I stay awake, as the real loss is not always wrong but a reason for numbness, not always the misstep but the way to an intended quieter openings moving,
I stay awake, this kind of attention is costly because it asks me to release my way into aliveness, when often the vivid thing arrives sideways,
I stay awake, I know how quickly I can become fixed when I am scared, choosing control over discovery, and then wondering why the work suddenly feels dead in my hands,
I stay awake, can I remain available even when the moment refuses to follow my own life’s outline,
I stay awake, because the rarest gifts rarely knock twice when I’m busy arguing with the shape I imagined they should have taken…
I encounter grief at every turn, every genuine transformation compels me to release some cherished image of how I was becoming and what I was supposed to appear like,
I encounter grief at every turn, a part of me always drags its feet because letting go of the first picture feels like betrayal, even when that picture can no longer hold the life now pressing against it,
I encounter grief at every turn, so I stand in that ache between attachment and where I am neither fully certain nor fully lost, only asked to keep moving with less hesitation than before,
I encounter grief at every turn, can I mourn the old shape without refusing the new one,
I encounter grief at every turn, and what comes forward is often rougher at first than what I planned yet strangely more alive, but this new piece had been waiting for me to stop naming its future too soon…
I trust the opening, though trust for me is never pure and shining, it comes mixed with flinching and second-guessing and that embarrassing desire to be reassured,
I trust the opening, I’ve seen enough to know that the best passages in my life rarely came from complete command but more often, they emerged from a sense of incompleteness,
I trust the opening, because I am tired of confusing my first idea with my deepest one, tired of protecting familiar limits simply because in ways that ask less transformation,
I trust the opening, can I let Becoming change to what I thought I came here to create,
I trust the opening, and the answer is usually quieter than confidence, more like a soft continued yes that arrives while my fear is still talking over again…
As I end softer, not because I have solved the tension between knowing and not knowing but because I no longer need to punish the uncertainty for being part of the time, part of the making, part of the honest costly pain,
As I end softer, this gentleness feels earned because it came through friction, through misreading myself, through holding too tightly, through releasing too late, through learning that clarity often enters after I stop wrestling for it,
As I end softer, with a steadier willingness to see clearly and then keep moving beyond my habits without the swollen promise, without the rehearsed collapse that used to feel inevitable,
As I end softer, can I continue without demanding a flawless map of what comes next,
As I conclude with a softer tone, sometimes the unexpected mark is not the ruin of the work at all, but rather the breath that finally allows it to live on…
Watchwords:
The quieter openings,
Obedient but dead in my hands,
I trust the opening,
Without the old theatrics,
The breath that finally lets it live,
Here is Tikatarot, who dares you to answer the question, “Who am I?”..
As and will always be reminding you to dream:
