. Unbearably exquisite. Scary as hell. It’s not as if I was hurtling uncontrollably towards a certainty, and yet … perhaps I am. Have the stars aligned to bring something to fruition now that was perhaps begun years ago while my attention was elsewhere? Is there a way to tell?

All I can tell you is that on a regular basis, I am slipping through the veil into a beautiful new world beyond. Over and over and over, reaching new levels, new heights, feeling deliciously grateful each time for the new shared space, moving into that space seamlessly, joyfully. Over and over, deeper, farther. Exponential, amazing new worlds.

Tonight I walked a long time in the falling snow, reveling in the stillness that surrounded me. Off in the distance, closer to the bay, a muffled joyful snowplay shout, but on my block there was total quiet. I felt soft flakes brush my face with tenderness. I felt the decadent softness of sheepskin on my warm, bare feet, crunching virgin steps on five fresh inches of white. I heard the snow falling on my head, my hair. I watched the shadows of falling snow in the pool of brightness under a street light.

Up ahead, letters trod in the fresh unbroken expanse in the street: I ♥ U KITTY FUZZ. A sign? When I got home I shook half an hour of snow off my jacket, revealing a single white feather under the accumulation. A sign.

I know the third sign is around here somewhere. I can feel it. My eyes and heart are wide open.