Homecoming

Last night I slept and while I slept I dreamed. In the dream, I was walking behind my soul. I followed her beautiful silhouette into the blinding sun. The dress she wore billowing out behind her, whipping and waving in the wind, its edges touching my skin ever so lightly. I looked down at the sand I walked over and wondered where we were going. Where are you taking me? I called to her. But she didn’t answer, she only continued forward, her billowing dress enfolding me and pulling me onward. I followed, unable to turn away, despite the fears beginning to bubble down inside my chest.
Then she whispered, Stay close, you don’t want to miss what we’re about to see.

I woke in a haze, feeling full. When I left for work this morning, I had to shake the sand out of my shoes.

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It’s been three months since my return to America. Only 24 hours after stepping off the plane, I was warmly welcomed with a hurricane and it threw me into reality quite quickly.

My adjustment has been seamless, though I often feel as though I’m following this force within me into the unknown. I’m not scared, though others around me seem to be. I watch the confusion on their faces appear when I begin to describe that I’m not sure what I’m doing next, or now for that matter.

I’ve created an existence here that closely resembles the one I left in the village as much as I can in this culture and though at times I feel like I only dreamt my experience in Ghana and never actually left this place at all, I look around at my life and all I see are remnants of that experience. It has changed me deeply, right down to my cells and there’s no going back.

I’ve consented never to force words to flow from me but rather to be still in the flow that is always resonating. When the words are there, I write, and when they stop, I stop. Often, what I write comes to me while I walk. Sentences just begin to form in my mind and the energy and momentum from that creates more and more and then it must get out immediately. Until now, I’ve been unable to write, except for a few feeble attempts of broken sentences, but nothing substantial.

Today, I’m writing and as I type these words and see the black forms filling up this white screen I feel so complete. As though the water tank filled to its brim and it couldn’t fill any more and then suddenly, the engineer came along and pulled the lever down and the tank began to steadily empty. I’m that tank and these words the water and here I go, once again, draining the experience from my heart.

I know this much… I will follow her, my beautiful soul, who knows far more than I do where we’re going, to the ends of the universe because I’m up for the adventure and she knows the way. What does that mean in real life terms? It means that I have to be still and constantly quiet myself and ask, Is this what will make my heart most happy? I know that money will never be enough to sustain me through a terrible job. I’m sure that I must place my wellbeing first, because I’m not waiting until I have a terminal illness before I really start living. I know that if I continue to create the art that beckons me to be created, I’ll never run out of the things I need to live a happy and full life. And, that in the end, I don’t need all that much to be happy and full.

I’m not ending the blog but I know not what it will become either. I suppose it will be like all things I’m drawn to, organic and pure, and it will metamorphosize on its own.

Stay tuned…