My journal has been getting much love from my own internal pain, supposedly this helps things. Sometimes I want to write in a way that shows up for other people even if no one is listening. How is it that broadcasting ourselves, even to a deaf audience, is such a powerful urge. I think it's less vanity than external confirmation of existence and effect. None the less, I have quit Twitter about a year after quitting Facebook and now I wonder if my email or phone isn't next.
Sometimes you have to really stub the toe for a hangnail to be loosened up enough to pull out. Or rather, blistered up enough. Over a year ago I aggravated two of my piggies enough with blisters beneath the nail that eventually one and then the other spit it out to make room for new growth. There's a metaphor in there, and there's also a lot of gross: puss in boots (e.g. not a kitty cat -- now try reading the title as intended, ever again).
Yesterday I nearly stepped on a tiny rabbit while walking home on the trail. Harrying flies popped on and off, dancing, shimmering chocolate chunks of filth to the beats of Kid Loco's The Graffiti Artist. I grabbed a short piece of wood and squatted down to carefully push him over. While in the process of this, earbuds in and oblivious to my surroundings, I heard a sudden squeak and sharp intake of breath as a girl coming from the opposite direction spotted my focus. "Is that a bunny?" It was, I said, and I was just trying to see how injured it was before moving it off the trail. She continued before I finished, what else could be done?
I prodded him gently with my fingers, soft fur gave way but the flesh pushed back and quivered yet its overlarge eyes stared at me intently. I picked him up slowly and moved him off into the bushes nearby, laying out a simple mantra and hoping my touch had not forever discouraged its mother (if it was that young) from returning. "Good lucky, little guy." This morning he was gone. I've seen plenty of rabbits, deer and once a young buck, raccoons, and even once a fox. So while he may have recovered his constitution and left by himself, I think rather he became a meal. Those big eyes in a tiny body looking into mine, that memory may be all that truly exists of him anymore.
Somehow, yesterday a level of peace furnished itself in my soul as had not happened in quite some time. Even with everything going on inside and out, within and without, I drank deeply of equilibrium draught, sipped a spirit of spaciousness, and inhaled self-forgiveness without personal identification. Troubles seemed far away, disconnected from my twisted net of emotions in this body and mind. The feeling has left, but the memory remains, staring at me from yesterday with big vulnerable sightless eyes.
I left my phone at home, walked to Marymoor Park, watched Dodgeball into the dark, and laughed unto spilling tears; a waterway so recently reserved only for sadness produced a sprinkle of liquid sunshine. On the walk home, my own figures gathered warmly around and I wrote in my moleskine: "Street lights cast an army of shadows, but they all stand at my feet."
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