Vulnerability ---

--- goes away when you display it.
This is the irony of it.

And so it goes that ...

... I am afraid of you knowing me. Really knowing me. I'm afraid if you found out about my deep, black secrets, those only whispered under my breath, you might find the will and reason to tie me to a wooden stake and burn me, in front of my peers, with good reasons. Good reasons that everyone will agree are good reasons.

They said, "Yes, it was hard to watch her burn up in flames because i can only imagine the pain, but something had to be done -- something had to be done to make an example of how a person shouldn't think."

And with that the community nodded their heads simultaneously, as the blue flame gripped me at my feet, rose up toward my chest, licked the tip of my chin then began to consume my face. As I fell into my own ashes my consciousness looked about me, from the ground. I looked at the departing crowd shaking their heads, sighing with relief, holding each other and some clinching their fists. They walked away, some looking back, as I lay their awaiting my wind to disperse me into everything -- soon I will become, everything. I will become the chill at their shoulder, the quick light to their right, the sudden noise in their silence and the abrupt choke in their throat.

I have become the sigh in their fear. I don't mean to become any of this. It's just that there is nothing else to become. There is nowhere else to go. There's just this place that I've begun to occupy that's somewhere between my reality and their denial.

Physics says that smoke will rise from a burning fire. If the fire doesn't get your flesh, then the smoke will take you from the inside out.

I, like smoke ,have been released from the flame and my spirit liberated from gravity. And they ---- they are still trapped by the very thing they believe keeps them free. And yet somehow, someway they envy my burning, wishing they had the courage to let the flame come for them and deliver their catharsis. But instead, this healing they scream for in their dreams is only experienced by observing someone else's endurance of pain.

There's an envy here put upon me. There's an envy that I have dared to hold the sun in my own hands, like an innocent child that's only interested in the light of it and not the burn.
And this is my vulnerability. It was, indeed standing there in front of them with all of my darkness awaiting the light to absorb me.

vulnerability ...
... goes away when you display it.

This is the irony of it.

My vulnerability died with my darkness. And now the pain of that birth has left me raw, open, sticky and new.
I have entered a paradigm shift and will return on slow moving, distant storm clouds.

I am with the thunder. I am with with forgiveness herself. Eyes darting and wisdom in my mouth -- it has brought me to today.

And today I am fearless - absolutely fearless.

Yet, vulnerability is still a distant sound in a canyon that echoes to me as it bounces against stone walls - reminding me that she's never too far away. Never, too far away.

So, I journey.
I journey.
I journey.
I journe
I journ
I jour
I jou
I jo
I j
I
.

This has been a long time ... I've been traveling in a worm hole through time and space, sniffing here and there, jaw-dropping once in a while, bored other times and floating in a stream of it all.

People, sometimes - misunderstand me. Yet, the world keeps hanging out in the middle of nowhere and my life, life in general, is all but a sneeze away from being over.

I haven't been here, blogging in a while. And why do I do it? Why do I even feel the need to externalize myself, to whispers, fast moving lights, business, the all of everything that is so self-involved that they don't see the person next to them. We have become like those horses trained and bred to toil and sweat without ever really knowing why we did.

So, I'm here in the middle of this place --- this place where everyone is so busy doing something --- alot of nothing. It is inevitable, if you're paying attention at all, that someone/people might believe that what I'm saying comes from an arrogance or some superiority complex inside of myself. I can see how and why some may think that. Or, maybe they don't at all. Perhaps it's just myself not wanting to meet myself. Maybe I'm afraid of myself and all that she is, has been and is becoming. Maybe I have to pretend I am less than I am so that I feel I have a place in this world - so that I won't be misunderstood.

My life is turning. Not left or right, but several circles forward and upward, forward and upward, forward and upward --- my soul is rising through perpetual motion itself and is sustained by the surrender to it.

But, who gets that? Who wants to get that?
So, I guess just posing these two questions would suggest that my knowledge isn't knowledge but instead arrogance. But, the arrogance isn't in me. It is confidence earned through humility.

There is a thing about a person becoming who they need to in their lives. All things around them -- people around them -- are scared. So, what's there to do? Crash in a deserted island like the folks in "Lost"? Plan your own fake death? Otherwise, it is hard to get away... to get away from the gasped breaths of those witnessing your transformation right before their eyes. They are not really asking "why are you doing this" but rather, "how dare you do this" ... how dare, you.

The arrogance of knowledge only exists in the culdasac of it -- in the backwater of the ebb and flow. That is to say, arrogance can only suckle on the certainty of denial. Denial then breeds more denial. Then this breeds vulnerability = fear = making excuses = projecting on everyone/everything else but yourself and your own weaknesses. Then, there you are. If you are known to be someone with knowledge to challenge the world that will require a little bit of tolerance for pain, then you are .... arrogant. Suddenly, everything you know (that you earned) is not what you know.

You are arrogant in the face of the judgement that comes from arrogance.

So, you -- "I" -- will stand there in the puddle and watch and listen to the lips slowly moving and sounds of whispers all around me. And I won't look down and I won't look forward. I will look upward and wait to rise, like steam into a never-ending, misunderstood and omnicient sky.

When you arrive there --- it's hard to be, here.