Leaving Ashley Down - Poem

I sit in front of the television

Staring into space

There’s a man talking about some decision

That he really couldn’t face

Upstairs room is bare, bags are packed

But you are not around

You’ve gone away because you lacked

Patience with the sound

of my voice.

Though you didn’t know I was leaving

You didn’t wait to find out

Can’t cope with senseless grieving

And the silence drove me out.

I walk out the door forever

My face dry and soul bare

Realising we’re not together

Knowing how our relationship fared

Middling to worst?

Or the sublime?

Especially when you became mine.

Memories flood me, tears run dry

And the thought of you...

Looking into my room...

Makes me hope that Time

Will heal

my Heart.

Again.

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Come Close Now - Song

Recorded in a broom cupboard in India on a second take with an mp3 player - with Anandhi George. I am not musical but this came from nowhere.

I walked up to my friend and said, 'I've written something, but I'm not sure...' She just picked up her guitar and went with it. 

The best kind of friends x

Have a listen!

Enjoy!

I want you closer

Come close now

Stand a little nearer

Come close now

Senses are alive

Come close now

I just want you to...

Come close now.

I watch you all the time

Your eyes express all

What is happening?

There is no control.

I want you closer

Come close now

Stand a little nearer

Come close now

Senses are alive

Come close now

I just want you to...

Come close now.

My day revolves 

When you appear

My world brightens

When your nearer

I want you closer

Come close now

Stand a little nearer

Come close now

Senses are alive

Come close now

I just want you to...

Come close now.

Silhouettes fade 

and your presence glows

It's inevitable

I will follow...

Just follow...

Just follow...

Just follow...

Come a little closer
Come close now

Stand a little nearer

Come close now

Senses are alive

Come close now

I just want you to...

Come close now.

Come close now

Come close now

Come close now

Come close now...

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Autumn - Very Short Story

They walked into the forest together; the ground crunching and crumbling under their footsteps. Autumn had streaked through the park at night and trees were now alight with reds, oranges and yellows. A cacophony of colour beckoned the couple to explore and walk deeper into the unknown. With fingers interlaced, they watched as birds flew overhead, squawking orders to one another. Squirrels scampered up and down large old gnarly trunks, busily picking up acorns for their food stores. The woods were alive and pulsating, readying itself for the long hibernation ahead.

They shivered and drew each other closer as a cool breeze danced between them. She could see warm breath leave his body and suddenly craved the intimate dance he shared with the air around him. His lips were slightly moist and she felt the deepest urge to kiss him. She stopped walking and pulled him closer to her, her hands clutching at his jacket. He wrapped his arms around her body and drew her in.

The glow of the forest warmed their hearts.

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The Start - Short Story

"You'll live," he said.
She stood in front of him like a broken doll. She turned and he followed her. He took her to the tram and waited with her until she got on.
  "Look after Bryan," she said, seemingly at a loss for any more words.
  "That might be difficult."
  "Yeah... well...." She paused. "I won't be doing this again."
  "Doing what?"
  "This...  Surprising you… I won't come to Melbourne to visit you again."
  "Oh you come round anytime you want." It's a reflex reaction, this politeness, probably derived from his English ancestry. She could see he would rather pull out his own teeth without anaesthetic.  

She gave him a half sardonic smile and as the tram arrived, he reached out and hugged her. She got on the tram. She could see his face from her seat and it was inscrutable. Her face let her down. She said if her face were a friend she would have deserted it ages ago though I have to admit I used to love the way every emotion would be betrayed by her features. She always was an unwitting master of a truant countenance. At the time, she said, her eyes filled with water. She said she cried all the way home.

That was well over a year ago. They barely communicated since. They barely communicated when they were together but that's another story.

They broke up during their last year of College, she came home a shadow of her former self. She was pale, gaunt and withdrawn. She found herself in a situation and was lost to it. She succumbed to a fatal pleasure that left her in knots later on. Knots she couldn't untangle. Knots she would never release.  

I know this because she has been my best friend since we were sixteen. When she came home from travelling, she sat at my kitchen table and confessed all. She told me about how she sent him an email and met up with him. It was as if she wanted me to replace his hands, his words and make everything better. Of course I couldn't. I didn't even like him. I always thought they were an odd couple. When they were together she would hardly speak about him and if she did, it was always in a light-hearted manner. She never acted like she was IN LOVE with him. How could I know? How could any of us have known?

She sat there, her brown hair falling into her long pale prematurely aging fingers which held her head up.
  "It's not as if the pleasure is worth it... The touching of hands was lovely. Just a small graze of our hands set my body on fire. And kissing... Well, that was amazing too."
I looked around.  "Do you want a cup of tea?"
  "Yeah… okay," she paused and then said, "When we first started going out that's all we used to do. Kiss. It used to go on for hours, at first we were all over the place but after some practice we were a perfect fit." She smiled at some forgotten memory. I brought the tea over.
  "Is it worth going over this…?" I asked.
  "I'm sorry am I boring you?"
  "No, it's just… well, so much time has passed, and he definitely doesn't give you a moment’s thought."
  "Time is an illusion."
  "Bollocks."
  "I know," she smiled again.
The tension is relieved and I started telling her the local gossip she missed while she was away. She sat there and listened but I saw her mind and eyes wander from time to time.
  "It's late. I should go."
  "Yeah, okay." We hugged and she left. Only the transient warmth on her seat and an empty mug a reminder of her presence. I wonder what she left him that night, was it the sound of her cries or the blood from her period on the sheets?

A couple of days later I received a phonecall from the Police. They said she had overdosed on headache pills. The neighbour had gotten worried because they heard no music from her flat and she used to have it on all the time. When they knocked there was no answer except for the cat that howled unnaturally at the door. In the end the landlord opened the door with his master key.

The Police said she definitely knew what she was doing. The flat was immaculate and a pile of letters sat on her kitchen table alongside an empty bottle of painkillers and a note with my contact details on. They gave me her keys. I went home with them snuggled into my winter jacket. I sat at my kitchen table playing with them in my hands. Numbness had crept into me. I opened a bottle of wine from the fridge and poured myself a glass. The dryness hit my throat, constricted my thoughts, I dropped the keys onto my table with a clatter, they broke the unending silence between us. Then there was nothing.

I stood up and collected the pile of envelopes neatly stacked, I flicked through each one and wondered what to do with them. They were all addressed with stamps already bought and pasted on the top right hand corner.

  "We were in his kitchen and he turned to me," she said. "He was drunk and I was sober. I should have stood my ground and filled my glass with water. I should have walked up the stairs and closed the door once I entered the spare room. I should have gotten under the cool covers and closed my eyes. I should have fallen asleep alone." Her face was drawn with pain, these 'should haves' biting into her each time.
  "It's done now. Forget it. He has."
  "Just because he has doesn't mean I can," she said. "What's the point in talking to you? You don't understand."

She was right, I didn't. I moved on from one man to the next. Not getting too close but enough so I could call and settle into some warmth if and when I needed it. I had postponed calling her because I didn't want to hear about him again. This myth she led her life around. In all honesty, it was boring me. This unrequited burnt out obsessive love she harboured.

There was an envelope with his name on it. I fingered the envelope. It was quite fat, almost padded. She had taken extra care to put sellotape on all the vulnerable parts of the envelope. There was no stamp.
  "Oh fuck…" I said to myself as I realised what I had to do, thinking of the enormity of the task that lay ahead of me. The imposed curse she had saddled me with.

………

I arrived early and waited for him. I was standing beside a blind girl at the train station, she was so still, at peace, her arm outstretched holding a money box. Lots of people would stop and give her money. She made no attempt at communication, no noise of approval, she just stood still, a solemn statue amongst the bustle of Melbourne's traffic. I didn't give her any money. I just watched her and wondered about her life, whether she was blind at birth or whether it was a consequence she suffered during the course of her young life and then I wondered what would be better. Maybe I should have given her money; I don't know why I didn't.

Finally he arrived. Well, I say he arrived but it wasn't the he I remembered. When I saw him again I was shocked. It looked like a lifetime had happened to him since I had seen him last. In my head he was still a boy, strawberry blonde hair and faintly oriental eyes. In my head he was still her college boyfriend.

We looked at one another solemnly and he took my bag and led me to a coffee shop. It had started to rain outside so we sat and casually watched the water hit the glass. I pulled out her letter and gave it to him. He took it and played with it in his hands, his name subtly folded in the creases.
  "What happened?" he asked.
  "Maybe I should be asking you that… Sometimes I forget what she said to me, as if I half listened only."
He nodded and opened the envelope. Inside was a silver bracelet, chunky and square, very unlike her. I had never seen her wear this piece of jewellery but then she never wore any jewellery whilst I knew her. Some paper fell out and he sat there and read it. The rain poured and some time passed before he put the letter down. He just sat there completely still. His face did not change. He folded the letter.

  "Can I read it?" I asked. I was desperate. I wanted to know more about her, suddenly, now she wasn't here. I wanted to know, I wanted to hear everything.
  "I guess" he pushed the letter across and our fingers touched lightly. I took the note and started to read. It was his turn to sit and wait.
When I finished he looked at me and said "She was always into hyperbole."
  "She was in love with you."
  "I know."
We sat in silence for a while. Both of us tried to digest her words, the words we didn't want to hear whilst she was alive. I looked up at him. He said "Don't get emotional. Come on, let's get out of here."

We stood and walked up the street and into a pub, he ordered a beer and a white wine and I found a booth for us to sit. He brought the drinks over and we drank in a moody silence.
  "I bet you never thought this would happen," he said.
  "A slight understatement," I replied. Now I had given him the envelope I didn't know what I was doing here. He was not in the mood for a post-mortem and I felt uncomfortable asking him personal questions since he seemed strangely unmoved by what he had read.
  "Was she your best friend?" he asked.
  "Yeah, I mean, yes, she was," I said. Then it suddenly hit me. She wasn't coming back. All the memories I have of her are mine alone. 
  "Were you ever in love with her?" I asked him.
  "At one point… yes I was. But she wrung out every last drop and towards the end I didn't even like her."
  "She just wanted you, no one else in her life came close."
  "She wanted a version of me, not the real me."
  "Really?"
He sighed, "I don't know now. Those words suggest differently. She could never speak clearly in front of me."
  "I can't imagine that," I said.

He looked and touched the envelope, "When we were friends she was vibrant but as soon as we became lovers it was as if she lost her power. She wilted…' Almost as an afterthought he said, 'Yet she could always speak to Bryan as if he were a close friend."
  "Bryan?"
  "He's my best friend. Bryan and her always got on really well."
  "Oh I vaguely remember that name."
  "Really?"
  "Yeah, I think she mentioned him once or twice."
I look at her handwriting on the front of the envelope. Once a teacher at school commented that her handwriting looked like it was trying to hide something underneath the twists and turns of her pen. Her writing always looked neat and tidy but you couldn't read it unless you took a closer inspection, even then it could be difficult sometimes.

  "I don't know why I didn't listen," I said.
  "Don't beat yourself up about it."
  "You're not very forgiving are you?"
  "What does forgiveness have to do with this?" 
  "What a waste."
  "I know," he said.
Then suddenly I was angry at him. "You bastard, she was in love with you and you don't care."
He looked at me, his face was so calm, and quietly he said, "You don't choose who you fall in and out of love with." Then a little louder, "Anyway, why are you getting angry at me? You are the one who said you didn't listen to her."

I wanted to cry but instead I finished my wine and stood up. "I've done what I came here to do. I am leaving now."
Suddenly he said, "Don't go."
  "I have to… I…" I stuttered.
  "Really don't go. I don't want to be alone."
And so I sat down again.
                                                           ………


Both of us cradled a cup of coffee in a café, we had been working in town. She was saving to go away again and I was saving to do my Masters. Not for the first time our paths were diverging but we sat in the warmth, laughing about the Messenger in my office who had taken to dropping in on me whenever he could. He was old and full of wrinkles but obviously thought he had a way with the ladies and I gave her an impression of his slow Australian drawl, and described the force of his breath reaching across the table towards me. She was laughing so hard it pealed in the coffee shop. Some of the customers looked up to see what was going on.
  "It stank!" I cried.
  "Don't tell me anymore! Stop! I am going to piss myself," she clutched her stomach.
  "Well, all I can say is that I am staying sober at the Christmas party this year," I said, trying to keep a straight face before I collapsed into giggles with her.
  "Oh, no more no more…"

On the day she left to go travelling I picked her up very early in the morning. Her neighbours were going to look after the cat and she had paid the rent six months in advance. She asked if we could stop at the beach before we went to the airport. She asked me if I would come in the sea with her but I had tonsillitis and didn't want it to get worse. I watched her from the car park. It was a wild windy day and the sun was just changing the colour of the sky. The whole beach was deserted. She walked to the edge of the ocean and stripped naked. She walked into the sea as if she would never come out. She was as wild as that sea, I could hear her whooping, screaming, crying and I watched her cavort in the waves, body surf to the sand and then plunge into the next depth.  

I had made some Green Tea in a flask and she sat sipping it in the car. Her hair was a salt mine and she brought half the beach onto the floor. She gave me the biggest smile. "You know I am probably making the biggest mistake of my life."
  "Maybe."
  "But you know I have to do it."
  "Yeah I know." 

She had only been back a few days when she came around my flat. She had hardly told me about her travels, she just spoke about seeing him again.

She had said that once they arrived in his house he just sat down in front of the television and ignored her. After that he started to read a book and when she would start a conversation he diverted it to the trivial. She wanted to get to the axis of which their relationship was based but he was happy to stay on the fringes of such a shadowy abyss. She had thoughts that she wanted to share with him yet he ignored her pleas and pretended ignorance. He compelled her to see only his reality, that of an austere environment where his bitterness kept him from understanding.

  "I'm powerless," she said.
  "No you're not."
  "I am in front of him. It's a battle of wills always and I cannot and do not want to fight him. It's easier to let him think he is right and I am wrong."
  "Does that bother you?"
  "It must do because I keep trying to go back and explain. But the more I do that the more set in his ways he becomes. I can't fight a misunderstood memory no matter how much I have changed."
  "Then let it be."
  "Guess I am gonna have too."
  "You'll still live." I said.



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Inner Shaman Adventures - Cacao Ceremony 14

In the stillness, there was movement. 

In the still black sky, the world was to be blessed with the light of the new moon. The stillness of darkness, the movement of light. As the moon phase transitioned, I stirred from the stillness of sleep as I had experienced the movement of a nightmare. I woke up in tears and didn't know why, somehow depths had reached my shallows and I was overwhelmed.

The tears did not stop and a question was on my lips.

'What if..?'

Suddenly I was pierced with regret and decisions I had taken in my life seemed wrong. Retrospective movies played out in my head as my body trembled and my heart contracted in pain. I called my friend and she soothed and bathed me with the voice of wisdom and compassion. I rocked and rolled but was then cooled and calmed. After, I felt tender, raw, but able to get out of bed and start the day.

I realised I had been forcing myself to move on more quickly than I was ready, trying to figure out, plan and execute. I have been eager to birth and manifest a life I want but without due processing of the emotions of moving on and letting go. I have been trying to build without the necessary foundations in place. In the name of movement, I forgot about stillness. 

The next day I sat in the Shaman's space, ready to be with Old Mother Cacao again. I told the Shaman that my intention was to cultivate patience.

I pulled the card, 'Trust.' It was of a person leaping into the unknown into the glowing pink. 'That which can be taken away from you is not worth keeping, and that which cannot be taken away from you, why should one be afraid of its being taken away? It cannot be taken away, there is no possibility.'

 

Oh fear... I see you now. You are shapeshifting into regret and forcing me to look at my world from a space of scarcity. I see I need to trust the world and understand that regret is of no use to me. I am where I need to be.

I drank in as much Cacao as I could.

After grounding us, the Shaman asked us to send love to those who have hurt us and suddenly I saw him. I tried to send him love but all I had were words and I stood and spoke to him in a dismal attempt to try and resolve regret. Yet I became involved, had forgotten the Shaman and had forgotten why I was there. 

After a while Old Mother Cacao came for me. 

  'Honey, what are you doing?'

I felt her gentle hands on my arms as she guided me away.

 She sat me on a small stone wall in a forest and rolled mapacho for us to smoke together.

  'This time to yourself is for you to fast forward your spiritual growth. If you were in a relationship right now you would not have the time or energy to devote to this important stage in your life. Become self-sufficient. You are on your way to becoming a Shaman and wise crone, trust all that is happening to you. Don't allow regret to disable you.'

 We smoked. In the stillness of the forest, I watched the movement of whispy vapour dancing in front of us.'

  'We know what it is that you want. Let us arrange it for you. Stop trying to force it. All you need to do is to let go and TRUST.'

  'Become still in the movement.'

The Shaman asked us to bring in our future selves. I saw myself sitting in a hut in Peru.

  'Don't forget Peru and your yoga teacher training. Concentrate on manifesting these aspects of your life and everything else will fall into place. Your intention for this lifetime is to effect positive change in yourself and others - keep hold of this. Always remember your intention.'

I saw myself in the retreat centre I will one day be a part of, the Shaman was there and she was dancing with wild abandonment. I saw people leaving their sadness at the door and finding pure joy within. I was there, able to create this space.

I pulled the card, 'The Master' - I know I have been given the tools to be the Master of my own life.

Aho.

You can find more adventures in Shamanism here: Inner Shaman Adventures

 

Cacao Ceremonies facilitated by Rebekah Shaman

 

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