Everyone has a comment about Michael Jackson. I'm no different. So far I haven't reflected on his career, his talent, his amazing contributions to the world. I've been thinking about the person who had to live in his skin. The person who seemed to want to do right, regardless of the small or large mistakes he made. My first thoughts were so sad. I cried for his soul. I see him as the poster child for the most damaged adult child of a dysfunctional family/society(though I don't know anything about his family...guess I could read up on it pretty easily now). He's also the poster child to give us an image of cancerous materialism. I watched a slide show of his career on yahoo news last night. I cried that he is human yet seemed so uncomfortable in his own skin, so desperate to get out. I cried because someone so potentially beautiful had become such a horrible image. I don't know what we think we're doing in our society. We each have an idea of why we're here, what we're supposed to accomplish and give in our life time. For some it's simply a not knowing. A going along in the wave of energy that engulfs a soul and hides reason. Could this be it, riding waves of just going along and anything to mask the pain. I was just like the rest, obsessed with Michael Jackson for several years. I probably wanted to marry him. I don't remember. I memorized Thriller, the song and the video. But remembering that and thinking that his talent is gone from this world are not what bring tears. It's that this spiritual being suffered in a way most of us can not imagine because he shared his talent, did what he had a passion for, made his livelihood in front of us all and we judged him constantly. You are so great! You are so deformed! You are so sick! You are brilliant! Can he rest now, ignore the criticism and praise that have flared up after his unexpected death and be answerable only to a loving God. That's the way it's always been anyway.
Picking red and black raspberries at 6pm. A tour of the garden by Maya. She's so articulate now. I was out there with the mosquitoes, the damp air that is summer in Illinois. I listened to Teresa splash in the little blue plastic pool near the play set near the new trampoline with the big net.
Driving with a quiet mind to the coop food store. A walking meditation through the aisles. Dental floss, bar of castille soap, 2 kinds of hummus, chips. I resisted the chocolate. Eying items one by one, weighing the possibilities in a part of my thinking that I can not see if I look directly at it. Outside I sat on a wooden patio seat, laid my food out, read a bit of Pratchett, looked at the sky, the people walking by, not very many on Sunday after 6pm. I called in to a 12 step meeting. I listened. The Serenity prayer, The Problem, The Solution, The Twelves steps, The reading from text, the sharing as each voice gave it's story, it's slice of understanding.
I walked slowly to the car. Once the ac was on, I leaned the seat back, kept listening, closed my eyes, waited. My body sank in to the seat, relaxed. I knew a car pulled up next to me, someone got out then got back in a bit later. I didn't look. I knew the little car was black. Eyes open now, I looked at all the clouds. I did not see shapes, I saw sky, big and beautiful, far away and all around me. Time passed slowly. As I listened I nodded recognition. I didn't give a piece of my story today. I did last week, I will later.
This was two and a half hours alone.