Broken Leg, Broken Heart and Clipped Wings

Years ago at a Rebirthing retreat, I participated in a exercise called eye gaze breathing. Partcipants did circular breathing while staring into another person's eyes. After a period of time, I felt an incredible spinning/tingling/buzzing feeling that enveloped my whole body. It was the most delicious feeling I have ever experienced. I shouted out, "Fuck". After the exercise was completed, I soon learned from a pal that my outburst had upset the people who were hosting this "consciousness raising" event.
The word "fuck" had erupted from me. Someone explained that I had experienced what is known as a cosmic bath. Whatever it was, I had been an innocent. I had breathed myself into such an exquisite state of aliveness that the word "fuck" had nothing whatsoever to do with a thought but rather with a feeling - a feeling that emcompassed all of my passion for all that is life.

My reaction to the disapproval took me back again to the place inside of me in which as a child I was made to be wrong for being totally me.

I find that I continue to put my deep desires on the back burner. Always making an excuse for why I don't sit down more and paint or write or take on those creative projects that spin as endless loops in my mind. They taunt me. They torment me. They wag their crooked fingers at me and cackle hideously as they say, "See, you are going to die, and we will die with you. Hey, pay us some attention before it's too late."

Why in hell am I afraid to let it all hang out? What is there to lose anymore? So much is now gone. I remember when I was younger I would tell myself that I would really write when my grandmother Pearl died. guess I had her set up as the finger pointer of my young life.
Pearl died in 1997.

And still nothing.

Thoreau's words about how most people live lives of quiet desperation has resonated with me since my early twenties when I first read him. Tonight his words are thundering within me.

We create fences around ourselves to keep us tame- to prevent us from breaking out- to allow us to graze and pretend that a life of contentment is enough. It is like we are sort of afraid of what might we become if we just charge full force ahead with our passions leading the way.

But as I lie here tonight I know that I need more.

And that very thought frightens me.

I turn sixty in less than a month.

I have a fire that won't go out.


This fire is a passion in me that has been burning since I was a very little girl. I used to think that sex- lots of hard, rocking, three times a day sex would satisfy it. But that's not it. Sex is a dead end. It doesn't satisfy the hunger in my soul


I have finished with the fences. There ain't no security to be had 'cept the deep feeling in your gut that your fire is still burning.


And it is that fire that so many whom have claimed to love me have sought to extinguish.

Maybe this current state of being able to do little but lie with my leg up will cause me to finally implode and be reborn again. Fresh. Me- Paula.