So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
Today is the 5th anniversary of my lowest point. It's kind of pleasing to have come this far - 15 more years and it'll be the axis of my life. It has long since ceased to be my internal equinox; long since ceased to be anything but a confusing story, an explanation for the tattoo, a drinking milestone and a deeply layered look exchanged between those who know. It's still lurks, though.
This weekend Pipe did several tarot readings for Joe that predict a great traumatizing disaster in her future. Joe, predictably, is nervous about this news and needed a great deal of reassurance about the whole thing. So I, of course, told her a very brief fingernail version of my story to convince her that big change is always a positive force in the long run. Knowledge comes from joy, I said with the sincerity of the very sleepy, but trauma is the only thing that will make you wise. For the end of something is the beginning of something, always...and the Tower is as much a prison as anything else.
We also spoke of dreams this weekend, as we discussed lines of influence and emotional gestalt understandings. I have had memorable dreams of course, but there was only one dream of true portent, and that is the dream I had the night before Poet & Marcie were married:
I had a dream that I was living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and that I had been captured by a powerful vampire. He marked me as his own by removing the hoop I wear in my cartilage piercing. The Boy and I had visited the local mall to buy something beautiful and useless, since money didn't mean anything anymore. We settled on a large, ornamental bowl. As we walked hand-in-hand through the mall, I saw a group of men playing a strange and beautiful cacophony on instruments unknown to me. One of the instruments looked like a large maroon velvet sequinned pillow with strings across it, which was played like a lap guitar. Poet was with them. He played drums, and when I looked over, he had begun to sing in a strange language. I found the whole thing indescribably beautiful and inspiring. I thought, "I will not listen to his song, or I will fall in love with him again." Instead I caught his eye and smiled. The smile shone with love and acceptance and also wry humour. Then my husband and I walked away, into the rest of the dream.
I was explaining this to everyone, talking about the dream and what it had meant to me, and Pipe spoke up. The word she used was 'forgiven.' I said, "I knew that from that moment on that I would be safe from everyone, especially myself." "You were forgiven," she said. It's true, I was.
The other thing is that in the months following this day 5 years ago, I had thought vaguely that I would want or need to memorialise this day in the future. I told Ophelia that we should meet on this day every year, envisioning fabulous journeys form mysterious locations and the establishment of a tradition that would outshine the source of occasion. That never happened, of course, and not just because she stopped speaking to me a little over a year later. It never happened because it was a stupid idea. It's stupid to try to cover mistakes with grand gestures and it's stupid to expect that the whole world will do you a favour and make your embarrassment into a gripping narrative.
Still, it doesn't hurt to try. At least, that's what I tell myself.
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3 years ago today: anything you say, giant drop of blood
