Art of Integration 2017

Contents

Prelude
A love letter
Message for when it is time
Window of opportunity – a song of trauma
Become wide

Prelude

I.

Sages say
all is well.

All is well.

I spent nine whole months in a womb.
I was madly in love.
I was deeply in love.
I know what ecstasy is.
I know what pain is.
I know that I want home.
I know that I feel little compared to who I am.
I know I don’t feel little enough.
I was with my mother in the big lake.
I was with my grandmother in the big lake, many times.
I have an uncle.
I know what nature is. I know what my nature is.
I felt grief.
I know what solitude is.
I know what disconnection is.
I know what connection is.

All is well.

It is all done. It is all full. It is all here.
Loss is love, figuring that out.
Deep loss, deep love.

All is well.

It was all settled a long time ago,
it was all settled in the first few cells
and even before.

I went to school.
I had friends.
I was afraid.
I was pushed.
I was aggressive.
I liked to sing.
I liked to move.
I liked to love.
I liked to be aggressive.
I knew nothing better.

I loved my friends.
We used stones for sport in the breaks,
we threw them at each other,
to practice dodging and to
exert force.

I do that on the mat now.
I do that in dance.
I do that with my relatives, my friends and with strangers,
and foremost with myself.

All is well.

I was clever.
I was trembling.
I was glowing.
I had a challenging relationship with air.

I love air now.
I love water, fire, earth and the sky.

I learned to love the hard way,
the soft way,
through fissure,
through rapture,
through nourishment,
through gifts,
through touch,
through whistling,
through jokes,
though movement
and through tales.
I learned it on my own skin.

All is well.

I know hatred.
I know you, in me.
I react.
I present.
I allow.
I resist.

All is well.

Prearranged, already done.
I embody impatience.
I embody all.
I fail, a lot.
I blame, a lot, contract.
I know guilt intimately.
I embody vastness.

I was in love six times.
I don’t know really, about six times.

All I lived through is full, it was done,
it is complete, it is at least as much a fact
as loss is a fact. It is vast.

I am incredibly lucky.

Through my eyes I have seen my mother trying to commit suicide,
through my heart I have seen much more.
It was on the same day as my first kiss and as my first breakup.
It was done and it is full.

I have seen rage.
I have seen my process, I felt a lot.

I know full rest. I know abundance.

I had birthdays!
I had my third birthday and I had a huge cake, two stories high.
I found it too little.

All is well.

My grandmother taught me how to whistle, how to ride a bike
and how to play badminton. What a stupid name, we call it featherball.

I can remember lying on my bed, watching the patterns on the wall,
the witness was already there, at maybe three, four or five.
Same as today.

I have shown my genitals to girls. I was shown genitals. Maybe too early,
huge energy went in that direction. Now I am much less interested.

Going round and round.
And at this time a bit differently.
Cycles, and at this time a bit differently.

So much movement, so many emotions, such thickness of them, covering all,
playing hide and seek, moving, moving, moving, never stopping,
whirling. I stop and there is the eye. The world is in the eye.

I am weak sometimes. That teaches me a lot.

I know what health is. I know what sickness is.
Maybe I know much much more than that and I just don’t remember.
Where is it now? Where is the experience now?

Where is him and her now, I don’t say names and I don’t say qualities
because you know.

All is well. Doubt.

My father hang himself when I was 18, if I remember correctly.
I know little, I am not even sure how he went.
Haven’t seen him since a good while then.
It was settled when he was one or two cells and even before. It is like that.
Not everyone has a chance to know the breath.

All is very well.

Once I was very scared of him, or maybe twice, or maybe more times than that.
He loved me though, very much.

You know there is war. I know war. It was done when I was a cell or two.
I know my grandfather’s war and I know my great-grandfather’s war.
I know my grandmother’s fate. She waited for me to find her until she died!
Not in person. She was alcoholic by that time. It ran in the family.

She was the other grandmother. Grandmother nevertheless.
This one on the other hand was fit, feared nothing since she feared everything.
She was strong.

II.

So my father.
My mother.
Home.
Siblings.
Animals.
Trees.
Patterns.
Lights.
Colours.
Sounds.
Smells.
Forests.
Big beautiful lakes.
The sea.
Stars.

I love the moon.
I listen to the sun.
I can hear your thoughts when it’s time.

All is well, they say, welcomingly, with a boundless heart.

Boundlessness beyond expression, folding into itself, weaving and
standing still at the same time.

It gets vaster and vaster and thinner and thinner, subtler, just barely there.
At the beginning or at the end.
Light. All at rest.

I faintly remember.

All is well.

My grandmother (the one with the whistle and bike and badminton) loved me to pieces.
Basically everybody loved me to pieces.
I am extremely lucky.
How couldn’t I feel all this now?

I do have hard times. I do have seen and felt terror, book-worthy fates and stories.
Some first-hand, many of them second-hand, it is here, now!
It was always here.
It was never ever second-hand, first-hand,
it was just weaved into the system so that I am here.

I was born with a fragile immune system. Or so it seems.
Or maybe I was just – surprised!
What’s with this flesh?
How come?
It was so calm and it was so vast.

I do have a nervous systems that plays tricks,
or at least this is what I see, maybe all fantasy. It may just be fine.

All is well.

I read the books. Good books. That is done, too. Oh I love so many things.
I have seen the sea.
I stood on a mountain and on a dirt pile.
I dig holes.
I built little houses.

I love knives. That’s from my grandfather maybe. From both of them.
One a smith, one a woodsman.

What else do I need?
What else to have?
What else to know completed?

I raced. Loved it. It is done as well.
Once I built good health for myself!

How come, where to come now? I can only come here. Why the movement?
Love.

On and on and on.

I learned this word vicarious.
All good there as well, even though it kills in wrong hands.
In my hands, in proud hands.

I’d lie down and feel whatever there is to feel,
the feeling for, the feeling instead, the contraction,
the lack, the love, the joy, the ease, my feet,
the grass, the dirt, the moon, the sky.
I’d think a lot because I do. How long, I don’t know.
There is a difference now, and that is the silence in the background.

I keep coming back to my mother, vicarious you see.
I can pity her, pity all who is not able to, who had little,
who grasp for way more. The guilt and all, all here.

All is well!

She spent nine months in a womb! You know the drill, I just said it all!
It is all done, ever ready! All very well!

The gaping hole of a gushing wound, all good, fire in the nerves, the pain,
complete hopelessness and infinitely narrowed in perspective beyond belief.
All very well.

I used to break apart and I still do so. Against my will or at will.
This is how near I am.
As I write this I am breaking, shifting again,
going deep with also loosing ground now.
It would be good to get physically connected right now, with a human,
to tell someone I want a touch or two now.
Sometimes I want to be held or caressed.
Sometimes I just want to be left alone!
I used to move my feet into funny positions and it was the most natural thing to do!
Nowadays I move my feet in very strict patterns and I don’t call for whatever I want.
Back to the ground now.

A simple life. Sounds very complicated with such rich embroidery
and it is so so simple after all.
A few events.
An unspeakable amount of atoms all moving in one direction.
Support beyond belief. And it does not matter, it is just there.

I like a good bean soup nowadays. Toblerone. A gasp of air.
A glass of water.
To play a game.
Soft pillows.
The colour white.
A long walk.

More important than many things – or all things basically.

All is well.

And I do have hair, funny business.

Also, I look at you in me lately.
I try to uncover the parts hidden by your name and flair.
A good way in, as long as so restless I am.

III.

The boy who picks up fallen leaves and puts them back up.
A boy who does not want to accept that his family
brings the presents, not Christkind or Santa Claus,
and there are no Krampuses.

The child picks a living leaf, tears it up and throws it away.
Who to blame?
The adult does the same.
Fall comes, the leaves fall, who to blame?

Spring also comes, and winter, summer,
there is lushness, scorching light or frozen wilds,
who to blame?

We live and die, who to blame?
Who messed up, who have failed?
I shake it out of my body again and again,
I know no better until there’s grace,
all in cycles again and again,
and each time a little bit differently.

What’s this tension that does not look like grace?
Where are those goggles, or gogglelessness that shows grace?
I can’t fly out of my chest in infinite softness all the time.
I am too fragile. I’d like to see it here,
in the flesh, here and now.

It must be between atoms, between moments, between words,
in the swiftness of contraction,
in intensity, in the ease of rest.
Where else could I look if I am here? What is not here that I need?
How could I be more here than that, in the flesh, breathing, bleeding,
feeling, sneezing, wanting, playing,
avoiding, watching, working? Maybe too busy organizing?
Cut out the middle man they say. The middle man is also it, it must be,
everything is it. We just don’t prefer it fully, don’t love it fully,
don’t love us fully. We can, right here, now, in all this fuss,
just lie back down, resting our weight in and on our rib cages and we would be
carried that way, no more, no less, it just happens on its own.
Slumbering now, twenty minutes to lie back down,
whatever minutes, words and wordlessness are,
and let’s do it when it is doing time.
My bed also carries me somewhere.
On your feet!

A love letter

The white bird of happiness.
A white man.
Three feathers, trinity cross,
three colours, (blue, yellow and green),
three pictures, (all the rainbow),
three paintings.
A couple. (Pain in the abdomen.)
Synchronizing, mixing the sides.
A cup. Water.

Dear Me,

Go for it! Go for it! Go for it!
Go for it! Go for it! Go for it!
You are fast.
Just go for it.
Go for the clothing brand,
go for the process, go for love,
go for romance.
Go for it! Go for it!
Go for it or fly for it.
Go for it. Go for the body.

Breath.
Time.
Slowing down.

Stay calm. Stay wide.
Go for it!
Go for it!
Live that shit.
Enjoy the beautiful abundant you!
Never hide! Go for it!
Fall and raise! Go for it!
You are wide. Be wide.
Lush. Dark comes around, goes around.
Round and round,
and you can stay
wide as you are.
Breathe!
Wait! Enjoy your companion, time!
Slow down!
Waves. So what? Learn!
New moon! Each cycle.
Just do it. Be watered!
Love. Love. Love.
You are life, limitless,
ever changing, rising-falling.
Pain. Love her! A big chunk of you! LOVE!
Stay wide, always wide,
as you are.

Fly. Keep the ground.
Walk. Love. Be patient.
Stop if you must or feel like.
Pray. You are doing it for yourself.

Go if you have to. Stay calm.
Not sure about this part,
or if someone else goes.

Round and round.
Stay. And go for it.

Go for it.

Go on.

Love.

You.