Day 6

The well has been dry for days, if not decades.

Where are my inner-picture galleries?  Has someone stolen them?  Or did I forget to create them?

This well of mine - deep and narrow and dark; plunging into depths unknown: I'm trying to find water.  I've been thirsty for years; I'm tired of wallking on my knees, for hundreds of miles, through the desert, repenting, (Sorry Mary Oliver, I haven't got there yet!).

I don't even know what I'm repenting for.  But my knees are sore, my throat is sand-paper, my eyes can no longer see and the sun has stung my back with lashes that don't seem to heal.

I dream of waterfalls: of standing in swallow-lakes, with streaming falls of misty water, whilst sun glides over smooth surfaces and creates diamond ripples; fragments of rainbows half form and disappear and transcend; the dirt and pain is cleansed, my body feels renewed; I drink and drink and drink.

And I accept this gift of life, as it silks my throat and balances my solar plexus; my head clears for the first time in years, as clear as a Malvern sky, which touches the earth with wool-softness.

The water washes clean the dried blood, the scars, washes the grit, the turmoil, the hardness away; sprinkles my hair with dew as if I was the first grass the dawn timidly kissed.

And my laughter bubbles up, raspy at first, then tinkly, then belly-full and earth-deep: blue birds, robins, blue tits and great tits, dippers and herons fly out of the nearest Disney version of 'Cinderella/Snow White/Sleeping Beauty' to join me in my long awaited celebration.

Yet there's something Disney missed.  The unseen black hole.  The well.  It's not been forgotten.  It has not been left behind. 

The water touches me; yes; the water trickles in and blesses me with flower-rich images of the intimacy and intricacy of Georgia O'Keeffe's brush, but doesn't fill me.  It cannot carry away all the heartache.  The residue, apparently is important, important that it stays; so the pain and the pleasure can embrace, unite and meet without judgment or condemnation.

Where the dark and the light meet - is it painful?  Is it healing?  Is it both?  Or do we just dance between the two - always seeking; always trying to give up this everlasting bad habit of repenting?

The water softens my skin, my mind, but the darkness still burns within, like a black star. 

All is not quite well: but perhaps tomorrow I will write.