No one sees the tears

“There were many occasions when planning an out-of-order sign across your heart seemed the wisest decision to make. Only you didn't. Instead you kept your heart open, invited people in. And even when they were reckless, messy, and selfish, you chose to remain open: a shift that never ends, a light that always stays on, a beacon in the darkest nicht, a melody that carries on. I am in awe of you: an open prairie among an ever-changing cycle of wind."

Courtney Peppernell, Pillow Thoughts

And isn't this the ultimate quest? For what is life other than a test to the openness of ones heart, a profound questioning of your willingness to surrender to the overpowering magnitude of birth and death, even beyond the security of a wishful, binary understanding? So many lives and loves have travelled through my heart and, time and time again, challenged my tenderness, the little brittle way of being porousiously me, under a skin that is both holding me here and eating me up from the outside.

"I yearn too, my darling, you know…because...."

....No one sees the tears of a crying whale.”*

So many stressful conversations formed by the echoing residues of painful past lives, so many not-to-be endings and black-and-white defenses… Our hearts shatter when we turn on the television and watch how violence keeps running through our veins. But we must keep our faith, she must prevail over our minds preference for fate. If its not brutality towards the other that keeps our lifes energy stuttering, its often our desperate self rejection holding us back from supporting each other unconditionally till the open end. But we must. We were never born to be separate. Our very feelings, what else is there, depend on it. For it must be a devotion to the full emotional spectrum of being colorfully alive which fosters our courage to open up. Falling into grace, skin to skin melting away all our relative fears.

Do not close your heart. Breathe life into your permeability. Your love-being is the ultimate dedication of your unquestionable death, a testimony to its lifelong, instinctively intimate closeness.

*artwork by Rogier Roeters