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Have you ever seen a picture of a particular place in which you were drawn to visit?  Maybe I should rephrase this question. I’m sure we’ve all been drawn to travel to certain places.  But this feeling is different. Have you felt called?  As if someone or something were beckoning you, murmuring your name?  Perhaps, even, because you had been there before? I suppose this has happened to me on a couple of separate occasions, one occasion having occurred just recently.  

It all begins with my friend Mary, whom I met at work a few years ago.  We are both teachers at the same school, she an art teacher, and I, music.  I suppose it’s natural we would gravitate to one another based on our areas of content alone.  Mary is not originally from Chicago; she moved here after college a little more than a decade ago.  Growing up, Mary lived all over the world thanks to her father’s service in the military. Before she eventually settled in Chicago, she called Florida home during the latter part of her formative years.  Mary’s parents still live in Florida, but they no longer live in the house where she grew up. After both of their daughters left the nest, they bought a new home on the banks of a river, built high up on stilts, adjacent to the tops of tall tropical trees.  Mary and her friends even affectionately refer to it as a treehouse, because, well, that’s what it is! Mary travels home to the treehouse to visit her parents a couple of times a year, returning each time with a loot of photographs that capture the bountiful nature unique to her parents’ backyard.  Lizards, turtles, a resident alligator (or alligators), raccoons, foxes, coyotes, and a kaleidoscope of different birds are among some of the wildlife that call Mary’s parents’ home their own.  

Whether it is solely the beauty of the landscape, Mary’s artistic eye, or some combination of the two, I cannot be sure — but the photographs she takes and subsequently posts on social media transport you to that riverbank in central Florida.  You might even say you have been there before. I knew when I laid my eyes upon these storybook images I had to somehow step into the portraits; I had to see them in real life.  

This year, over winter break, I was fortunate to be able to do just that.  It had been some years since I first saw these photos, the resident alligator in the photographs had more than quadrupled in size.  When I set foot in Mary’s parents’ enchanting backyard I was taken with the beauty, it was everything I imagined it would be and even more.  It was an overcast day, the threat of drizzle lingered in the air until it would eventually crescendo into torrents of rain later that afternoon.  The moment I set foot on her parents’ back deck I could feel a sort of magic in the air, like the electric feeling carried by sprightly winds that precede a thunderstorm.  I hadn’t even seen any wildlife yet.  

But it was only moments into my arrival when my eyes were gifted with the many different creatures that grace the yard and its canopy of tall trees with their presence.  My memory fails to serve me the animals’ order of appearance, but I had seen inconspicuous lizards darting through tropical plants, baby raccoons burrowing in hollowed-out trees, families of turtles sunning themselves under a sunless sky, and the alligator (or perhaps alligators) at the banks of the river that I had been most looking forward to meeting.  What I was not prepared for was both the variety and the sheer volume of birds flying in the piece of the sky above the roof of their charming home on stilts.  It should be said that I had already seen my money’s worth of birds on my way to Mary’s parents’ house — herons, egrets, cranes, storks, pelicans, roosters, just to name a few.  Perhaps their backyard did not offer anything new in terms of species, but what I experienced there was nevertheless the high point of my trip (and quite literally, since I was in a treehouse).     

I was standing pensive on that deck halfway up into those trees when I noticed a large bush on the ground behind me, but at the front of their yard.  Dotted with many brilliant red flowers, I figured it would be a good place to catch a glimpse of possible hummingbirds, which I hadn’t seen since the halcyon days of some summers past.  The bush was moving, and I couldn’t tell, were those red flowers bobbing in the wind? Or…

At once, the “flowers” came to life and the bush burst forth a small explosion of cardinals into the sky.  Twenty, or thirty, at least. It was a sight I hadn’t the fortune of seeing in all my thirty-eight years of bird-viewing.  Although the cardinal is the Illinois state bird, here in Illinois you typically only ever see two at a time. At most, less than what you can count on one hand.  The cardinals were multiplying, it seemed as though they were materializing in that very air, flying back and forth between the many trees. For a moment, I was transported to another world, a cinematic and ethereal world where the fluttering of countless red wings reigned above me.  I had never seen anything like it — it’s impossible to adequately express what I felt in words. It was perhaps as close to a religious experience as I had come. Palpable. Had I been here before? I didn’t know. All I knew is that as I watched the dozens of red birds flickering in and out of green palm leaves I felt as if I had stepped into a real-life portrait, just as I had hoped.  I was tempted to actually pinch myself, as I was sure this was a dream.  

The experience accompanied me the rest of the day, hanging over my head like a glorious cloud. It was the lovely shadow cast over the rest of my stay in Florida.  On my last full day, Mary’s sister had asked me what the highlight of my trip was. I took a minute to respond, when I realized that the answer was obvious. “Well, honestly, it was your parents’ backyard!” I exclaimed.  The memory remained burned into my consciousness long after I returned home to Chicago, which at this time of year is held tight in winter’s icy grips. Perhaps it was made more visceral by the fact that later on the night of the same day I saw the cardinals, the conclave had returned to visit me in my sleep, this nocturnal encore almost parallel to the otherworldliness I witnessed when I was awake.  I had a dream, that I was in Mary’s parents’ backyard, standing pensive on that deck halfway up into the trees when I noticed a large bush on the ground behind me, but at the front of their yard…

The scene of the dream was a replica of the one earlier that day, brushstroke for brushstroke.  It occurred just as it had hours prior, both as realistic and as dreamy as it was in real life. Emotions echoed when I witnessed a sky littered with the red confetti of mostly male cardinals for what I hadn’t realized was the second time.  Is this real? Is this a dream? I was tempted to pinch myself to be sure. But in this reality, something felt familiar. A déjà vu of sorts.  Hadn’t this happened before?  Earlier in the day, when I was still awake?  I was tripping over my own consciousness. Or was it unconsciousness?  I was confused; I didn’t know where one began and the other ended. I liken the experience to an image reflected in back-to-back mirrors, infinite optic facsimiles.  It’s worth mentioning that I can never remember having had a dream like this before, never a reenactment of waking life taking place during sleep. What I have had are several dreams that come to fruition the exact same way in real life, never a premonition of what’s to come in my slumber.  I awoke from the dream the next morning ever more spellbound, the lines between reality and reverie ever more blurred. I lay in the hotel bed mulling over its significance.  Any way you look at it, it can be considered a gift from the universe, either by way of coincidence or fate.

But I have never been one to believe in coincidence.    

Maybe it’s the whole “being an artist” thing.  Perhaps even the reason I, the music teacher, befriended Mary, the art teacher, in the first place.  A life without fate, or magic, or spirit, or winged messengers is, essentially, a life without food. That which nourishes your art.  

And sometimes, in the day-to-day, life does seem that way — without fate, or magic, or spirit, or winged messengers.  Colorless. Dismal. We log into our social media accounts and live vicariously, perusing people’s pictures from various excursions and vacations, hoping we could step into one of those photos for a moment and forget the “real world,” the Monday-Friday one, the one that can prove to be so painfully monotonous and drab.  

But it begs the question, is that world in fact the real one, or are we asleep behind the wheels of vehicles driving aimlessly down roads leading nowhere?  The vehicles our selves, the roads years passing by in rearview mirrors? And so I wonder, in that fateful backyard on the banks of a river in central Florida, was I gifted with a glimpse into the real real world?  I’m still not certain which one is real and which is the dream.

I tried to document my magical encounter with the cardinals by taking photographs of my own, but the birds could not be captured, not even on film.  There is the chance it’s because they were taken by the eye of the music teacher, and not the art teacher. My phone’s photo gallery was almost entirely blurry whirs of red.  In the clearer photos, you could see one or two cardinals in a tree at the same time, which, big whoop, we see that all the time here in Illinois. You would look at the pictures and say I just took multiple shots of the same bird.  But I guess that is the beauty of the whole experience anyway, the moral of this story. It was a fleeting moment in time, not to be captured, except maybe only by my memory. It was my experience, my reality, or I guess my question is, was it reality at all?

If you have ever written a blog, you may share the sentiment that going back to re-read and edit a final blog entry before submission can often be a dizzying and confusing experience.  Perhaps, like me, you start writing an entry and then, as it happens all too often, “life gets in the way.” For me personally, it is difficult enough to find slices of time to write in between both of my jobs and taking out the garbage, let alone in between breakups and deaths and seasons of endings and beginnings and endings again, resulting in inevitable writer’s block.  My final entries are usually a patchwork of paragraphs composed months and seasons and even years apart from one another. Because of these lapses in momentum, when I reach the end of a final blog entry, I sometimes find the need to go back to the beginning and start over, occasionally writing a foreword to make sense of the ensuing prose for my readers (provided there are readers, of course).  So, confusing as it may be, the beginning of this blog entry is where, when writing, I ended this blog entry.

The initial inspiration for this entry was a rather psychedelic episode I experienced while on an acupuncture table, in an acupuncture office that used to be walking-distance from my apartment at the time.  I have since moved from that apartment and switched offices, not because I moved, but because my acupuncturist opened her own office, in an entirely different part of town. This is either an indicator of how much time has passed since I started this blog entry, or, conversely, how much can change in a short amount of time.  

In itself, the experience on the acupuncture table was life-changing; I felt compelled to document the episode and release it out into the universe.  I had written a few paragraphs narrating what I experienced and then the entry came to an abrupt ending; I knew nothing of what to say or where to go after detailing this trippy, life-changing encounter.  What I didn’t realize was how much my life would continue to change in the months following this encounter, how many chapters would come to an end, and how the series of these experiences would serve as a conclusion to this blog entry.  I started by wanting to share a psychedelic experience I had during acupuncture, but as time went by and as this entry took shape, I realized that the crux of this passage is death — literal death or proverbial, as in an ending, and the first story at the acupuncture office is and was just the beginning.

I must preface this by saying that today is Halloween (as good a day as any to have a discussion about death) and the year is 2019.  The following paragraph begins at, well, the beginning, which was January of 2018. A year and nine months ago. And then it picks back up in the spring of 2018, and concludes tonight, on Halloween.  So, here goes:

I am a patient of an acupuncture office nestled in the heart of downtown Chicago, ensconced by the proverbial hustle and bustle; the tempo outside a stark contrast to the meandering adagio within the four walls of the office. Instantly you are transferred to a dimension that is almost otherworldly in its tranquility and peace.  All the women who work there are beautiful, earthly goddesses walking among us, white witches and alchemists. Less of an office and more of a sacred haven, the space is adorned with crystals large and small of various pastel shades, giant plants and coiling vines hanging upside down from the ceiling, eclectic books in all the bookcases, and healing jewelry at checkout which I have begun draping myself in to ward off negative energy, as there is is seemingly never any scarcity of it on this plane.

I recently had a rather surreal encounter in this ethereal realm disguised as an office. This wouldn’t be the first time I was met with a hallucinogenic experience on the acupuncture table, but this particular occasion was a standout experience.  I have never dipped my toe in the stream of psychoactive drugs, but when I described what happened to friends of mine who enjoyed their share of hallucinogens during the halcyon days of their youth, they were astounded, describing it as a “genuine drug trip.”

It started, for the most part, normal, as most of my appointments there do, with me relaxed and face-down on the table, winding down from a probably stressful day at work.  I had been doing a thirty-day detox diet where not an unhealthy bite or sip could get past my lips — no alcohol, sugar, dairy, wheat, grains — the list was extensive, the detox all but draconian.  This detox heightened my sense of mental clarity all month long, which may have attributed to my experience on the acupuncture table. My acupuncturist had performed cupping therapy and moxibustion on me; the former, if you are not familiar, is when the acupuncturist places a series of cups on your back which suction to your skin, to draw out toxins and pathogens and increase blood circulation.  The latter is a treatment which involves the burning of an herb called mugwort at various acupuncture points on the skin.

Mugwort is an esoteric, powerful herb.  In traditional Chinese medicine, mugwort can be used to regulate hormones, fend off colds and strengthen the immune system.  Mugwort has also been used in herbal abortions for many centuries. Essentially the same herb as wormwood, the infamous ingredient in absinthe, mugwort can be steeped in a tea or smoked.  It can also be placed in a pillow to promote lucid dreaming and even astral projection.  

When I smelled the unique yet familiar, earthen smell of the mugwort, I knew there was the possibility of a cosmic experience that could extend beyond the walls of a room slightly larger than a linen closet.  What I didn’t know was how potent the experience would be.

As I drifted off into another dimension of a waking dream, I felt twinges of doom that I just couldn’t shake.  Shortly thereafter, I found myself in a busy office building crowded with people, and my eyes fell on a young man in a suit, who in an instant drew a gun out of of his briefcase and in front of an unwitting mass of people, pointed the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger.  The window to his side exploded open and he fell into it, where shards of glass trapped him in his last moments.

Blood, tissue, glass, and horror lay strewn everywhere across the floor.  As hard as I tried, I couldn’t look away. Not because I felt compelled to look, but physically, I was trapped, just as he was.  And then it occurred to me why I was trapped. Suddenly, I was no longer an observer. I had become trapped inside his body. Confined in this tomb of glass shards, I tried to move, but I couldn’t.  There were lapses in my consciousness. And then, I felt myself being lifted up by several pairs of hands, out of sharp glass jaws. Another lapse in consciousness. Then, an overwhelming light and warmth washing all over me.  Peace.

And then I was no longer one but two.  Once again in my own form, in a long flowing black dress, the man in a suit timidly joined me.  I took his hand and we floated through an expanse of endless onyx space, toward a dim light, both eons and milliseconds away.  The dim light was fluorescing through the slit of a door slightly ajar. The light glimmered in intensity as we drew closer, as my astral travel companion grew more tentative.  We conversed without any words spoken; I assured him all was well, let go of his hand, and encouraged him onto the other side of the doorway. As he glided over and was welcomed to the other side, the side I could see but to which I was not privy, I knew he was well again.  He was whole in a way that he not been whole his entire earthly life. And I knew that I had done this before, with others.

And then I heard a door open, and I found myself on a table; my acupuncturist had returned to remove the many needles from my body.  I had awoken from being asleep, the first time I had ever fallen asleep on her table. There were phases to this experience that are hard to quantify.  There was the waking dream, premonition, experiencing sleep through death, re-awakening, astral travel to another dimension, the end of that journey and falling asleep in my own body, and waking up on this earthly plane.  A series of different beginnings and endings. Coming to on the acupuncture table is always a bit of a process, but this time the experience was intensified exponentially. It was as if I had been asleep hundreds of years and missed out on lifetimes.       

Interestingly, in the coming weeks I would be asked to sing at a number of funerals.  Throughout my music career I had performed virtually every type of event you can imagine, save for a funeral.  Providing music for the passing of souls in my flesh form I felt like I was that astral version of myself again, in a long black dress, my voice taking the place of my astral form, floating through the universe, its ascending notes guiding caskets out of the church and souls upward to the light.  I realized that I enjoyed singing funerals more than any other occasion. I began to wonder why I had this inexplicable, morbid inclination for singing funerals. Most musicians would prefer to perform more lighthearted or joyous affairs, but I feel right at home in the heart of a funeral parlor. After all, most weddings I have performed have already ended in divorce, so rather than singing for the beginning of a couple’s new life together, I guess I’m better suited to provide music for the ending of one’s life.

And so I wondered, what was going on in that astral realm?  What was I up to in that astral dimension? Is this some service my own soul provided?  Can the human spirit also serve as a spirit guide while it resides inside the human body?  Can the living help the dead cross over? If so, how so? Are there multiple ways? Is singing one of them?  Are there are episodes where the human spirit vacates the body and travels to unknown realms? Would I ever know any of the answers to these questions for sure?  If there are episodes, and I believe that there are episodes, these episodes are also cyclic, and symbolic, of beginnings and endings. Beginning. Ending. Beginning.  Ending. Over and over and over and over again. An endless halo of seasons changing and then changing back again and again and again.

In the midst of this season of funerals, it was the calendar season of spring — the season of beginnings, where people begin to dress in less layers and the trees begin to dress in more layers, beautiful floral patterns before leaves.  Little white petals littered the streets.  

In this season of beginnings, I received word that yet another person had passed away.  This time it hit much closer to home — the partner of a lifelong friend had died; it was sudden and untimely.  My friend reached out to me with this tragic news, asking that I please pray for his peaceful transition. After the initial shock and tears, I immediately closed my eyes and began to pray.  At the time I had lived up in the sky of the city, stories above a concrete jungle, with nothing above me but sky. When I opened my eyes from prayer, I noticed little white flower petals raining down from above.  I opened the sliding door that served as a window to the outside but led to nowhere, and stuck my head out to find the origin of the white flower petals. There were no trees above me, and I could not find the origin of these petals as they began where the sky did.  I knew, then, that he had transitioned peacefully, and he was well again. He was whole in a way that he not been whole his entire earthly life.

Death is always a significant event, with far-reaching ripple effects.  My friend’s partner’s death had set off a wave of dominoes and the season of spring, known for its beginnings, set off a series of endings in my life.  Endings and new beginnings. Death, birth, death, rebirth. People close to me and far from me continued to die, and I continued to lend my voice to a number of funerals, even amid the throes of endings and proverbial deaths taking my place in my own personal life.  As usual, I drew strength from music, learning daunting arias for these services with little to no notice — a welcome reprieve from my own mourning, which I had begun to pack away in cardboard boxes that to this day have remained mostly unpacked. But I had an important task at hand, and my voice was needed to guide and provide comfort to souls of both the dead and the living, my own soul included.  And so all these funerals were reflected into my life by a mirror, held up to me by the universe, perhaps so I could more clearly come to terms with all that was being ushered out of my own life.

* * * * *

Fast-forward nearly two years later.  Tonight, Halloween night of 2019. A peculiar Halloween, as the ground is blanketed in inches of snow.  Possibly so peculiar as this Halloween happens to fall on the first day Mercury officially goes retrograde in Scorpio, the zodiac sign synonymous with birth, death, and rebirth.  

Scorpio, Mercury retrograde, and Samhain (Halloween) all represent endings and beginnings in some respect. Samhain is the pagan new year, and witches have traditionally observed Samhain by doing spellwork around the symbolism of these beginnings and endings, designing rituals with the intention of letting go.  

And so tonight, I reflected on what I must release in my own life, as it is yet another season for endings.  The contents of those cardboard boxes from the last season of endings have not only remained unpacked, but have begun to collect a layer of dust in a sepulchre of storage closet shadows.  

The veil between worlds in my apartment is always questionably thin, and tonight unquestionably diaphanous. Illuminated by all the orange Halloween candles lit in my window to help guide souls onto the next world that awaits them, I sat in meditation, grasping a rose quartz tightly in the palm of my left hand, because the truth is, sometimes I fear endings, even with their promise of new beginnings.  Having my share of abandonment issues born not long after I was, I always feared that endings often meant something is lost, that something usually being love, and isn’t that what we all long for most — love? So I grasped the rose quartz securely since this crystal is known for its power to chisel away at hardened hearts that have turned into stone, to melt away at the ice that forms when the world turns cold, to clear the clutter of accumulated pain and make room for love.  A crystal that helps transmute painful endings into beautiful beginnings.

And sometimes, like in acupuncture sessions or astral dreams, when I meditate, I receive epiphanies or messages.  Likely aided by the rose quartz I held in my hand, the message sent to me was that no matter who or what has died in our lives, whether physically dead or metaphorically, love never dies.  Love is unique, because there is always room for more love, and new love. Love and expansion are synonymous. Love is expansion; love is not contraction.  Love is light. And light is all around us.  Love is eternal. And sometimes, if we are paying attention, love can return to us in little reminders, as butterflies or birds or flickering lights — as visitation or astral dreams or doors that open on their own and give us a glimpse into other worlds.

While lighting candles this evening I received a text message from a friend of mine, interestingly the same friend who lost her partner in the spring of 2018.  A friend who has a wealth of her own stories with regard to the divine love notes the universe sent her in the wake of her partner’s passing. She asked me how I was observing Halloween and I explained that I was in the midst of lighting candles in my window as a ritual to help brighten the path for souls transitioning from one world to the next.

“You are a true witch, my friend,” her message read.  “Interesting about souls traveling to other worlds… You’ve done that before with the one man when you astral-traveled during acupuncture!”

I started writing this blog entry when the episode on the acupuncture table occurred, in January of 2018.  Tonight is the last night of October, 2019. Over a year and nine months have passed. Several seasons of different endings and new beginnings have come and gone.  Trees sprouted flowers first, then leaves, eventually releasing them to the ground, which froze over, then thawed, sprang flowers, which also appeared on trees, then leaves, eventually being freed again to the ground.  This entry lay dormant the entire time, with a beginning, but no certain ending. Tonight I know one thing for certain about endings. No matter the ending, the proverbial death, or the passing of seasons or souls, love is what persists through all these seasons and dimensions.  It is ubiquitous, even when seemingly dormant, lying just beneath the surface, like unseen flowers in the ground that emerge bright and full of hope — their arrival timely, usually just when we have convinced ourselves that there is no hope. Love is infinite; in no way can it be contained by time or space.  And now, it seems as if we’ve come to an end here, so if you’ll allow me, I must return to the beginning and start all over again, as like all things, the cycle carries on.

I’ve been living in my apartment in the city for over a year now.  I have a big window that overlooks Lake Michigan, where civilization ends and solitude begins, a vast stretch of never-ending cerulean. Before I lived here, I was fortunate to live in other places of great beauty, and once as close to nature as you could get without having to pitch a tent.  On a nearly daily basis I crossed paths with woodland creatures such as foxes, coyotes, deer, turtles, snakes, hummingbirds, goldfinch, and my personal favorite, the great blue heron. I always interpreted these meetings as a message to be heeded from another world, the otherwise unseen world that’s visible from my window, a world that begins where civilization ends.

The price of living in an apartment up in the sky of such a large metropolis is paid for in inflated rent and the absence of contact with these beautiful creatures. It’s a fast-paced life.  A life where, if you thirst for symbolism, you have to dig a little deeper to unearth that which quenches your thirst. It doesn’t smack you in the face as obviously as a starling smacking into your window, though that has been known to happen here in the high rises of the city as well. Had I lost my touch, my direct line with that other world, that more beautiful world?  I began to wonder.  

There aren’t many creatures to be seen outside my current picture window, save for flocks of drunken sunbathers during mating season or gaggles of geese during migrating season. I do love when I can catch a glimpse of the occasional cormorant.  But then, recently, on a day when summer was drawing its last breaths, I had the fortune of looking out the window when it was passing by — hard to miss, its giant indigo wings flapping at once both gracefully and laboriously in the air.  

This was my first and only sighting of the great blue heron outside my window, and only the second sighting of the bird amid the city’s congestion since I’ve lived here.  Flying in the air between two buildings, my own and the one that peers directly into mine, I noticed that it was ascending in small upward spirals, higher and higher, searching for that air current where it would begin to soar effortlessly over the city to a world just outside the foreground.

I watched this performance in the sky above my building for five minutes or more, analyzing what was taking place before my eyes.  The heron would make a circle, fly a bit forward, then continue to fly upward in a circle, fly a bit forward, repeat. I don’t know much about the science of bird migration, but it was clear to me that the bird was searching for that perfect, almost predestined stream of air, that lift it required so its wings wouldn’t labor as much — just glide over the sky — as it was about to embark on a lengthy journey.     

Later, a quick Google search would reveal that the bird was using something called “thermal soaring” in an effort to find the air current which would carry it great distances on its journey with ease and grace.  At the time, I didn’t realize heat was part of the equation. At the time, I didn’t think a whole lot about the science or the mechanics of what was taking place before me, but rather, the symbolism of watching what this bird was doing and how it related to my own life.  What was the lesson being offered by this winged blue messenger? I turned again to Google, which revealed that the great blue heron brings messages of self-determination and self-reliance, and symbolizes the innate wisdom of being able to maneuver through life, progress, and evolve.

Emily Dickinson once said that hope is the thing with feathers.  As my eyes followed the great bird’s eventual ascent into the troposphere, my heart welled up with the muse featured in her verse — hope.  While I strained my eyes to keep up with its flight pattern as it grew smaller, until it was only a dot moving across the sky, I was inspired “to wish impossible things,” which happens to be the title of a song I listened to when I was a teenager, a time when in fact I did wish impossible things, and they seemed just within reach, like that other world I can see just outside my picture window.

Since I first witnessed the bird, I have been replaying the scene in my mind, perhaps as a reminder to stay true to my own course.  Not long after, during one such iteration, a synchronicity occurred. I received a text from a friend of mine, who found a painting of a great blue heron in the building he works, asking me if I wanted it for my apartment. It was an almost life-sized canvas of the majestic bird.

The universe works in mysterious ways, but it brings you just what you need when you need it, in the form of synchronicities or air currents or feathered visitors just passing through.  It reminds us that the seemingly impossible is anything but, and that which seems hopelessly intangible is just within your reach. The universe has a way of carrying you on its shoulders, if, like the heron, you would just give yourself the initial lift.  Like the heron, if you set out and take flight on that lengthy and potentially unfamiliar journey, the rewards at the end may be the things you wished for long ago, those seemingly impossible things which are waiting to come true, somewhere out there in that world just beyond your picture window.

Some days are painful and some days are joyful.  But no matter the temperament, it is important to remember that each day is a gift.  To be alone can be painful. But in all pain, there is some gift, some opportunity, or some lesson to be learned, and potentially taught to others.  

The desire to want to be in the company of others is natural.  Our human circuitry is composed of a complex system of wiring connecting each of us to one another.  Yet ironically, fickle creatures that we are, we always seem to want what we don’t have, don’t we? So when our personal lives are brimming with lovers, friends, neighbors, colleagues, pets, family members, and children, we long for the days of solitude, precious “me-time.”  For when we are alone, we have a unique opportunity — an opportunity to learn, and an opportunity to connect to source. This could be the source of who we are, finding and fulfilling that which is our sole purpose in this life. This could be the ultimate “source,” that which you may call “God,” or “spirit,” or the universe.

To be alone is to be a slate mostly clean, a canvas ready for new perspectives.  There is enormous potential to learn and to share what you learn with others. It is a gift that is given to you and you can return the gift to those willing to receive it.  There is space for you to be of support and of service to more people than you would normally if you were not alone. But before that is even a consideration, the space is cleared for you to be of service to yourself much more than you would if you were not alone.  This is perhaps not requisite, but ideal before becoming a bastion for others who may call on you to help them bear the weight that they carry alone.

For those of you in my age range, to be alone now offers you a unique opportunity to sincerely get to know yourself again.  When you have the freedom to recline and take pause, you realize that somewhere along the way, as all the years accumulated, and all the earthly matters bore their weight upon you, you became estranged from yourself.  And for whatever reason, in the thick of these earthly matters, it is so easy to forget the good that you offer the world and to instead fixate on where you may fall short. To truly get to know yourself again, you are reminded of all the amazing qualities you possess.  What’s more, being alone allows you the opportunity and the energy to set and achieve goals which can better help you ascend to your higher self.

Somewhat ironically, being alone allows you a chance to meet many more people than you would normally if you were in tandem.  It allows you to experience more of what life can offer. But another one of life’s ironies is that sometimes, at this age, new and exciting experiences no longer seem new, and no longer exciting.  In part, this could be because if you have tried to lead a fulfilling life up to this point, you have perhaps experienced much of what life has to offer, and so you naturally wonder, “Now what? What’s left?”  It is the single experience that many of us will become acquainted with at some point — the existential crisis.

Or, I wonder, as I sit here musing and watching the chaotic energy of turbulent waters crash upon a shoreline, perhaps it is because some of the less pleasant life experiences hurled our way have eroded us into jaded beings who forget what it is to feel joy.  No new experience is novel. You no longer view the world through the untarnished lens of a child’s eye. Being alone, perhaps, allows you the space to muse on that, as I muse alone at the edge of a battered shoreline.

Careening through space untethered to anyone or anything can be frightening.  It can be a  challenge, and it can be a voyage.  But, life is a series of different challenges and voyages and we can either embrace and experience them wholly and fully or we can allow them to take hold of us and pummel us like unrelenting waves breaking on a exhausted shores.

 

Choppy waters on Lake Michigan before a thunderstorm, August 2018.

 

And as I watch the cycle of waves on loop I remember that being alone allows you the space to better take care of yourself, which is so important to remember, whether or not we are alone.  We have a tendency, alone or together, to dispose of our time in thoughtless and even pernicious ways. Discarding of our time becomes a habituation, an addiction, until it is a motor propelling us directionless through the world. None of us are immune to falling into this trap of existence. But it is when we are alone that we seem to discard of our time in such ways due to an apprehension fostered by this perceived abandonment. The same way there is a collective fear of death, we fear being alone, perhaps for the same reason we fear death — there is a void, and an overpowering solitude.  Fathomless uncertainty. The canvas is blank, save for a nebula of questions marks. So we try desperately and sometimes in misguided or self-destructive ways, intentionally or not, to fill our perceived void.  A void which, by the way, is still there when we think we are not alone, when we think it has been sufficiently filled by someone or something else. Ironically, it eventually will only deepen this chasm.  It’s when you actually venture into this chasm and explore what’s hidden in the darkness that you find pure light on the other side.  There is also something empowering about doing it all on your own, overcoming the fear associated with it, and not relying on anyone but yourself.   Taking life by the reins and riding it unabashedly.  To quote a friend of mine, “Sometimes it’s really nice to take full charge of your own life.”

Remember that no one is ever alone at any time, and that everyone is always alone, all the time.  There is solace to be found in this.  In the thickest of forests, individual trees stand on their own, separate yet together.  We as humans are the same. Yes, we are social creatures, and ultimately we seek to build relationships, partnerships, marriages, friendships, and families.  But if you find that you are not currently in one of those relationships or families, remember that never are you truly alone. And whether or not you believe in spirit guides, or a God that is always with you, or none of the above, remember that the universe will always be beside you.  That is indisputable, no matter your beliefs in what lies beyond this earthly dimension.

Some days are painful and some days are joyful.  But no matter the temperament, it is important to remember that each day is a gift.  We don’t know what tomorrow may bring, and tomorrow is not promised. If you and I are at the same stage in our lives, or if you are leaps and bounds ahead of me, we both know that time begins to race faster as it accumulates.  It has a funny way of doing that. A year is 365 days, but as we gain more years, they gain more momentum. The grains of sand run through the hourglass too quickly. Don’t dispose of what time you do have left.  It isn’t too late.  Experience things, and be grateful for all of your experiences. Even those which seem mundane or have lost their luster over time. Even those which may have caused you immeasurable pain. For within each of these experiences there lies a gift, and that gift can be shared with others.  And in sharing your gifts with others, you will undoubtedly never be alone.

Some time ago, I went through a personal experience that was very painful.  Perhaps this is not the forum in which to delve into specifics, but it was one of those experiences that is not uncommon to the human condition; something undoubtedly that many others have been through.  Along with other upheavals that had gone on at that time, this experience involved love, loss, and pain — the building blocks of life as we know it.  Around this time I had a tarot card reading and the Tower card was pulled, accurately foretelling the events unfolding all around me at the time, and all that which would collapse in the near future.  If you are familiar with the tarot, you know that Tower life experiences can involve events like divorce, death of a loved one, health problems — anything that shakes you to the core of your being.  Essentially, some part of your life, if not multiple parts of your life, go up in flames.

For the rest of this entry I will refer to this experience and this point in my life as the “collapsing towers.”  In the throes and the aftermath of the collapsing towers, I was left much like a wounded animal who could barely move from one place to another.  I was feeling like an abandoned child, all alone, and the pain felt ancient, as if I had felt this pain before.  At first I thought it might have been in another lifetime, and then I realized that in fact it had happened in this lifetime, a lifetime ago.

When I was three and a half years old, my parents divorced.  My mother, who suffered with very dangerous and violent mental illness, moved back overseas, to barely be heard from ever again.  My father, and my sister, who was a decade older than me, basked in relief at her departure.  Being so young and hardly cognizant, there was this aching in me that I could not put into words, partly because I was too young to fully process everything that had happened, and partly because I knew in my young mind that these feelings were not shared by my father and sister.  I longed for my mother’s return, and they, understandably, reveled in her departure.  As I would describe to my therapist many years later, it was as if my father, sister, and I were all on an island, and the land broke, leaving me on one piece, my sister and father on the other, the now two separate islands to continuously drift further away from each other for the rest of our lives.

As you grow older, certain pain stays with you like insidious clouds always at your back — but the pain — like clouds in the sky, is nebulous, and you struggle to identify its origin.  Eckhart Tolle talks about the “pain body,” and I believe the pain body accurately defines the clouds and the darkness that we grapple with.  But sometimes it takes a long time, if ever, to identify the cause of these pain bodies; the source of these stormfronts.

It took this experience of the collapsing towers to really figure out that I was carrying this heavy weight with me on my shoulders for such a long time.  I went back into my three-year-old self and was met again with abandonment and a painful loneliness.  When I, my therapist, and a few astute friends solved the puzzle — the collapsing towers had a lot to do with my missing mother — my therapist asked me if I would ever be interested in contacting her again, as so many people asked me throughout my life.  My answer was always the same, a lukewarm “maybe” that really translated to a “not at all.”  I didn’t know if she was alive or dead, but I guess because I never heard any news that she had passed, I assumed she was still alive.

Then, I received the message.  From a faceless man in a boat with a child in a river.  I opened the message a month after it was delivered to me.  My mother had died.  Two days ago, and she was buried yesterday.  Only I was reading this message more than a month after its harbinger hit the send button.  The harbinger — the faceless man in the river — a social worker at the mental institution where my mother had been living for the past twenty years, after her own mother had died.

For months after the collapsing towers I crawled on my knees in pain. Not only had that upheaval brought me pain, but it thrust me back to the foremost pain in my life, the great-grandfather that reigned over all the pain in my life.  It forced me to examine that part of my life again, to revisit my phantom mother in my mind, and possibly my biological mother in real life.

But to re-establish any connection with my mother in this lifetime was never again meant to be.

I received this message the day before Thanksgiving.  There had been an interlude in communication with my sister, as there sometimes is with family.  But my sister’s birthday is in November, and birthdays offer invitations for both soirees and olive branches.  Fatefully, I began speaking with her just a week before opening the message.  The timing was serendipitous, as it is probably better to break prolonged silence with birthday greetings rather than news of an estranged mother’s passing.  I also figured the news would impact my sister more significantly, since she was much older than me when our mother left.  This is made more complicated by the fact that my mother’s role in our lives was a perilous one; there is no minimizing that.  My sister (and my father) inevitably bore the brunt of her abuse, since she was only in my life for a mere three years.

After the initial absorption of the news, my sister’s response was surprisingly enlightened, especially considering everything she endured at my mother’s hands.  She thanked her for the gift of life, said she felt sorry that she could not fulfill the role of mother, but that there is not much that could be done for severe schizophrenia.  She was sad for her, but also felt as though our mother was finally at peace.  She reminded both herself and myself that life is short, and we should be kind and enjoy the moment.

I was not raised in a religious family; for all intents and purposes, my father was an Atheist, as he rejected the fanatic religious dogma innate to his own upbringing.  I remember being a little girl and asking him what happens after we die, and he told me there was no heaven or hell, and that our bodies go into a ground and decompose.  That’s it, the end.  Eternal darkness.  Not only was I frightened and scarred by his description; I just didn’t believe it.  In my cells I felt there was more to this existence than merely that which can be seen.  Nevertheless, I cannot deny that my first conversation about death impacted me in such a way that made me ask questions for many years.  For a long time I harbored fears of the unknown.

But for any of us who feel unsure about what happens after we die, perhaps when someone very close to us dies, we find perspective.  My mother and I were not close emotionally or in terms of proximity, but since she is the woman who gave me life, now that she has died, I do believe that a part of me has died as well.  

My family line and my mother’s family line spent lifetimes shrouded in darkness.  But now that my mother has gone back to source, I can focus on nothing but the light.  For when she gave me life, she also gave me light.  She may have been the courier of some of those dark clouds that loomed in the background of my life, but she also gave me light.  And in turn, I send all my light to her, and I ask that she be bathed in brilliant, illuminating light wherever she may be at this moment in time and space.

Being a musician has saved my life on many occasions, in part because music is my life.  Not only do we listen to music, but music listens to us, with no preconceived notions or judgments about who we are.  Music is the most reliable friend a person can have, always there for you in life’s moments and hours of darkness.  Ironically, there are times so dark when merely pressing play on one of your favorite albums seems nearly impossible to do, because your every waking move happens underwater on dry land — slow-motion — even carrying out the simplest tasks are done with the greatest difficulty.  Eventually, you find the strength to reach out to those things that you love, and they carry you through those dark times, and bring you back to the light again, helping you rebuild yourself one molecule at a time.  

For a musician, the music is your child, your labor of love.  But it is also your parent; the love that music holds for you, its vessel, is a tough love.  Music has many lessons to teach.  I’ve often heard people describe music as fun.  Yes, music can be fun.  But that’s one of the cheaper compliments you can pay.  Music is challenging.  It is painful.  The highs are great and the lows are devastating —  music is an impeccable reflection of life, of the human experience.  

I am grateful that I learned to play piano, albeit late in life.  As vocal a person as I am, in times of trauma we can be left mute in the aftermath.  There are things I can say with my hands on a piano that my voice simply cannot put into words during difficult times.  Over time, distance, and space, some of the most important messages have been transmitted through music, many times through music without words.

And when music has carried me into the light, the warmth — as it helps to rebuild my soul one fragment at a time, I learn to use my voice again.  And then I remember that no matter the pain, my voice will inevitably ascend above all of the earthly turmoil like birds soaring overhead through currents of wind in the sky.  And the same voice, and the same hands on the piano, can help touch those who also reach out to music in their darkest hours.

Music is reciprocal, unconditional love.  It will never give up on you.  Although music will challenge, and even frustrate you at times, music will not quit you.  But should you quit music, it will inevitably welcome you back with equally warm and punitive arms.  Music the parent will chasten, but music the friend will stay up with you all night, picking right back up with you on the page where you left off.  You see, music is unique because it is mother, father, son, daughter, teacher, friend, lover, and self.  Music is sunshine, darkness, oxygen.  Music is nutrients.

Like life, there will always be struggle with music.  Like life, music is teeming with untold beauty.  To describe omnipotence, omnipresence, is to describe music.  It is the great philosopher, the great healer.  It transcends the universe as we know it.  And for some of us, music is our universe.  Without it, our soul would be imprisoned by a body that would sooner than later wither away until it turned to dust.  For some of us, there simply is no without it.  And that includes the universe.  For without music, we would know no universe, or any of the worlds beyond.

A long time ago, you could have found me dressed in all black, wearing too much eyeliner, mussed hair, drifting off into a daydream when I should have been paying attention in class.  Okay, maybe it wasn’t that long ago, maybe it was as recent as last week, but nevertheless I’d like to take you on a trip down memory lane into high school and its peripheral years, the 90s.  And maybe the first year or two of the current millennium.  

When I heard of Dolores O’Riordan’s passing yesterday, I simultaneously heard the very inimitable sound of her voice and her music.  It’s a sound that begs you to reminisce.  Being that girl dressed in all black in my teens, I spent most of my time staring off into space and writing poetry when I should have been listening to teachers’ lectures in high school.  I’d walk home two and a half miles in the ropy rain, heavy eyeliner running in rivulets down my face, headphones in, drowning out the world while my Walkman blared The Cure, Tori Amos, Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode, or occasionally The Cranberries.  I was a sight to behold, like a character out of a Neil Gaiman book or a Tim Burton movie.

Almost more than any of the other aforementioned bands, The Cranberries are a sonic snapshot in time.  Unlike the other bands, I didn’t listen to The Cranberries as much.  I wasn’t as obsessed with The Cranberries as I was with Tori or NIN.  As for The Cure and Depeche Mode, their albums practically had a hand in raising me.  With The Cranberries, however, I usually pressed play when I was in a very particular pensive mood.  Good mood or bad, happy or sad.  But always pensive.  The mercury reading had to be just right.  Now, it’s suffice to say that I was often in this mood.  I still am.  The Cranberries just paired well with these versions of a very specific temperament, like a good Malbec with an aged cheddar.  Sometimes I was feeling sad, sometimes romantic, sometimes lost — sometimes I just wanted to roll the car windows down, turn up the music, and feel the air blowing against my skin.  But always pensive.

And sometimes I needed to mourn, lost love especially during these years.  My requiem of choice was The Cranberries’ “Disappointment.”  Its words, written nearly a quarter of a century ago, still relevant today.  “But it won’t get any harder, and I hope you’ll find your way again.”  It still quenches that melancholic thirst.  Back then, it was almost always on cassette, because that’s how long ago it was.  Back then, along with other female artists like Tori Amos, Bjork, and Kate Bush, The Cranberries saw me through my transition from young girl to womanhood, and all the experiences and implications that came along with it.  The score for this rite of passage?  The Cranberries’ 1994 album, “No Need to Argue.”

The Cranberries were roller-skating parties.  They were first loves and first kisses.  They were sneaking out late at night.  The Cranberries were running with your girlfriends through cemeteries at the stroke of midnight.  They were teary drunken nights.  Walking home in the rain, staring off into space during trigonometry.  They were pen pals, they were getting your license and driving across state lines to hang out with friends you met on the internet.  They were breakups, and driving home from those breakups.  They were open mics and gigging at bars with your cover band.  They were every side job you had before you landed your real job.

The Cranberries were pensive thoughts, which also seem to be a thing of my youth.  Whenever I listen to The Cranberries in this lifetime, I am reminded of a different life and time.  Their sound, never to be recreated, is a reminder of all the things that have died long before Dolores’ passing.  I grasp for these things sometimes, trying to discern what has stayed with me over time and what has gone away.  And the truth is that most of it is fossilized, in shoeboxes filled with photos and other time capsules; recorded in musty memories and mix tapes.

Though I am still on Christmas Break, the holiday lights are already down.  I’m onto my third cup of coffee, and my fourth day sans makeup or bra.  It’s that time of year when all the merriment so many of us look forward to gives way to a much-needed quietude, if only for a couple of months.  I sit in the protective womb of my apartment, the thermostat set to subtropic levels, and yet all I need to do is look outside my window and the temperature makes itself visible by the scene’s clues, like the clouds of steam coming to a rolling boil over the tops of the other high-rises.

But there is a sort of clove of seasons within me, and probably within many.  The holiday yearning to bake and bake and eat and eat and eat more is still alive and well, but the desire to turn over the proverbial leaf now waxes enthusiastic.  You see, somewhere during the holiday season, when we give, and we celebrate our loved ones; when we eat, drink, and are merry, there is often excess and even darkness that gets muddled in with all the good.  When all is said and done, there is a weight on us, certainly physical, but often emotional weight as well, and we are all too eager to leave it behind in the past, along with the old year.

 What I find ironic, is that the holiday season is intended to be centered around finding and celebrating the light within (ourselves and others), when it so scarce in our environment.  This is a custom that can be traced all the way back to the Pagan era. It is no secret, however, that the holiday season has evolved to become a time of stress, overextension, overindulgence, and family tension.  Even those who look forward to the holidays all the way back to the dead of summer heave a huge sigh of relief when it has finally come to its end.

But now, for a brief moment, we’re all blanketed in the calm.  The perpetually animated streets are suddenly empty, their usual occupants tucked away in the warmth of their cozy apartments and condominiums.  This calm brings with it an introspective moment in time, a time in which I’ve been guilty of buying into “new year, new me” mantras.  Except that there is really nothing to be guilty of, nothing to buy into.  Our society can be a jaded one, and so I find sometimes that when I ask the guests at a holiday party what their New Year’s resolutions are, they scoff at the question, laugh it off, or a answer it in the form of a joke — as if none of us is above improvement, or in need of a fresh start.  Perhaps this more cynical face of society began to emerge alongside a once-meaningful season now perverted by the talons of mass retailers and the like.  

Nevertheless, I personally think it is beautiful that each year we get a bit of a “clean slate,” or another chance — maybe a chance to set a new intention or some practice at an old one.  Having said that, I’ve never been one for winter.  Physically it can be very hard on my body; I suspect harder on mine than on others, since I know so many people revel in this season!  But I’ve lived here my entire life even though I have wished to move somewhere with a more favorable climate.  Until that happens though, I have learned to embrace the unique qualities of this season and its unforgiving climate over the years.  I welcome the early nightfall even though it casts darkness on my otherwise warm and welcome one-bedroom.  I remain in a state of Hygge, as my windows provide me a protective barrier from the harsh and bitter reality of the outdoors.  These are the same windows, which less than an hour ago, were seeping the most brilliant light into my closed eyes as I sat in meditation, enveloping me in a warmth that could carry me through a lifetime’s worth of winter nights.  Now I could tell you much more about that experience, but if you’ll excuse me, I’m being beckoned by the sound of the Keurig, and although I vowed to begin a New Year’s diet, an unwritten invitation from the leftover holiday chocolate on the kitchen counter.  Cheers to a wonderful new year.