no regrets?

i wanted to write this piece without the question mark at the end; but if i did, it wouldn't ring true to me and my feelings. i can't speak for us any more, i have not been speaking for us for awhile, and currently there is no longer any "us" to speak of. yes, the journey we set out on about a year and two months ago has finally come to an end.

an end, perhaps not the end, but an end nonetheless. an end to a phase of my life so wild and beautiful that it leaves the rest of my reality sad and pale in its shadow. the memories we have created tinge my world red with regret, and yet they add so much vividness and color, that i would do it all again, right now.

i have vowed to never let my heart become cynical and hardened, to continue learning to love less selfishly with the same abandon, though next time, i hope, with a tenderness hallowed by grief. if i have learned to be a person who incarnates Love just a little bit better over the course of this last year, perhaps i have won out in the only way worth winning in the end.

Ling for her part has chosen other paths, paths which i worry about, but they are hers to choose. i have struggled long with whether i have fulfilled my part of the vow we made, whether or not the Shepherd-of-our-Souls was really calling me finally to other paths, after being led by Him to remain all this time.

in the end i found where i belong once more, in His green pastures with Him, beside the still waters of His rest. there i have laid my heart for the next three years at Asbury. unless His rod and staff shall lead me to another i remain His and His alone, His to be given to all those He brings into my life there. in a sense i never left, and yet i long to sojourn further up and higher in. it is to that journey i am called anew.

so at this point, this is the end of flowersandfury for me. Ling has already been doing her blogging elsewhere for the most part, but perhaps she will want to write a swansong of her own for this blog later. for my part, i have taken the kind of blogging that i have needed to do the last few days elsewhere.

perhaps there is another journey Ling and i will make together at a later date, and perhaps at that time flowersandfury will live again. i do not know. but for now, i bid you au revoir with many thanks for sharing with us the flowers and the fury of our journey.

may the Shepherd-of-our-Souls always be your guide.

sing-a-long

your voice leaves me hollow
in the center
a little knot
of love
and pain
sweet torment
melodious dissonance
left cold

there and back again

Bilbo Baggin's memoirs—subsequently published under the title, "the Hobbit"—were a journey that took a pompous, tweenaged, heavy-around-the-middle hobbit on a high adventure across Middle Earth that ended where it started, in his warm, comfortable hobbit-hole (and hobbit-holes mean comfort). yet as Bilbo discovered, everything was the same, and yet nothing was. his beloved seven-meals-a-day existence, much lamented over while hiding from trolls, evading dragons and goblins, and traveling via barrel was no longer him.

cliffs crumble, shorelines are shaped, new islets and beaches form as the tides of life swirls in and out, in and out. there is no returning to where we were, at least not in the same way. as someone once said, perhaps at the end of the journey, we will find ourselves back where we started and understand it for the first time. yet that place will never be the same again. it can't be for we are never the same people twice.

perhaps the real question for us is where to end? is it the end, with a capital E, or is the end the place where we have a new beginning? is every end a new beginning perhaps? in that sense we already had many ends. but is there something more final, but not Final, more new, but not New, some way forward that is not middling?

flowersandfury was created on the premise that it would be a memoir of our journey together. as is obvious to anyone who has followed it, over the last few months it turned into my journal of my own struggles about us, while Ling put hers elsewhere. the last six months have been a process of trying to figure out who each of us is, and so who we are and where we want to go from here.

we're not exactly sure.

in a sense that's where we started, and yet it is not.

how could it be?

so too flowersandfury. as our journey goes, so our journal goes. it is an open book, and the ending is always being written.

coherent

amy tan has this wonderful story in "the joy luck club" about an american couple who divide up the bills, have separate bank accounts, separate cars, separate jobs, basically separate lives.

this may be the american way, but i just don't get it. how do two become one flesh and then divide up the grocery bills? how does one measure out love? in dollar bills, cars and property?

that's not what i want. that's not what you want. perhaps the problem is finding what we want. yet becoming one is so darn hard.

if there's anything we've learnt over the last few months, perhaps it's that in order to grow and be together, one has to find a space where we can both be. a safe and secure nest, a secret garden, some little grotto where we can find each other, and find ourselves and be more than ourselves by being less.

the problem is finding that space. finding the security to be nothing that we might be everything together. discovering a way of being one in which we are two and yet together, a way to respect difference and celebrate togetherness. finding the space which we can both share, a place where we can be utterly free to be and so perhaps be more, is well, hard, especially when we're at such different places in life.

but it's possible dear. it's possible. if you want it, if we want it, there's a secret place hallowed by blood and water, a place blessed by our Beloved Lover; the place that we have been struggling these eleven months to find.

There is a happy ending to this story, dear. But endings don't come at the end, endings start in the middle.

incoherent

my silence betrays me; for too long i would rather give the polished impression that i have it all together when i really don't.

stay awhile, be mine. maybe we could pretend for an hour or two...you were you are am i are you? i don't know where we go. i want to hold you. i want to run away. i don't want to feel. you twist within me. i want to feel you. i don't want these tears that slip down my cheeks. i turn to be alone. arms of coldness. words denied. so far we have come, so far apart together, yawning distance growing wider. your eyes smile. you are warm you call me and i huddle within myself. weep icy shards of warm tears. hold this cold heart against you. embittered empowered impassioned the paths we walk together away from all this? i don't know. i don't understand. i can't fathom the way this works, or doesn't. sincerity cuts. i am numb and speechless. overwhelmed. helpless.

has it been a year since dreams were birthed? almost.

my immortal

I'm so tired of being here
Suppressed by all my childish fears
And if you have to leave
I wish that you would just leave
'Cause your presence still lingers here
And it won't leave me alone

These wounds won't seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There's just too much that time cannot erase

When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears
When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears
And I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have
All of me

You used to captivate me
By your resonating life
Now I'm bound by the life you've left behind
Your face it haunts
My once pleasant dreams
Your voice it chased away
All the sanity in me

I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone
But though you're still with me
I've been alone all along

- Evanescence, My Immortal