The podcast is being revived/resurrected/reconstituted.
Reasoning here.
because writing doesn’t do it all for me
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Category Archives: perpetual dawnne
what falters
Turbulent Saffron © 2004 (photo), 2005 (comp) Dawnne
and something completely different.
we are mesmerized by the lighted shadows, the shadowed lightnesses, and the sudden gleamings, no matter how disconnected (and all the more so if consequently irretrievable).
there is laughter in the light of the moon, and fear beneath the blazing sun.
a separation: there is naught but wandering.
reminiscences pale beneath the onslaught of the here-and-now; they fade. yellowed, grayed and musty, they depart from us slowly, though we bathe still within their subtle light. drawn to them (drawn of them), we grow, possessed still of an internal innocence that shall never grow old.
and so, begun again, that one unfortunate scream
metes the silence with all the anticipation that normality can bring to bear.
displace, this place
yeah, that last one was a bit more obtuse than intended. so, to clarify:
i don’t really hate it here per se. there are, at least, some really great people that i’ve met here over the past few years, and i enjoy having them in my life. theoretically, they enjoy having me in their lives as well. the only trouble with that is the fact (a very literal fact) that they are overwhelmingly from somewhere else, transplanted here just like i was. and it is they, along with my children, which constitute the only things that are keeping me here right now.
whenever i do get to leave, i know i shall have mostly good memories of this place, and certainly of these people.
mostly.
but things came together in such a way that i very much am in a holding pattern, now. how long i hold here has yet to be theorized, let alone determined. but i am waiting to leave now, and yes, the waiting for it bleeds.
but aye, some of it, i will miss. indeed. i am, after all, transformed somewhat by my experiences here.
Transformed By Evening Shadows © 2005 (photo), 2007 (comp) Dawnne
changes within the ever-changing unchangeable
stasis is not a thing i do well, and moments of unclarity like this do not range far from my definition of stasis. i feel that i’m at a crossroads, taking a moment’s pause before choosing which direction to turn, or not to turn, but in truth, there are no divergent paths before me, no turns to the left or right, no forks in the road ahead. i’m just pulled to the side for a bit; maybe to gather my strength, or maybe i should get out and walk. at least that would constitute some sort of decision to make….something to do.
okay, i’m no longer terribly thrilled with this metaphor. let me try another.
did i ever mention i’m not terribly adept at waiting? yeah, i probably did. when that for which you wait is unwelcome, the waiting for it bleeds.
once upon a time, this is what waiting felt like for me:
Tempered Impatience © 2004 (photo), 2005 (comp) Dawnne
it may convey something different to you, and to be honest, you’ll never hear me say anything like “this is the perfect image to describe ‘waiting’, in my opinion.” this was just what waiting felt like to me at a certain time: a waiting of a certain form, when all the things being waited upon were undefined, unknowable, hidden, mysterious, unresolved. but i do keep coming back to this image at moments like this, remembering the “then”, and comparing it to the “now.” sometimes, it’s even beneficial. and at other times, it might even feel that way.
there is a sense of acuity that comes with experience: a knowledge that the things to come will be better than the things that have been, at least in retrospect, for in later years we enjoy the privilege of coloring the things that were with the knowledge we have gained from them.
on days like this, the shadows fade, and on days like this, reminiscence is a muted scream.
inconsequentially yours
words do not begin…
it recycles, and that annoys. but, it’s never the same.
the problem with me is that i remember. i don’t have the type of brain that memorizes every word that is spoken or written, whether outbound or inbound, but i remember so much else, so many other details, usually visual or aural, that will haunt me all of my days.
just this past week, unbidden, came sounds from the night of my high school graduation dinner, an event that hasn’t entered my mind again in over twenty years. that’s what i mean by haunting. i remember, but i can’t always call things up at will. instead, the memories come almost randomly, and leave me cold.
and so, words do not begin…
sometimes, i catch myself about to do something that i’ve done before, and if it’s that type of thing that doesn’t really need to be done in the first place, well, that irks. recycling is good for the environment, but this kind of recycling makes me worry about my brain. i don’t like redundancy, even if those who were to receive what i’ve had done or said would never have had a way to know i was being redundant.
maybe even especially then, when i know it’s only me that i annoy.
and words do not even remotely begin…
i was chatting with a friend last night, and something came out of my mouth that surprised me: that within the short span of less-than-three (pardon the pun) months, i have learned to love without being selfish about it. that’s a bigger accomplishment than you might think. and more than that, i’ve learned to keep myself above the age-old tendency to lose myself in the emotion, in her. it is a different thing: one that took far longer than it should have, to accomplish.
and while the words fail to suffice to describe it all, neither do they prevent the enjoyment anymore.
i started writing this in late august, and got sidetracked with life, living, and the pursuit of not being borne down by the music i listen to (the things that remind me of where i’ve been, what i’ve done, and whom i’ve known, in other words), into the depths of remorse and might-have-beens. the vectors of certain tangents in my life are helical: not quite recursive, but they come back around, time and time again, and the where-i-was is in view for long, painful moments until i move up and away and around and back again.
i had to make a break with the one who haunted me all those years. it’s not a clean break, and if i think about it (or her) too much, it’s the one thing that can actually bring me to tears. it’s a regret, true and thorough. i had intended never to have such a thing, but there it is. i’ve cried more for her than i have for the mother of my children, but the tears, now, lack the power to sway me.
syntheschism
there’s a need for it like nothing i’ve ever known: a growing, changeful thing—a nuisance to itself and others—a thing that separates itself into anxiety, rhythm, bright darkness and understanding: things we tend to treasure, as if such things were remotely unique.
but it is a need. an intrinsic need: a part of the underlying conditions. a hopeful, insistent, semi-sentient, nearly-autonomous thing that seems to take control and drive us, and the only part about it that makes any sense is that those who experience it nearly invariably come to identify themselves by the virtue of its touch.
and then it changes, shifts, coalesces and divides again, trailing off in multiple directions, accomplishing different things, becoming far more than what was intended, sometimes until it’s far too large to rein back in. it becomes the light, the dark, the in-between, and eventually, it is everything and nothing: both more and less than what it was, and what we ever dared become.
it doesn’t matter what it is.
it is us.
again
would that i not be independent: that i couldn’t stand without your support, for a small, selfish part of me would very much like to just lay down.
would that i not be self-reliant: but as much as i like having your arms around me, i have to hold myself together in order to be yours.
would that i not be self-motivated: i could easily live my life for you and you alone, but only i can be responsible for my successes and failures, and i certainly wouldn’t pin the latter on you.
i feel incomplete without you, but i can’t feel helpless when you’re gone, for the hole you leave inside me is covered by all the things i appear to be and do.
and that vacancy is quite large, echoing with the sounds of my self-reliance, resounding then fading, as if they were searching for you, calling your name then chasing after you until they disappear over the horizon.
left alone, i return to myself somewhat, but it is, in truth, something less than what i am, when you are with me.
i might hide it well.
perhaps.
but i miss you already, and you’ve only just departed.
traded
i live in a moment of barter which makes no sense, for nothing has been tangibly exchanged. yet it seeped through me, runs over me, and the only word that comes to mind as description is barter: i have traded something away and gained something very much more. describing it, defining it: these things are beyond me today.
there are no storms, as if August came and swept them all away so that my center would lie elsewhere. i do not grieve for them, and yet, for a while, they reconnected me with my past in their warm, wet, intimate way. and that, of all things, was the healing i needed. i am not groundless in this. i do not waver constantly without my center. i know where it is, and what it awaits, and that, today, is centering enough.
it is a different time now, a different place, a different measure. all the might-have-beens were washed away this summer—all the could-have-beens, the in-betweens, and the waiting for them that bled and bled and bled my life away. even alone, i live more fully now than over the past decade.
and that word. that rarely-seen, unfamiliar word that has come to me infrequently over time, came up again in my last writing. and it has interpolated itself into something more than it ever was before. recalescence: that ever-ephemeral glow of molten iron as it cools. somehow, over the years, i’ve managed to keep my own core malleable, workable, changeable, adaptable, and to keep that recalescence alive. i thought i’d lost it, yet it burns within me still, though it seems like something close to forever since i last saw it shine.
i thought i’d traded it away for stability—for that constant, inconsequential insistence that all is well. if i’ve failed at anything in life, i’m pleased to have failed at that, then.
and she—she only begins to know, to understand. she hasn’t been a part of all of this, and she didn’t know she could be burned by my recalescence. i try to shelter her from it, yet having failed at least once (at least partially), she remains, voluntarily, and pulls it—pulls me—closer to her heart. i cannot fathom why, or even pretend to. i simply cherish it, and cherish her, and walk alongside her, hoping neither of us burn.
for i’ve traded the insularity for brightness, and that brightness came with the death of the all which never was.
and so
there are many things that come to mind, many things that seem to be, and the seeming is the arrival, and the arrival is the impetus behind other thoughts. there are days like this one, and in it, the seemings, disarranged, facilitate the extravagance of all that waits to be known.
i try (and the attempts are trials), to maintain composure, but sometimes, the way in which life coalesces merely compounds the idiosyncratic tendencies of everyone around me (or at least my perception of them) and every plan, every expectation, every hope, turn into something other than what we supposed it would be—what we had dared to dream.
fragments of other people’s songs, their lyrics, their own communion with the world: these things i use, to trace my life throughout the confluences of existence, and even to define my interrelation with the world. there was a time when those were my songs, my lyrics. for a while after the spirit died within me, i was bitter, but the music never really left me. it lingers yet.
waiting.
waiting, like so many other days in my life.
but this waiting, this moment, this churning, has a glimmer: a spark.
a recalescence.
there is something about this time, this moment, that shines. the waiting, this once, is a good thing, for i wait here, willingly, at the end of the all which never was, and the dawn of the all which might now become.
(earlier this week, I took an old draft and turned it into this. something significant had happened the previous night, which i’m not going to explain it here, but it was a good thing: one which changed the entire tenor of the original draft from July 8, which was a much darker time. i am driven by rainstorms of late, and they drive me towards a glistening light.)
an amalgam of what failed to become
i sit beneath the rain again. it pages down, an unwritten book that so many have read since time forgotten.
on nights like this, it hollows crevices in my mind, and slowly fills them with melancholy, nostalgia, and stupidly even hope.
i am of that nature, possessed of the ability to dream, but not only to dream, to segment the dreams from the reformulated memories, the fears of what remains unknown, and the brief foreshadowing of insights i will later fail to recognize.
i don’t see everything, but what i do see, i see quite well.
which is not to say i always glean the right impression. especially when the rain comes, and then with it, the thunder and the lightning redefine every thought before i ever have a chance to set them down.
i breathe an air that is flavored with, colored by, comprised of this rain, and i remember all the things i wanted long ago, and none of them stand in my future. and no matter how deeply this rain saturates this moment and me, i come no closer to bringing them back to life.
and everyone else, having read these pages since time began, probably knows them for exactly what they are.