silver-bellied

"in order to be a good warrior, one has to feel this sad and tender heart." 

i think she was trying to tell me something different this time, something other than: i love you. thank you. you saved my life.  she has said these things before. and i look off at the surface of the river and notice the silver-bellied fishes leaping like videos of whales after they've been freed from some monstrous net or water gone suddenly too shallow. i don't hear her when she tells me about love or gratitude. i don't hear her but i cry big loping tears whenever it happens and i always think: i should be writing this down. because the not hearing means not remembering, and i've always wondered if things might have gone differently if anything she had said had stuck.

silver-bellied memory splash down deep and all that matters is deeper, deeper and cool water on my skin. the vague idea that above me, beyond the surface, is a danger of some kind. shadowy and expansive, elusive, the kind of danger that surfaces when the water is still and all is right in this world and the next and our bodies are well and alive and the ways we move prove it. and prove love. and prove faith and fate and magic. the ways we move there under the surface is magic, is silver-bellied reflection and we breathe water like air there, together, while above the stillness, just beyond the place where we might begin to hear and remember, is a dark-bellied shadow threat of a danger. it's a thing we've dreamed of, but speaking of it would bring us closer to it, so we go deeper deeper and the water is cool and our bodies are well and good but that deep makes us forget how to remember and so i always wish i would write it down.

when you tell me i am the one you think of when you want to be so present you lose all the parts of yourself that keep you trapped at the surface. that i am what you think of when you want release, when you want desire. i wish i would write it down, these slippery words. i say thank you for saying that. i say: all these years i thought you were ashamed of your love for me. i say: all these years i thought you'd have me be invisible. and she says oh oh no, that is exactly not what i wanted. and i forget again that she is trying to tell me something different this time, she is trying to tell me something i can hold long enough in my hands that i will remember how it feels. remember how it silver-bellied itself between my fingers and weighted down my palms and wet my skin right down to my bones, blood, beating heart.

(freewrite: 14 minutes: write about what the heart has to do with being powerful)

“Tenderness contains an element of sadness.  It is not the sadness of feeling sorry for yourself or feeling deprived, but it is a natural situation of fullness.  You feel so full and rich, as if you were about to shed tears.  In order to be a good warrior, one has to feel this sad and tender heart.  If a person does not feel alone or sad, he cannot be a warrior at all.” -Chogyam Trungpa