Play of She Is

The play had ended, the egg had dropped. Her pulling, yearning for Him had also been His play. She hid Her tears of joy in Her quick movements of gesturing for Her tuxedo jacket; not stopping to put it on . . . moving through the dreams of Her sisters' confusion; the question of "what is this play all about?". . . their looks towards Her for answers.

Outside the theater, which was once a military base but now a substratum of cultural, artistic rectangular cubicles—the drably-painted muddy brown buildings sifted Her historical perception from past wars to current tyrannical conflicts. It all ran through Her . . . yes . . . another time of great danger . . . yet . . . she breathed sweetness, exclaiming to the starry winter sky . . . "Love does exist in all this."

Her steps quickened into a dancer's military march, outpacing the women who accompanied Her—to hide Her tears of joy from them. How could She share with them, Her beloved sisters, Her friends, when all they could share with Her was their confusion and bewilderment? They lived in a world of struggling for visibility, enraged that their power was cut from their lifeline. She represented to them their hope of an enduring healing, but Her gestures of love were often embarrassing, disconcerting to them.

She could feel them wanting to know—for Her to console and instruct all of them this time, always another again and again. They clung to Her footsteps, cautious and needy for confirmation. An out-of-season warming wind increased in its vigor—Her friend Kali understanding and protecting Her vulnerability—blew, drying the wet particles from Her face before they could cause damage to Her make-up. She did not want to give Herself away. They would not understand Her tears of joy. They would only become more afraid, more bewildered and invisible to Love's happy cry.

Love does exist in all this!

"Are you coming to dinner?" a sister dared to ask.

"Yes . . . I'll see you there." She unlocked the door of the "I Am She" vehicle . . . Her one, bold extravagant announcement to the world. She laughed at Her foolish daring and at the recollection of people who, passing Her vehicle, would stare at Her wondering who "She" is when all she appeared to be was a small, ordinary greying woman—on the other side of youth and not quite wrinkled enough, grey enough, fattening enough to be someone's grandmother. "I Am She"—I Am She conjured up images of the desirable woman of youth: big breasted, rounded, full lips, long golden hair, precision features accented beautifully by even, careful applications of paint to draw out her desirability even more. Their instant conclusion . . . How can She say . . . what nerve for Her to announce publicly . . . advertising it on Her car for all to see . . . we can see . . . She is only an aging, average-looking woman. Anger drives by me. Fuck you—the traveler's only greeting. Love's form is not discernable. She Is only a turn on for their lust and the blame for their shortcomings. Will She remain forever anciently invisible to them?

The play! It had ended with the intimate poetry She had longed to hear. The story of Her darling, yearning to be reunited with Her, gave way to the moment of transcendental visibility. His true voice spoke through the speakers. He was not there through His character representation, or even in the beautiful prose He had written for Her. He was there—visible—most personally with great emotion, speaking the words of love She had so longed to hear. It was the sharing of love HERSELF that He understood and lived with Great confidential emotion.

Only He could see, He who Loves all could see beyond Her ordinariness. His love of Her supported Her wings of free form, of freedom, and the drama of their separation—the mysterious disguise of a mortal frame of breasts and vagina. Eyes that cannot see did not feel their secret. He and She lived, played as the Compassionate Heart—that is everything. They are the One . . . the One that is called the Heart.

Yes, She stood seemingly alone as a great paradox for a design and purpose of Her own. She recalled the play, it was His story of His great Love of Her . . . the ordinariness of His realness and realization. Her own story, apart from Him. He knew of it, but could not reveal Her symbols to the audience. She would have to stand alone, apart from Him, to tell Her story, enact Her symbols of Her love for Him so She could touch the hearts of those whose pain has been invisible for too long. This is Her story; Love's cry—Her call for your remembering. What have you forgotten in your dream of standing apart, alone without Her?

She was never born, nor will She ever die. There is a great mystery about Her— indeed She Is the Great Mystery. But for the mystery to be appreciated it must become a story; a heroine who through Her ordeal, Her passionate great leaps of heart-warming, ego-dissolving revelation, can be discovered for those who have lost their ability to be awe-struck and happily mystified. She cast Her disguise, Her roles through that of a mother, wife, woman warrior, goddess, artist and lover. And so the I of Her began its story for you on a spring day in early May in the year 1952.

She had been so long forgotten by the children of this world—the grown children as well—that Her arrival went relatively unnoticed. There were no great wonders of nature's proclamation—She Is HERE! Maybe the sun shone a warmer glow that day, or a prancing, gentle wind caressed the tree tops or a hummingbird hummed Her name as it drank deeply of the nectar of a spring flower. There was no one to record or notice any subtle brightness that dripped through from the divine world. It was an ordinary day. The third child (one of six children to be) breathed Her presence through the rasping cry of a tiny infant. The welcoming committee, Her parents, dreamed that She was their child and that Her destiny would be like their own. They would teach Her the ways of middle-class life in 20th Century New England America. They gave her the name Karen—Karen King.

Karen was a quiet, shy child who did not demand much attention of those around her. She enjoyed stealing moments to be alone, apart from the busy comings and goings of a large family. Sitting on the top branches of a maple tree with sketch pad or writing tablet, or pounding a ball on the suburban streets or walls of the neighborhood school, she felt a calm, a sweet deliciousness that was hard to feel with people. She wanted to please her parents, sisters, brothers, strangers . . . to be happy with them; to share a moment of sweet sighing that she felt when she was alone, but she did not know how. There was a hardness in people, a desperation that frightened her. They told her that "life was hard," and they did look hardened. She could feel what people would not express honestly, and this split between what they felt and what they allowed themselves to speak of, was a craziness that she would have to adapt to, to be able to survive. She wondered, "What are they so afraid of?" When she tried to ask, the doors shut tight, the locks clicked a metallic slap—Keep Out—no trespassing, subject to criminal prosecution, wired fence— security system procedures.

What is this world? Pain, great pain is what she felt in people—the older the person, the greater the bitterness and the denial of sweet deliciousness. What is this great fear, this never ending pain about?

And so . . .

Her first lover

Her first teacher was fear and the pain it necessitates.

A split between Heart and mind began for her. The sweet sighs, the delicious mystery of life's vibrating presence hid behind the curtain of the enclosed room, her house of wired walls. In she went—inside her house, body of pain, body of imagined pleasures. She became a world into herself—the drama began its tragic acts of dilemma of a human destiny. Sealing the wall tight—Heart and mind felt split—in and out of her—in, was guarded; safe, but threatened retreat—out, was the "hard rock," the world where she had to fit in.

Fit In

In

The world is 4 billion boxes

In and out

Guarded heavily

Mind exist

apart from Heart?

Catch on . . .

Hold on . . . It fell in on her. She learned the fearful roles of pain. But still—on a rarer occasion now—from a slip away from time, pain and fear; from the masquerade of in and out—a tingling would circle her body, splash its waves from her Heart center. She would have a moment of recognition that it (the world she was cast in) was only a dream. She stands free in the dream. She Is . . . then it left. . . it left her with an aching, a yearning for a lover, her love . . . a teacher besides the Ph.D. of fear, and its closest relative, pain.

Her body grew, and the sweet sighs of Love's contentment had visitation rights in her house of stucco only in deep dreams of revelry. She took to her lessons like a dazed wanderer, finding herself lost in a foreign land with no skills for survival other than her body's instincts to stay alive. Were these foreign faces, with chiseled frowns, really her beloved? She wondered.

People talked but not about love's bliss . . .

People worked but not to share their creative skills of

loving expressing means . . .

People played only to exhaust themselves . . .

People worshiped the shadows of light cast by the

reflections of their own fears.

A moment of satiating the senses was the only form of pleasure they could feel, and even that was done through their walls of concrete signals.

Heart and mind split. In and out became her experience completely. The dry, lifeless foreign country became her residence, where she lived with a deep scowl of sadness on her face. Humor was at the expense of others.

She became Karen King—a character taught by pain and fear, that was invented by those who needed her, for those who could not feel She Is. A dream now became her living, her mistaken reality. She did not feel her Self. She gave her life to those who would mold her destiny to one who resembled their own.

So they thought,

but even their power did not come from the fear

caused by Heart and mind split.

This forgetting, this submission, was a mysterious gift that She Is gave; and Karen was given a clue that was tucked into her seams of funky garment. It was a slip of invisible paper, a note that contained a message she would only read in moments of great desperation. The seven words—dearer than any commandments, that were sewn into every pore of the freckled fabric of her skin read:

Remember that you are really Free Flow.

And so the cast of characters made their appearances act by act, and Karen's dialogue with the world began.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"Karen, what do you want to be when you grow up? . . . You're almost there, you're seventeen now . . ." Her father asked while passing the flowered, ceramic bowl to her that was filled to the brim with mashed potatoes.

She ladled a blob of potatoes. The direct question shocked her. Her father never asked her questions that gave her a choice, a decision of her own power. No images of white, lacy wedding gowns, wiping tenderly running noses of toddling infants or two-piece navy blue suits with briefcase under her arm, dreamed up expression. What! What do I want to be . . . am I not now being? she wondered.

He looked at her expectantly. She could see that he was getting bored already. He was waiting for an easy, pat response. The standard, . . . "I want to be a nurse . . . I'll get married . . . teach or something . . . have kids" . . . that's what he wanted to hear. She stared into her potatoes and mumbled, "I just want to be . . ." and then looked up, looked directly into his eyes and said, "Happy."

He leaned on his elbow to get closer to her face. She was flushed and repulsed by his cigar, beef-breath. Did I say something defiant?—it felt so. She could feel anger—it frightened her and she backed away from him.

"Happy!" He exclaimed, trying to sound parentally loving. THE big advice, the Ph.D. of pain sermon, here it comes . . . "Life is hard my dear . . . being happy is not what it is about . . . You'll never find happiness. Get serious . . . what do you want to be when you grow up?"

Be happy! She screamed inwardly, but outwardly he saw her numb; (good, she's afraid of me) hanging her head, vacantly staring into her mashed potatoes.

Mary, her mother, changed the subject. "Ted, did you pass your test today?" she asked of Karen's younger brother.

Obviously she failed this one, the one of knowing her proper place. Echoes of "As long as you live in my house, young lady, . . . you will do as I say . . . and feel what I let you feel . . . help your mother to clean, cook, there lies your destiny . . . you'll be happy with that . . . don't dream of anything else . . . these tapes were the screaming subliminal messages of childhood. If it's good enough for me, it's good enough for you.

Dialogue, inner, outer dialogue. Heart so split from mind. She yearned for a lover who could come into her inner sanctum. The in of her, where Free Flow hid, felt choked up by the rules of conformity. Free Flow was like a peacock-colored fish drowning, rotting in polluted waters. She had to create a bridge to clean the foul-smelling waters, where a spring of hope could spurt from the glass-eyed sands of disbelief, to call forth hauntingly, beautiful visions from a clear water oasis.

She was ready to end Act One, to leave her first shelter and seek a more love-promising teacher.

He was a tall, dark brown man, thin, appearing to be all arms and legs. He held his back and his head upright, which compensated for his elongated limbs and gave him an air of personal dignity. A halo's growth of six or seven inches of curly black hair smiled with no compromise from his head.

She felt his call to her. She stood frozen, suspended from time in the crowded halls of school learning, waiting for the promise and the bridge of sexual desire—the call from him that he could hold her in his deepest place, the inner sanctum of his heart. She was ready, her body's hormonal juices flowing. He would hold her gently in a whisper, his premonitory pledge. Her teacher would be most auspicious, the moon of desire.

And of course, the course of true love or any kind of love never runs smooth. It cannot be compared to a gushing of water, filling its pools of refreshment simply by the ease of gravity. Love/desire is always contrasted against the "proper norms" of passion and is plummeted against the current, the split from Heart and mind. Karen's awakening into love, sex, desire was from the start doomed to tragedy, and if it could survive it anyway, it would probably take the usual stale forms of mediocre settlements for the uses and exchanges of power.