Heresy

"Pottery and Memories"

'she comes down from Yellow Mountain,
on a dark flat land she rides
on a pony she named Wildfire
with a whirlwind by her side,
on a cold Nebraska night

oh they say she died one winter
when there came a killing frost
and the pony she named Wildfire
busted down his stall
in a blizzard, he was lost

She ran callin' Wildfire
She ran callin' Wildfire
She can callin' Wildfire...'

*************

Its funny sometimes, how things lost from your past come back to you. This song was one of them..not the kind of thing I normally listen to by any means now, a soft, sad 1970's song about woman and her horse, both lost to a blizzard from the perspective of the man that lost her. I was too young to remember the song coming out; it would have been many years later that I heard it, via my mom or even my grandmother as she had a taste for a lot of 1970s bands even though by my teenage years she was of some advanced years.

Its happening a lot lately...not just with music....everything from rediscovering old songs I once loved to just revisiting parts of myself I'd forgotten.

Its probably because I'm getting rid of so many things now...selling them, giving them away, throwing them away..everything is just..ending.. Or beginning, or both. But that is the nature of beginnings and endings, isn't it? One occurs, the other must by definition follow. Even the ending of the life is the beginning of some patch of earth getting some good old biological fertiliser, or some funeral parlor worker's bonus cheque for selling yet another overpriced, pointless 'death box'.

I'm emerging from these last couple..no wait, let's be honest, its been almost 8 years now, since the day I set foot on the plane and left America for the UK. So let's just say..really...8 years of what I didn't think my life was going to be like. Not that I didn't learn a lot - I did, believe me, more than I possibly could have realised. But I also disintegrated, shattered, got rebuilt, shattered again, rebuilt again...

If I was pottery, not only would I be out of glue by now but the pieces would be so fucking small that I'd not resemble so much what I started out as, as a fucked up mosaic of the events that followed.

But then...maybe that's not so far off after all. I'm far more cynical than I was even a year ago. Darker, guarded, fearful. And yet maybe that's not me changing so much as just trying to protect of what IS left of what I was.

What is left, then?

I don't know. Maybe that's why all these old songs come back, all these moments that are entering my mind, memories, reminders, flashbacks....and yet strangely I feel very emotionless about most of it..seeing things I said I 'cherished' leave this house, I feel nothing. I start to ask myself..

"Did I cherish them after all? Or were they props to a life I never actually led? False satisfactions to placate what was - in essence - a very very unhappy woman?"

Maybe its time to stop gluing that piece of pottery together...and just get a new fucking pot, hmm?

Old songs inspire less emotion than the new ones I discover each passing day now....

Old rules I once lived by that only brought misery I now shun.

With what is left of my life, I'm doing it my way and based on ONE thing - my perceptions of what is in front of me.

Not what I think people want, not what I am being told is expected by the conservative neighbours of my youth, not by the media, not what my friends say (because they too have been horribly, tragically wrong) and not what guilt, fear, other people's morality or anything else dictates. I should, and will be, deeply suspicious of other people's perceptions of my choices..and stop fucking questioning my own so much.

After all, perception is all any of us really have to guide us, and if you can't trust that then you're fucked, my friend, with a big spiked stick. Perception is the root of trust, of self and others. When I lost that ability to trust my own, I lost everything. And people I know that don't have it run rampant through my life now, I see them doubting, self-destructing and questioning like dozens of tiny exploding stars.

And in writing this..about memories, about belongings, about that shattered pot I called a soul.. I've realised something.

You can give away whatever you want, sell it, break it, give it away - I've done it all these last few weeks and none of it matters as much as getting that one elusive thing back - the ability to trust my perceptions. Nothing is worth as much, nothing was as expensive to lose - or as critical to recover.

But first - I need a new pot.

Forged by my own hands, to the soundtrack of the future..

Not the past.

I may not be able to get back those eight years.

But I'll be damned if I fucking repeat 'em.

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"I wrote the story myself. It's about a girl who lost her reputation and never missed it." - Mae West
Fireflower's Words of Wisdom: http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/a...ompilation.jpg

I_s_h

You certainly have a direction, and thanks yet again for something to read.

callumf

Heresy - you really are talented.

I'm currently reading a collection of short stories by Joseph Heller - and you really do compare favourably with him.

If you changed the angle and made it an internal monologue you would be up there with the last chapter of Ulysses - Molly Bloom's Soliloquy.

Keep writing this stuff it really does give me food for thought - thank you.

__________________
sigged by Firebird of Stratics! Thanks!

Heresy

I'm speechless... HELLER? I'm ..totally honoured/flattered. Thank you.

I'm glad people get something from them, that is the idea after all, I like to think that somehow people connect with these random musings, gives me a good feeling when it happens.

Many thanks to both of you for reading and you ninja-readers as well, I hope you enjoy the ramblings. I'm sure with everything that's about to explode in my life there will be more to come.

However, upon reflection and re-reading, I really 'do' say fucking far, far too much. I blame our guild, for the word gets used more than Badhew's smiley macro. I shall probably edit this at some point, after all there's so many other words I could use. Its just that I LIKE that one.

*grin*

Thanks again.

H

__________________
"I wrote the story myself. It's about a girl who lost her reputation and never missed it." - Mae West
Fireflower's Words of Wisdom: http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/a...ompilation.jpg