The Stairway

Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.
Like a worm on a hook, like a knight from some old-fashioned book
I have saved all my ribbons for thee.

Leonard Cohen.


How does it happen that two strangers pass with just gentle swipes of the shoulder, and one keeps steady while the other's heart leaps as if in the midst of danger? And all the while it's only the brussle sprouts who bear witness, and they could really care less. They're already about to be devoured.

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Sometimes the past comes suddenly into the present, without warning. Each time I think to myself, next time, next time I'll be ready. What is it I'm ready-ing for? The final break from the illusion? A breaking revelation? The past to untie its impossibly tight knot?

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I had a dream the other night that I was full of an electric pulse. I went to wash my hands in the bathroom basin and electrocuted myself. There was a violent shaking as a wild, untamed power trembled throughout my body. A bright spark popped and sputtered in the middle of my heart and I woke up gasping for air.

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I go to practicum three times a week and listen to the sorrows of the world. Somewhere inside of me I bear an image of a woman carrying heavy buckets of water from an overflowing well. What is that woman going to do with all of those buckets of water, I wonder. Will it help the well? Will it stop the flooding? She needs to find the source, but she knows that will require that she go down... way down into the middle of the earth. Someone elses earth. Someone elses darkness. Does she have the lantern ready? Does she have the right amount of light so that not only she can see, but that she can walk that other person out too? Or will she discover, way down there, when she finally arrives at the source of it all... that she, and the other, are actually One?