08.05.02

i could pour out a book from inside my heart right now. i feel...full of emotion. the hope that i could live life differently is not foolish. i can. the life i want can be mine, but that means i have to be willing to do things differently. which means, to let myself be seen. katrina's parting words to me were, "the more you let yourself be seen, the more you will be loved." and that's the beauty and the agony of trust. to step over the precipice of comfort and into the unknown is the only way to experience the intensity of love.

i have this romantic idea that i can starve away all the impurities of my flesh and mind. isn't that what the saints were after when they fasted? If you feed off your own excess for long enough, surely something must become clear. If you use the skeleton as a metaphor for Buddha nature, starving is like purification. When only the bare bones of you are left, you become as perfect as you were when you entered the world. Without greed, selfishness, deceit.

If only it would really work that way. If I remove enough layers of myself, will I become the me I've always wanted to be? There remains the problem of need. Even babies, perfect as they are, are born into the world needing others, a mother, food, warmth, love, to survive.

I cannot starve away need, as hard as I may try. Do I satisfy my needs honestly-- like a baby, crying when hungry, smiling when content, unabashedly reaching for loving arms-- or do i cast shadows around them and seek to conceal that which makes me human?

Starving is schooling oneself in not needing to need-- the art of turning a deaf ear to the cries of ones own humanity. And what is noble about that? Isn't the desire for a zen state of emaciation as greedy as that to overconsume?

I am not at peace with the way my body and spirit encounter this world. I want to believe that if I lose enough weight, I will give birth to a stark, spare beautiful butterfly of self, born out of this shabby cocoon of me. I crave that transformation with a hunger far deeper than anything physical.

Is asceticism torture or journey to the center? How much can I do without? In the absence of all frivolities, will I be closer to seeing/touching/knowing/finding a core of precious self? Will refusal to consume turn me into a clear mirror? Or will I be as real as a reflection, composed of a thousand refractions of light?

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xoxo,

moonbird

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