...Are Those Feathers I Smell Burning?

I have been so full, during these last many months of growth and opportunity. This nonstop balancing act of homage and betrayal and calm, calm, calm has left me largely unable to write with any kind of regularity. I'm too close to see the thing, too close to make out details... "The Thing," of course, is the trajectory of my life-pattern segue, the path from There to Here to There. The overgrown machete-cut trail of murder and love and bewilderment and beauty. The Artery of Understanding....

And I still don't get it.

I reckon that's what I'm doing here: trying to figure stuff out. Writing down what knowledge Experience has given me. Trying not just to remember, but to live what my Mama taught (and continues to teach) me. Trying to acknowledge with my Absolute Everything the rhetorical query of George Eliot, "What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?"

Of course, I am only now realizing that sometimes "making life less difficult" entails adamantly demanding others Piss Off and leave me the hell alone so I can think. I used to be so good at that when I was still a belligerent teenaged drunk....

These days, in lieu of shouting, I am moving 2725 crow-miles away (to a subtropical island, no less) before I leave the US entirely for a while. I'm afraid Seattle's oyster-broth winters have been in my hair a bit too long. I've got too much rain in my eyes to see, too much blood on my skin to be able to feel anything but vicious extremes. And christ almighty, the whole Terrified-to-Idiocy climate of oppression gaining momentum in this country is making my goddamned skin crawl. People are getting dumber and meaner, and I've been exposed---to my last howling nerve---to too much cruel and violent bullshit this year to be willing to put up with any more. Period. I'm not saying I'm the only one stripped to the marrow. Not by a long stretch. I'm just done keeping my bones in the petrol-fire. I'm done seeing it, smelling it, being reminded of it every day. I'm tired of coughing up loathing every morning with my coffee...

So, I'm getting out.

Giving myself a metaphysical electroshock. Letting the sun burn the bile from my skin. Engineering my own recrudescence. Planning my own bonfire, my own smoldering ashpile, my own PhoenixNest from which to rise.

Lo, I am already on fire.