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MidnightRainfall
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Name: Hija de Miranda
Interests:
Christianity, music, writing, nature, philosophy, spirituality, history, psychology, astronomy, guitar, reading, Romanticism, analyzing works, idealism, poetry, the ocean, piano, environmentalism, the promotion of social justice, Eastern thought (Buddhism, Daoism, Jainism, etc), cultures and regions around the world, rain, journeys of self-enlightenment, seeking knowledge, activism, body modification, driving alone to new and spontaneous locations, humanity, observing, landscape photography, snow, nighttime, and anything enigmatic and/or elusive. There are more. I gain interests too often. :)
In existence lies everything and nothing.
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  resonantambience
Member Since:
2/13/2005
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| The smoke billows towards the towers by the sea, leaving the city-dwellers gazing into the horizon with wariness and wonder. To them, the source of the murky sky is a minor nuisance at best, and a confusing distraction at worst. The loud hum of cars cuts through the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, leaking its noise pollution to the untamed wilderness that lies in unrest beyond the worn pavement. Each driver is burrowed in their home-on-wheels, changing tracks and radio stations, pausing occasionally at nostalgic sounds that permeate their ears.
Thirty miles east, a herd of mule deer are running away from the sense of impending danger. The smoke rings a familiar alarm, and many separate from their families, lost, trapped, surrounded by the raging, natural process. Some mule deer find refuge in remote canyons, seemingly in safety, while others are not so lucky. Elders, scrub oaks, and manzanitas burst into rapid flame, stripping the peaks bare of their lush clothing, and gutting the canyons of their old-growth sanctuaries.
A tear makes its mark known on her cheek. Her gaze remains fixed on the mountain range in the distance. Without a single blink, she begins to nod slowly. Surely she understands the cycle that all life clings to, the beauty of the circle; however, she had formed an undeniable attachment to these visions of heavens-- these "plantations of God", as Emerson had once put it. Many days were spent in retreat where the ashes now congregate, and where the animals dwell in unison no more. Many days where enlightenment knocked on her thick door, where she was gifted with the opportunity to mesh with Her once more. Many days, oh many days, did she cry and rejoice alone, in agony and in passion, surrounded only by the pine trees and the sage plants. She remembered the radiant moon that illuminated the sky on one of her night escapades, staining the boughs with a dim, ominous glow that awakened a drive deep inside of her. She wouldn't forget the precious solitude. She wouldn't forget the bounty of the forest.
As you remind me of your cycle of life and death, I bid you a momentary farewell. You are not gone. You are in a transitional state again, as you always have been and always will be, she thinks.
Still, her attachment to the place that once was never completely diminished, nor did the longing for the ability to spend only one more hour by the waterfall she honored. In all honesty, no home felt more rewarding or authentic than the endless canyons that she had once so gratefully wed.
You are right, my daughter. I have not departed. A different stage of my cycle has begun. Remember:
I hold the keys for construction,
and a hefty handful of the end.
I have a tendency for destruction,
but the ability to mend.
And amidst the tears, a smile begins to form.
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| It is a deep yearning, a stinging pain, an endlessly growing fear, a paranoia that eats away at me. But there is the uncontainable vision of something new lying ahead, and that vision somehow manages to bag all the negativity up and transform it into a courage I've never experienced before. What lies ahead? Where is this path I'm paving leading to? I'm trying so hard to get rid of one of my greatest problems: indecision.
It is time to create a road, and stop idling because many paths seem equally as fulfilling. It is time to pave a new path that integrates as many of the other paths as possible. It is time to stop cowering from the future. I'm terrified. I'm so beyond terrified, and always push these thoughts away because they lead to anxiety. As I write this, actually, anxiety is attempting to take over me. This is big for me; this is huge. It is time to decide.
After that, it will be time to advance with all my strength in the direction I will have decided to go. The next few months of my life will, unless I cower to my defense mechanism of indecision again, be instrumental to all that I've been building towards. It is time to step out of the back seat, allowing impersonal and irrelevant-to-me goals of others drive me. I must take the wheel, and I must take it with passion. I will shiver, I will cry, I will be ridden with anxiety and fear, but at least I will have the wheel in my possession, in the way I should have always had it. It needs to be done, and it needs to begin now.
I will not settle for inactivity any longer. I will not settle for inactivity any longer. I will not settle for inactivity any longer. There isn't as much time as I foolishly thought there would be. Action, I embrace you. Ready, set, go. | | |
| It sounds like a disgrace to the gift of life to say, but I have come to terms with the idea of dying tomorrow. I am okay with the idea. I do not wish death upon me -- there is much I still wish to experience -- but I am okay with today being my last, if that is in store for me. I have been gifted with this ever-so-elusive and wondrous 'life': I have cursed life, considered taking [my] life, rejoiced in life, been granted the opportunity of knowing others in life, encountered so many mysteries, thus far, in life. How many of them can I honestly say I've found the answers to? Not many, if any at all. Do answers even exist to the questions I perpetually bring to conscious thought? Who knows. But searching -- my dear God, searching has been greater than discovery. The search has humbled me to the realization that I am nothing in this form. Do I know if discoveries lie somewhere? It's not relevant to my human condition. What is relevant is the fulfillment the searching, the passion to be, brings to me.
I am not writing this to state that I am done with what life has to offer. Such a statement would be a disgrace and disservice to the wonder and unabridged mystery of living. I haven't even begun my second lap, if I am gifted enough to remain alive for awhile longer. There remains endless landscape to explore, and I am humbled and deeply grateful for the opportunity to tread it. The purpose in this reflection is to reaffirm to myself that I will continue to search, to love, to worship, to breathe, to cry, to seethe, to humiliate myself, to suffer, to question, to wander.
One of my favorite quotes from the band Winds is, "Beyond the world I wandered to find a birth in my death, and at the crown of my journey, I saw dawn from far away." The more I think about this line, the more I don't know if a perceivable crown to my journey exists here on Earth... and the less it matters. In fact, the journey in its entirety may be the crown if I let it be. I am so humbled by the beauty and severity of life, so grateful to have the opportunity to explore its terrain. May each day be equivalent to a lifetime, with every dawn signifying the beginnings of existence and every sunset signifying the end. What a glorious sunrise, what radiating light--- but also, what beautiful stars await the twilight sky, and what an empowering moon shines amidst even the darkest night. | | |
| For what feels like forever now, I have been continually beaten into a mush of apathy... by none other than myself. In attempts to resurface my passionate self, I post lyrics to a song that gives me a rarely-felt motivation for, as the song puts, "my will to be". This will serve as a reminder to listen to the song that brings me a haunting conviction to live according to my ideals.
Winds - Passion's Quest
In the time of silence,
I saw a trace for my will to be.
While in the remnants of my heart,
I saw them shine through clouded eyes.
My time of silence represents, metaphorically, the extended period of apathy I've locked myself into, the lack of motivation to be productive in ways that satisfy my existence. My escape routes, detours, and road blocks I have put up for myself are all manners by which I've silenced myself. More literally, I have silenced myself by halting the one thing that gives me a sense of truly living: writing. I've been too afraid to translate my thoughts into words, because I increasingly find my words to be meager attempts to explain the storm of concepts, memories, and emotions that run through my veins. I still don't feel satisfied with writing for this very reason, but I have to live with that. There is no improvement without practice, I've come to realize.
My "will to be"-- in other words, my motivation to exist and function-- has made itself apparent again more recently, whispering ever-so-gently at my conscious and unconscious mind. A trace is all I need, but oftentimes this trace is ignored. What remains appears to be found in my 'heart', my emotional center. The imagery of clouded eyes literally causes me to shudder. I don't think I'd like to formulate words explaining why.
In the depths of the night
I reach beyond the brightest stars.
The darkness has hovered over me -- I've allowed such-- and the stars seem to become more distant the more I continue my existence lethargically. Somewhere within, there is a desire to reach beyond the "brightest stars", beyond even my fondest goals and ideals. As long as the stars can continue to be seen, there is the hope that I may reach out to the ones that shine brightly to me.
And I touch your wings with my remorse,
As I drain my fountain of spring.
My deepest reverence.
My exposed serenity.
This is perhaps the most chilling part. The thoughts conjured up by "drain[ing] my fountain of spring" bring anxiety and I must not contemplate too long on what in that statement causes my fear. I am not too afraid of aging-- it is inevitable and I accept it-- but rather, I am afraid of aging apathetically. Almost deliberately, the guitars here become frantic and disorderly. I never want to lose the everlasting wonder I have for the world, no matter how frequently or heavily it may go into hibernation. "My remorse" is directed towards God, for taking His dearest gift of life for granted.
From the depths of my boundless heart,
I pledge myself to thee.
A reaffirmation to live my life with the sense of wonder, to subtract the fear of my past and future failures, and to move forward only with a pure readiness, an authentic desire to do my work.
My days of novelty have decayed.
I find myself at the end of infinity,
I gaze to see the angels.
As grim (and ambiguous) as it may seem, I interpret this portion obscurely, in ways that both frighten me to action and leave me with a sense of positive resolution. The "days of novelty" describe the existence I've been leading. However, underneath the surface and in the few instances of written introspection, there brewed an elixir more involved, more passionately seeking, more empathetic, more curious, more, more, more. It simply wanted more -- and this needs to become my cure of choice. This needs to be manifested more strongly to myself than it has in the past. There is no way out of my lack of passion than by enduring a quest for it: passion's quest.
The "end of infinity" may be the end of what seems to have been a lifetime of apathy. The angels offer me a deliverance that needs to be realized, one that can no longer be taken for granted. There is no foreseeable end to what I've set out to do, only the continual attempt towards an existence more pure. And if I could spend the rest of my life using up all the extractable effort in me, to no avail or no result, then that is all I could ever ask for. I simply want the opportunity to try, and the passion for the journey. | | |
| I can feel the music permeating my skin and vibrating into every cell of my body. It's a fuel to every crevice of me. All of the sweat, blood, and tears I form are fusing in a cascade of emotion, a magnificent flood of musical elevation. The highest mountains I scale, the darkest pathways I run through fearlessly. In the forest, I stand alone. The trees appear to be billowing over me, the midnight air allowing them the gift of ethereal motion. They seem to dance to the reverberation of music coming from inside my soul. The moonlight captures my heart; my brain is encapsulated by the beating of the drums. I can't imagine a sensory overload more intense than the moment I feel my bare feet sinking into the mud. I'm melting and becoming one with myself: the earth I am falling into slowly but steadily.
The song ends in my head but another begins, and my plight away from the glowing embers of hell continues. I smell the smoldering smoke in the wet, cold night air, but the road ahead of me is all I am allowed to focus on. Every experience tonight, captured by photographic memory, begins flowing in layers, and all of what makes me human becomes known. I blend in with the environment, with the world, and I'm not separate. For this moment, I am not separate. I never was. I've held a wall up, away from her, scared of what she possesses, but I have shattered it with the aid of the night air, the music, the trees that call me, the mud that is slowly consuming me whole.
The canopy of vegetation blends into the night sky in a portrait the most talented of humans cannot portray. The moon— it whispers secrets to the stars that I cannot interpret, only sense. The limitations of my humanity become more apparent, but they are in no way restrictive. It is not a bad sensation to understand that many mysteries lie beyond my cognition. It's not scary to imagine that I cannot analyze beyond a certain point. Apart from my mind lies a world I will not scale the landscape of, but that's okay. I am immensely grateful to be given the opportunity to experience what I feel now; there is nothing more that I could ever ask for. My mind begins to wander further:
Beneath our everyday lives lies the premise for something more. Moments that chip away at the ego lurk in the shadows of consciousness, waiting for any opportunity of release. Meditation, distress, boredom, realizations of finitude, psychoactive drugs, music, art, poetry, natural wonders, in-depth conversations, connections with other humans, reveries, and more, give way to the potential for transcendence, for opening up a world of experience not often perceived. The world we reside in, the flow of life we belong in, is not a mundane one. In fact, it's so overwhelmingly beautiful, so humble, so righteous, so filled with potentiality that we may overlook what is in clear sight. This belief has manifested itself strongly the more I have allowed myself to look for it in the everyday motion of life. I do not want to die knowing I took what simple pleasures I have been given for granted; this gift of life given to me by Him is not to be wasted away. The chapters are being written each step that is taken.
In the recesses of the forest once more, I see shadows in my peripheral vision. They try to grasp me and enlist fear in my heart, but the music overpowers any chance for negativity to take hold of my once-paranoid being. It's like being latched into a pleasant form of simplicity, where complexities, though important at times, can be tossed aside and looked at later. There is nothing more vastly rewarding than the mother nature that blankets me and puts me to sleep in her arms. Her gentle kisses bring a smile to my face, where it is locked in place and cannot fade. I've been sheltered somewhere, lost and found and lost again, in a state of flux, under her canopy. I am safe here.
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