Art, Free Living, Loving, and Healing

Out of the morning,

Into the mist that separates night and day,

That place where every moment is a whisper

                That has not been voiced,

                Yet has long since been heard.

No one’s comfort rests here.

Let the shutters open for the light to shine within,

To illuminate everything that has no focus,

                No seen shape,

                No reality.

But alas there are no shutters to open.

Into the outer being of the unknown

On the edge of reason I reside

One toe dipped in the pool of knowledge

With my forehead touching the sky

  The other toe dangles an inch over nothing

Only a child can see what’s inside

Both hands clasped in welcoming fashion

by Heathaer Bonea

  If one has a complete sense of self-love, self-ownership, self-reliance, there is no holding back. There is no fear of loving others that that love will not be returned.

  To feel complete power over one-self is to know that giving love without expectation or even hope of receiving it in return is the most powerful thing a person can do.

  I love someone, give them all of me. And though that love may not be returned, it is not wasted. The world is filled with an immense vastness of love. We are filled with an immense vastness of love. It is a well that cannot be depleted. Though many people have it tightly and efficiently capped so they may not even be aware of its presence within them, yet the seal has no physical reality to it. It exists only in their perception. The love, though they cannot feel or perceive it, flows freely still.

  I love someone and though they may not consciously return it, it is my gift to them. I delight in the nourishment it provides their soul.

  Though they may choose not to receive my love, I am grateful to have shared myself with another person on this earth and take comfort in the knowledge that the web of my love has been woven through another person’s life.

  That love when given freely is not depleted. It is grown, like a wildfire in a forest. It is a silent fire spreading through the world bringing not destruction nor consumption but an eternal spring, a flush of color to the tiny rose blooming within us all.

  I love someone and though they may not consciously return it, I feel it flowing through them, tapping into the well of love within them and back through me out into the universe.

  For love truly freely given is a gift. Love given with the hope or expectation of return is offered with a price tag, an expectation of a return on an investment.

  Love freely given is a gift to myself that I may grow. It is a gift to the universe that it may be filled with light. It is a gift to an other that they grow and feel the lightness of their being.

  Grief over the rejection of one’s love is in fact not. It is grief over the loss of what one had expected in return for their love. That grief is born from a love that was not truly freely given.

  That which we mistake for grief over rejection of our love is grief over the loss of companionship, shared experience, memories that will never be created, occasions that will never come to pass, the sight of dreams we had pinned our hopes upon fluttering to the ground. This grief is real, but it is temporal, just as the concepts which are grieved are temporal aspects of our existence. With each passing moment, the future is slightly adjusted. Each passing moment brings with it the uncertain effect it will have on our lives.

  Though we perceive the losses due to rejection acutely, they are no more profound than the innumerable losses sustained with the uncertainty of each momentary unfolding of our future.

  If we see that we grieve the loss of a future that was uncertain to begin with, perhaps it will be easier to accept and let go.

So I read this book Tuesdays with Morrie, by Mitch Albom – a real life account of a sociology professor’s last days of suffering with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). It is mostly about realizations he makes as he is dying and my favorite quote is “When you learn how to die, you learn how to live.” That we should live each day like it could be our last. Some of his aphorisms really inspired me. Knowing his days were very limited, he becomes very clear about what makes for a happy, meaningful life. 

  “The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.”

  “If you are always battling against getting older, you’re always going to be unhappy, because it will happen anyhow.”

  “This is your time to be in your thirties. I had my time to be in my thirties, and now is my time to be seventy-eight. . . . The truth is, part of me is every age . . . I am every age up to my own . . . How can I be envious of where you are – when I’ve been there myself?”

  “You remember what I said about finding a meaningful life? . . . Devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”

  “The fact is, there is no foundation, no secure ground, upon which people may stand today if it isn’t the family. It’s become quite clear to me as I’ve been sick. If you don’t have the support and love and caring and concern that you get from a family, you don’t have much at all. Love is so supremely important. As our great poet Auden said, ‘Love each other or perish.’”

  “Without love, we are birds with broken wings.”

  “ . . . a loved one is so important. You realize that, especially when you’re in a time like I am, when you’re not doing so well. Friends are great, but friends are not going to be here on a night when you’re coughing and can’t sleep and someone has to sit up all night with you, comfort you, try to be helpful.”

  “ . . . there are a few rules I know to be true about love and marriage: If you don’t respect the other person, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don’t know how to compromise, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. If you can’t talk openly about what goes on between you, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. And if you don’t have a common set of values in life, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. Your values must be alike. And the biggest one of those values . . . your belief in the importance of your marriage.”

  “People are only mean when they are threatened.”

  “That’s what we’re all looking for. A certain peace with the idea of dying. If we know, in the end, that we can ultimately have that peace with dying, then we can finally do the really hard thing. Make peace with living.”

  “As long as we can love each other, and remember the feeling of love we had, we can die without ever really going away. All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on – in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here.”

  “Death ends a life, not a relationship.”

  One concept discussed by Morrie is “detachment.” Not clinging to things, emotions. This is his thought on the key to detachment regarding emotions (love, fear, pain).

  “. . . detachment doesn’t mean that you don’t let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you fully. That’s how you are able to leave it. . . . If you hold back on the emotions – if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them – you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief. You’re afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.”

  Those are some of the quotes that inspired me to write On Love (see following post) last night. It also comes from a certain self-awareness of my apprehension to get close to another person. I wrote it as an affirmation to myself, not directed toward anyone, nor referencing any experience I have or have had with any one person. It would be my goal, I suppose, to truly live what I have written.

  *********

  On Love by Heathaer Bonea

  If one has a complete sense of self-love, self-ownership, self-reliance, there is no holding back. There is no fear of loving others that that love will not be returned.

  To feel complete power over one-self is to know that giving love without expectation or even hope of receiving it in return is the most powerful thing a person can do.

  I love someone, give them all of me. And though that love may not be returned, it is not wasted. The world is filled with an immense vastness of love. We are filled with an immense vastness of love. It is a well that cannot be depleted. Though many people have it tightly and efficiently capped so they may not even be aware of its presence within them, yet the seal has no physical reality to it. It exists only in their perception. The love, though they cannot feel or perceive it, flows freely still.

  I love someone and though they may not consciously return it, it is my gift to them. I delight in the nourishment it provides their soul.

  Though they may choose not to receive my love, I am grateful to have shared myself with another person on this earth and take comfort in the knowledge that the web of my love has been woven through another person’s life.

  That love when given freely is not depleted. It is grown, like a wildfire in a forest. It is a silent fire spreading through the world bringing not destruction nor consumption but an eternal spring, a flush of color to the tiny rose blooming within us all.

  I love someone and though they may not consciously return it, I feel it flowing through them, tapping into the well of love within them and back through me out into the universe.

  For love truly freely given is a gift. Love given with the hope or expectation of return is offered with a price tag, an expectation of a return on an investment.

  Love freely given is a gift to myself that I may grow. It is a gift to the universe that it may be filled with light. It is a gift to an other that they grow and feel the lightness of their being.

  Grief over the rejection of one’s love is in fact not. It is grief over the loss of what one had expected in return for their love. That grief is born from a love that was not truly freely given.

  That which we mistake for grief over rejection of our love is grief over the loss of companionship, shared experience, memories that will never be created, occasions that will never come to pass, the sight of dreams we had pinned our hopes upon fluttering to the ground. This grief is real, but it is temporal, just as the concepts which are grieved are temporal aspects of our existence. With each passing moment, the future is slightly adjusted. Each passing moment brings with it the uncertain effect it will have on our lives.

  Though we perceive the losses due to rejection acutely, they are no more profound than the innumerable losses sustained with the uncertainty of each momentary unfolding of our future.

  If we see that we grieve the loss of a future that was uncertain to begin with, perhaps it will be easier to accept and let go.

Acrylic poems set to watercolor rhythms

Cascading down to wells deep and blue

Caressing me along the way

Enticing me to somewhere new.

  Birds of paradise now they grow

Where winter’s ice once spread

And the chasms thrusting dark below

Now fill with moss to rest my head

  As I lay me down to sleep

Your cool sweet water at my feet

The wine drank slowly filtered through

Till I awoke from dreams of you

  Bathed in light, I stood there at the altar

Dipping my fingers one word at a time

Breathlessly awaiting echoes of your footfall

Or wondering if the heartbeat was only mine.

  Heavy is the lid pushed back had revealed

Spiders weaving in the morning dew

Light glancing off torn webs out which spilled

Delicate dreams of every hue.

  As I lay me down to sleep

Your cool sweet water lapped at my feet.

The wine drank slowly trickled through

Till I awoke from dreams of you

How empty is life without love,

Laying in waste along the road

of some forgotten dream

  Grease in the gears of a rudderless

Boat, adrift in a sea

Of false hope.

  Blind in the alley between

Today and tomorrow

Mugged and left for dead

By my own pride.

  Hungry for the spark

Ignited by the sun

Setting in your eyes.

  Lonely for your touch

And the bruises you

Left on my heart.

  The agony of each day

I don’t see you

Spilling on the floor

And soaking away.

  The merciless joy for

The pain of each new

Day of our friendship.

  Grappling on the edge

of the cliff, reaching for

a sturdy vine, poisonous

thorns searing my flesh.

  Dark clouds on the horizon

Turning somersaults

In my emptiness.

  Churning and heaving

Great seas of ineptitude.

Deadwood washed upon my shore.

  When the music stops

I wonder if it’s you

Knocking on the door of my soul.

  Always calling and always

Running away, the face

Of your dark heart

Half turned toward the light.

  And the music stops.

  And I wonder if it’s you.

Over yonder meadow’s blight,

Across endless fields of light,

A silent spring goes wandering,

Fingers tracing through the night.

  It sails away toward dark abyss,

Swallowed up by ambiguous mist.

The trail it leaves slowly fading

From where two lovers once had kissed.

  Here tho hours drip with heavy

Hearted wine, You seem to levy

Fate against the test of time.

Daren’t taste of fruit not yet ready.

  Fate two ships had brought together

In the night. Time will never

Stop to watch them drift apart

Nor sink ‘neath threat of stormy weather

  And so we’ve built our castle walls,

Stale air drifting through empty halls.

One cage keeps the bird within,

The other deafens his lover’s calls.

  I never shared that part of me

Which you were always wont to see,

Because your eyes would close

At once, should it come bursting free.

  I see now your reluctant face,

Falling back from my embrace,

Yet reaching out with wat’ry eyes

And words veiled in a sea of lace.

  Your path leads onward up the mount

Mine toward valley’s springing fount

You drift into another’s arms and

Love fades without a sound

  In love’s place grows a steady wind

From earthen shadows where naught have sinned

Nor fell from grace to lay in wait

There's a dark spot on my eye.

I see you through it

And you are divine.

The dark spot grows 

  You feed it

And I help you. 

The dark spot grows.  

There is no room for anyone else now.

  Scaffolding falling away,

The work unfinished.

Left to wander,

An undeveloped fetus.

  The dark spot grows.

  Dancing in a Dream.

In the Dark.

In Silence. 

The dark spot fills my eye now.

  It grows.

It is killing me.

If I remove the eye,

Will it be gone? 

1. MIX dry ingredients: 2 1/2 cups flour 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 cup brown sugar 3 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp baking soda 1 tsp salt 1 tsp cinnamon

2. MIX wet ingredients: 3 mashed bananas 2/3 stick melted butter 2 eggs 1/3 cup milk 1 tsp vanilla

3. COMBINE wet and dry ingredients.

4. ADD 1/2 cup nuts if desired.

5. POUR into 2 lightly greased bread pans and spread flat.

There you were on my doorstep

One last time again

Singin' your sorry blues song

'bout another dead beat man.

  Lost in your dark abyss

arms reaching out for

nothing in particular

eyes rolled up towards the

light that is not there.

  I see you there, I watch you

like a drowning bird

just out of reach

can't quite stay afloat

Neither fly away

caught in the tide of your own destruction

waves pulling you down

each beat of your wings

ever more useless

  (gasp)

  at the point of no return you take one last gulp of air . . .

and

sink

to

the

bottom.

  Dark, light.

Dark, light

Night, day.

Day, night.

  Why do I feel so dark.

I'm laughing somewhere.

I know it, but can't find it.

  Elusive.

  Listless.

  Floating on a breeze of dreams.

  Ha. There it is.

  Slowly finding it's way to the surface.

To finally be happy alone.

Winding down the path lit

half by a song

  Sittin on the side of the road for so long.

  Only now it's been a hundred

years since I've seen

this side of me.

  All around, round, round

this great big life.

Full of grief.

Full of light.

  Elation, frustration, condemnation.

  A nation of emotion.

Sometimes I think you’re a dream Floating in and out of my life. Wind of my soul Breathing heavy rivers of ice and fire, Blood and soil, through this stream of Mixed emotions, false perceptions, Moments caught in the realization of the beauty of your ether.

The visceral weight of your presence Singing to me in sweet tones Of golden amber. Golden embers Stirred in the fire of my light.

How you sit there,

Waiting.

Watching.

Whispering in the trees.

Taking flight on wings of gossamer Through fields of fancy, Through groves filled with the Deafening bells of defeat. Ferrying my hopes across Rivers of doubt,