living in terry tempest williams' words

I have been living in Terry Tempest Williams' words (Leap) for the last few days. no, few months. I breathe them, I think them, I hear them, I write them over and over so that I can see them, read them. They are in my steps, my downward-facing dog, my cooking, my heart, my mind. They are becoming my voice (for I have always had trouble with words of my own, but these words are becoming me, or I am becoming them. I am living them--I have always lived them--and so they are my voice. I am going to start to speak them now).

"I walk these streets of Madrid anonymous, faceless, attached to no one. I do not cast a shadow. If I were to die, no one would know my identity or whereabouts. The sky is grey. The buildings are grey. The mood is grey. The color of retreat is grey. Nothing has meaning. I can find no meaning...Boundaries dissolve. Teachings dissolve. Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? I honestly don't know. Say it again, I honestly don't know. Nothing makes sense. El Bosco's Hell is seeping into the world...Hell, I am certain, is the place wehre one is afforded no movement. Motion. Emotion. To remember what moves us, inside, outside. Perhaps the most profound barometer for misery is when we can no longer percieve beauty. To feel beauty. Hell is the Great Forgetting..."

The last several days have been embodied by this for me. The color of retreat is grey. I am grey. The sky is grey. We are all grey. We are all too mixed up. I am too mixed up. There is so much that it is all running together--all the colors and forms and ideas together come out as grey, a wall of grey. I am paralyzed. I am blocked, I am afforded no movement in all of this grey dissolution.

And then I was painting and found the deliciousness of paint, gobs of paint (I have never used gobs of paint), and then there was zinc white, oh it is too big for words. Things started to move again. It was like sunbeams and rainbows, (says Mr. Fox). It was the first time since April that painting has felt good, right. I could feel my lungs coming back to life. Just the first few breaths clearing out the old air, enough to unparalyze me, to be able to communicate something. Now I know that I need to get to this:

"There are others climbing the ladder. I want out. I want down. I have to wait my turn. Turn. The millstone turns...The tightening of strings, in my head I feel a tightening of strings. There, a woman hangs from the strings of a harp like a crucifix. Father forgive them for they do not know what they do. I do not know what to do...they are standing in Hell, all of them in Hell, my mind is in Hell, they are tromping all over this landscape, go aware, go away. Leave me in peace with my own contemplations of the Dark. It is Hell to know the Devil is the intimate near faraway stranger, strangler, our own family, this is clear, this nausea I am feeling is the anxiety I embody when I cannot breathe, I cannot breathe in this crowd of too many feats, feet, these noxious smells must surely pass."

I have not forgotten this, but I have forgotten how to express it. I have edited myself down to never speaking of the obsessive dark. I am afraid to speak of it. More than ever now, I must say it somehow. Because hell is next to the earthly delights. ("I will balance this die on my head and say to the inquisitors, yes there are times I inhabit Hell right here on earth and yes there are times I inhabit Heaven right here on earth. Can you hear, I hear that fresh, fertile cadence coming out of the forest, dancing on trees, fallen trees. We too can dance on the floors of decaying wood. Can you hear, I hear, that wide-open joy singing on the sage flats, meadow lark, meadow vole, hidden, it can be hidden, all this is hidden, until the faith of falcons, peregrine falcons appear midair, drop and break through a haze of indifference, the greatest sin is the sin of indifference, and dive past our sluggish hearts and we are jump-started by beauty, rising and falling beauty, our native pulse restored.")