Is any of this interesting. Maybe. But what do I know?
That there’s an “in-between” world, that houses beauty, and we touch it only furtively.
We fear it and avoid it because it tells us we’re wrong about what we’re doing.
Our ways are somehow misaligned with nature.
This bothers us for entire lifetimes.
Yet, we keep coming back to it.
Attracted to small things that sparkle in our days.
It shows up in things we stop for.
In natural compositions that stop our lonely walks.
In art that shows up unexpectedly.
In wild animals that cross our paths.
Anything from a black beetle to a contrail in the sky can capture us.
Anything from a coyote encounter at 5:00 AM to a pamphlet found in a gutter at just the right time.
The story we tell ourselves clicks with an image in the outer world.
And we recognize the pattern of our liberation.
There is no magic.
There’s just a constant flood of small miraculous.
That seems mystical because it matches the story we’re developing in our dreamy minds.
But there’s no mystery.
Who we are and what we are. . . are what we think we are.
And that river comes flooding toward us.
To deny this is to relinquish our sovereignty.
It’s a giving up of the self to play by someone else’s rules.
It’s being untrue to ourselves because we don’t trust our own brains.
We’ve been trained to go with others’ training.
To follow tested narratives and guidelines.
When deep down we know that following is demonic.
And the breaking out on our own – though lonely – is the only way to get close to some kind of living salvation.
The existing narratives and rule-bound imperatives produce the same groundhog days.
The same worlds bloom again and again.
Those that strike out by poem rebellion, invention, excursion, denial, argument, discovery, alternation, escape, heresy and insanity. . .
they bring new worlds into play.
Those will not find agreement and approbation in their time.
They can’t.
They will more likely be hung in a town square.
All you can do regarding this “in-between” world is know it when it ambushes you,
find out how to visit it more often, and to constantly ask your own self –
this character you’ve devised for your trip across the tundra – WHY?
Why this story for this robe and mask I’ve donned?
Why this story for the character of me.
And why the artist and poet story for this character?
Because I have some reason to believe we’re here to comfort and amuse each other.
Why not show color in words to someone?
Why not send a spaceship with a special message out to worlds uncharted?
Why not paint a pleasing scene so somebody, anybody, might get a chance to stop and see an “in-between” world.
The odds are slim, but the chance needs to be taken.
Message in the bottle.