The Surprise of Shadows (for Veronica)

[all photos mine, from Fawe Park, the Beatrix Potter family summer vacation home for many years during her childhood] Sometimes even when I'm looking directly at it, I can't (don't) see what I'm meant to see. Maybe I don't want to. Maybe I'm resisting. Maybe I know it means I have to look even further inward, under the moss and mess and creepy crawlies that have important things to whisper to me (when I'm willing to listen). Maybe I know it means I have to let go of my pride. I'm always rushing to try to put my thumbprint on change, growth ... trying to own it before I'm ready for it, before I've thought about it and let it own ME, shape ME! Even though I know the latter is the better way! Procrastinating on the need for grooming, weeding, admitting, revealing, letting go or taking in ... because I feel lazy and comfortable and lulled -- or scared & inadequate & too small for the task. It's only fear that makes me unyielding, that closes my eyes and emits eerie shivers throughout my skeletal structure. Why are the walls in my way sometimes so much more intriguing, more beloved, more sought after, than the path past them, around them, even through them? God, the looming, imposing, shadow-casting mental structures, facades, moods, self-delusions, ominous speculations ... there are windows, but somehow they are seeing, looking at, ME, and not showing me anything clearly, not providing illumination. Views are sometimes backwards, peering in at me, taunting, distorted. Walls, a tangle of mental plants, with the desired vista in the distance but so much in the way to overcome. This is what finally moves me to surrender, to open my SELF, to take the risk, to imagine 'what's the worst that can happen?', to feel THAT and tremble through the pain of it so that I can take action to prevent it (the worst, I mean, not the pain), to free myself of anything stopping me in order to at least do SOMETHING toward my objective ... once I've done that? I can see more clearly what's beyond, what's possible, and what's needed from me to effect it.

My V-Luv and I, you see, had become/have been kind of distant, not a lot of interaction or exchange, not much communication. It was so gradual that by the time I realized it, it took my breath literally away, and a big hole opened up inside. And the longer I waited, without breathing, to just ask, 'Hey, wazzup!', the bigger the hole, the more colorful my dread, and the more powerful, the louder and more insistent, the voices saying, "She doesn't love you anymore!" You know, Veronica and I have never met, in person. I thought, in the twisted way fear creates, that maybe she'd moved on to newer, more interesting bloglandia friendships, that the electronic magic had gone!

For the second time in the years that we've known each other, I had to say, "Veronica, I'm jealous." And then 'splain myself. Allow myself to be hurt and confused and needy and emotional and scared and just plain vulnerable. But this time, Veronica said it first! I've been shocked a few times in my life, but never like hearing her say that to me. Suddenly, fears and creepy crawlies and walls and distortions and neediness and big huge playground-bawly-sized tears morphed, for us both, into the mode of transportation we needed to cross, and to close, the distance. And just that easily (well, not 'easily', but you know what I mean), all my ducks (or geese, in this case) were swiftly in a row again. And once again shadows give way to internal panoramas, light, air, blue skies, and lush green connection, communication, and reiterated, joyful, jubilant LOVE!!! Hello, breath! Hello, whole internal self! Hello, happiness! Hello, New Attitude! Hello, my Soul Sister, V-Luv, Cabbage Girl!!