On Some Parallel Earth ...

All day I have been feeling cynical, pessimistic.  Maybe because it was April Fool's Day, which for some reason has always annoyed me.  Maybe it's because I cut my hair off yesterday and I am processing the reasons and ramifications of my drift back towards invisibility.  Maybe it's just because I am lonely.  I don't know.

Just within the last few minutes, though, a metaphorical beam of moonlight passed through the windows up here in The Womb, and the vague scent of peace, if not quite hopefulness, entered.  Liam O'Flynn played the uiliieann pipes and I thought of my upcoming travels, where sadness & longing will be so near, yet so far away.

It was an interview on oprah.com, of all places, that really stirred me up.  Maria Shriver spoke with the poet Mary Oliver, who I've always meant to read but never have, and I was reminded, as I am periodically, that I am a poet, and that poets have special powers.  We can dance with words, and in dancing, create new worlds.

If I were to create a new world, it would be a world where I was loved, instead of admired, for my authenticity.  It would be a world where I could burn brightly without having to give up my solitude, where how I looked yesterday morning would be met with as much indifference as how I looked this morning.

My science fiction mind never lets me get far away from concepts like multiverses, and parallel earths.  I'd like to think that on one of those earths, I didn't need to pause my transformation after seventeen months.  I'd also like to think that on one of those earths, I never had to transform in the first place.  Wouldn't that be something?

For now, though, on this earth, I have work to do, a broken heart to mend, and very little strength for the daily grind of being both hero and punching bag.  What an unfamiliar feeling it was this evening to walk through the grocery store, and through the mall, completely unnoticed. After seventeen months of stink-eye, it was a revelation.

Maybe with some of this newfound quiet, I should get back to the business of changing the world, of being creator and destroyer.  Or maybe I should just read John O'Donohue, or Donald Hall, or Mary Oliver, and put one word, one foot, one breath, in front of the other.  Either way, maybe I'll be too occupied to notice how much I miss her.