But I decided to write something anyway. Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose, and that is what I have, being everything and nothing at once, in this land, in this being, of the free, if we can only recognize, in the eyes, in the skies, past the lies, which are masked fear, just to hear, but they're nothing, and we are here. That's the kind of spirit that cannot be stopped, that walks and talks, that makes no sense and nonsense and every sense, that says more than I can, that means it all at once, that unclogs my brain, in the rain, down the drain, to where the water flows and the grass grows and the crickets sing and the ding-a-ling means howdy, neighbor, I love you, like I love the soul of everything that has not been delifed and deliced and desighted and befrighted and defriended and upended and spun around every which way with words that say buy, buy, get this, get that, you are not complete unless you wear this hat, you have got no grit until you learn to hit. That's bullshit, which is an insult to bulls, so I take it back.
Words are like that, they take you down the wrong alleys, no, the wrong streets, no, the wrong ways of thinking entirely, because they put you in the wrong car when you're not even looking for a car at all, you can walk perfectly fine, you can go a hundred million places that a car cannot go, and once you get in the car, in the street, in the word, it is over, you'll never get there until you get out of that box, drop those letters and those fetters, explore the underbrush and the waterways and the steep climbs and the narrow, barely-defined paths that almost no one sees anymore, and the new ones that are also old ones if you're in the spirit of them, because cars only travel in lines but time is not a line, life is not a line, nothing is a line except the ones human egos put around things.
Yes, lines are convenient (there will be one on this page when I'm finished), but only to point you to something that is not a line at all, only to contain something that overflows anyway once you see it, only to show you that everything we think of as accomplishment and success is, for the most part, just a joke that we are playing on ourselves. Children and all unadulterated beings know this without thinking. Their masterpieces are continuous and beautiful beyond words--far beyond words, luckily. Some words may point you there.
Zimmerman's words may point you there, and that relates to the ego-pain I was feeling. Because something in that line-way of thinking told me that any of us (including me) could have been just like that, but didn't have the guts. We let him say everything we wanted to say (but not exactly, because we're each unique)--we worshipped his words because we had lost our own. He's only a genius because we're all geniuses--you can't appreciate a genius unless you can comprehend what she or he comprehends.
Who took the artist out of us? Who took the poet, the expressive, beautiful being that we each are, and caused us to need to go looking for it in someone else? It wasn't Zimmerman--he told us so himself, and jumped off every pedestal we placed him on. But maybe there is no blame--maybe it's all a lesson. How powerful that would be: no blame, no shame, just lessons, ones we can learn from, and change from, like the rain changes by falling from the sky. We are that rain, and that creek, and that river, and that ocean, and we are actually Zimmerman too, so there is no reason to beat up our egos about it.
The spirit wants to fly, and we cry out for flight, when the walls don't seem right, when they're blocking out sight, and we know it's only boxes we create or tolerate that keep us inside. The spirit can be squashed, defiled, reviled, exiled, knocked about, and spun around by the confusions and delusions of those boxes, but it can't be killed. I think not, knots, spirals, webs, spiders and humans and everything that is scarred, scared, sacred, and naked in absolute wonder, joy, and rebirth, for life doesn't just lie down in orderly fashion when we stick some lines around it. Thank the Goddess we're all Zimmerman in our own right, and can remember it, sing about it, put it into and out of words and worlds--without fame, shame, or blame--because if we're not looking, we won't see it, if we're not listening, we won't hear it, and if we're not feeling, we won't touch it. But if we do all those things, finding wholeness becomes child's play, and no pain about notness is, because we are...
Woody Thomas writes: "If you think this is a joke, you'll realize I'm serious." He recently healed himself from feelings of inadequacy, and invites you to join him.
©2001 Talking Leaves
Winter 2002
Volume 11, Number 3
Diversity, Wholeness, and Healing