So it happened again...Yesterday I promised my partner I’d dedicate the day’s writing time to creating fresh, new content for our webpage. It’s daunting because I’ve said the same things so many times it was coming out stuffy and stale. How to find that genuine voice and yet remain professional? How to be compelling enough to make people want to explore further? The whole litany.
Flustered by the audacity of the blank page staring back at me, secretly feeling it’d be easier to delve back into the gut-tangling implications of having actually sent the audacious epistle I’d just penned, I took refuge in the hope that I might find something to ponder on in Susannah’s photos Bindu had posted the night before for our writing prompts the following day.
That the first two were chosen and positioned the way they were- did anyone else feel a stirring inside that set the tear buds to blossoming?
There is something mystical in the portrayal of any pathway. This one, though, struck me in some deep resounding way as the exact path I’m on in this moment: In sepia tones it becomes timeless, the light makes it simultaneously ethereal and vaguely unsettling because it’s indirect. What’s lit up is not the path per se, but the tall grasses surrounding it - because the traveler cannot see what lies beyond the grasses it becomes a tunnel of sorts - a topless tunnel, but one from which the traveler cannot stray until the path’s conclusion... and there is no way to discern what awaits there.
Hand in hand with the unsettled sense, though, is a deeply felt serenity. I find myself taking one of those deep, calm breaths that come when I accept the task ahead of me. There is suddenly a feeling of protection in gazing at the photo, and I am softly stunned to recognize it as coming from within.
It’s as if I have seen this pathway from many vantage points in times past, have known all along that I would need to cross it in order to continue in my unfolding - and that in this moment the fortitude and the courage and the extreme rightness of the task ahead of me have converged in a feeling of exhilaration. That it is tinged with trepidation just adds to the thrill because the fear is now a companion instead of a barrier.
To scroll ever so slightly down to the next photo is to set the tear blossoms cascading as if at some great holy festival.
It is said that the feet are the repository of spiritual energy, and the feet of the master are regarded with reverence in many traditions. I’ve spent hours reveling in the contemplation of a certain set of holy feet myself; when I lived in a place dedicated to meditation and study in the Indian tradition, I used to arrive in the temple at 2 am to tend to the ablution and adornment, with sandalwood paste and flowers, of the padukas - the sandals representing the spiritual power of the master - before the stream of seekers came to place their reverent foreheads there.
But I digress...
From this perspective the feet are directly under me. I feel the coolness on my toes even as I write (I have the photos on the screen with the page I’m writing). These feet, while probably Susannah’s, can only be mine while I gaze at the photo. Importantly, the metal thingamajig in the upper corner assumes (in my mind at least) the role of one of those great sturdy clamps that holds bridges onto the structure from whence they proceed. As the two photos are arranged (bridge on top, tootsies beneath), I have the sense of gazing out at the bridge before me, and then down at my own feet the moment before I step onto it.
This is the moment, then. The great “start where you are and keep going no matter what” moment I’ve been craving all my conscious life.
And the petals- yes, the petals. I can construct a story to describe how they’ve been tossed in the air with great fanfare to herald the historic moment, bestowing blessings from my benefactors for the journey ahead.
Or perhaps they have fallen all around me as the poetic manifestation of these burning tears. Perhaps for once I bless my own feet as they stand so bravely beneath me, ready to do my bidding - to carry me along this path on which there is no turning back. Bathing in the holy river of my own tearwater I feel unburdened and purified. And changed.
I imagine the photo playing out in a vignette where the tears fall as petals until they cover the feet and in some magical way I am able to kneel there and place my own head upon them - to bless and be blessed in a gesture so earnest, with a reverence so complete, it feels like a vow.
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