Enough deconstruction, enough looking backward upon that ocean of feeling that is the past.
Within that ocean, islands of traumatic memory became the land upon which identity had been built. Those islands of pain were the focus of years of feelings. There, tangled and distorted flotsam lay washed up with the unavoidable jetsam, discarded and rejected no more. Emerging from the depths of fathomless waters, memories of unworthiness and isolation were exposed upon those rocky shores.
On the horizon I see a distant mirage of new land emerging. There are bright colours visible, wavering and dancing into the sky. A tangible, vibrant aurora of thoughts, feelings and memories, of places and people, all exploding upwards.
I am there.
Walking on the beach of my youth. My bare feet sink into glittering, golden sand, hot and dry as it squeezes between my grasping toes. Above, the mirage of colour still dances. It is alive with imagery of joyful times. Laughter, smells, visceral sensation. With calloused hands and aching fingers from a lifetime of unconscious use, reaching upwards into the light, I become aware of what a wondrous gift it is to touch, to hold, to feel with such sensitivity. The mirage becomes my fingers, becomes my heart opening, filling with exuberant boyhood memories.
I am there, in the back garden, standing barefoot beneath an orange sun of years past. With sheer awe I gaze at the towering sunflower that grew so quickly from a seed so small. My young mind cannot grasp the magic of this event.
I am there, the lane behind our cottage, warm wind whistles past my ears, my tummy is full of dancing butterflies. The first time I knew the unimaginable freedom of a bicycle without stabilisers.
There is no word that describes the constant sound of perpetual motion that is the wild sea. At once it is all motion, yet within it, all stillness is held.
I am there, an endless summer day spent swimming in the warm, salty sea. A day of being lifted upon the backs of white horses as they gather and roll and crash upon the shore. My nostrils filled with the smell of seaweed, waist deep, balanced on tiptoe, my back to the swell of the surging waves. Up, up, lifted off my feet and then, in an instant, submerged, gasping and spluttering I laugh and scream in delight. From the boat yard comes the ever present ding, ding, ding of rigging vibrating against the masts of uncountable yachts. For a young child, a place of mystery and adventure where I crawled beneath the hulls and trailers, amongst the roots of that aluminium forest.
I am there, alone, laying under the impossible, myriad richness of the Milky Way. My child hands, calloused and rough as they lay upon my bare stomach. Those perpetual callouses from building a perpetual tree house, where, one summer I slept beneath those stars, suspended between worlds, beneath, the earth, above, the stars, within me, the boundless expanse of imagination.
Yes, there was awful pain, yes, there was crushing isolation, without which there would be no knowledge of suffering, no reason to seek the deeper truth of experience. No reason to ask for help.
This is where I find humility. This is where I find my true self. I asked and was answered.
I am here, now, I build upon a new foundation, never again shall I be a voyeur of my own pain, never again shall I turn away from my own gaze.
Anima 