What about MY Dark Matter? plus Robert A. Lowe aka Lichens

Very moving for me, very long (17 minutes), but I found quite worth it. I hear it as a soul gathering courage and reaching out meeting like-souls and reverberating around itself. I love music and the power of the voice, the language that we can all understand.

The snow is falling again, we have almost 4 inches, and it is beautiful. The element that turned the word blanket into a verb! Although I think our culture today allows for the "verbification" of pretty much any and every word.

I love to sing, I have been in a few bands and choirs over the years. Most recently a Pink Floyd Tribute Band called All in All (www.allinall.ca/). We covered all of their songs from the mid 60's to The Division Bell (1994 I think). I got to sing a part of The Great Gig In the Sky, we even put about 10 videos on Youtube. Great Gig was a wondrous experience because there are no words. As the subject matter is one's death, the song is about putting sounds to the feelings one might have whilst pondering death. So every time I got to sing it, it allowed me to channel my rage, my grief out to the audience. While I have definitely received many less than flattering reviews, I always felt cleansed after singing. Detoxed a bit. As if the song were the leeches through which I bled out my despair. In my worst times, I stopped listening to music, I didn't laugh, indeed seeing/hearing others laugh left me mystified.

Yesterday was therapist day, started off okay just discussing the week's events and the puppy (of course!), even brought in my crackberry to show her some pics, however, me being new to the technology, the images remained unviewed. Oh well. Then I went on to describe an encounter I had had with a man busking downtown, he was still wearing a poppy so I thanked him for the music and asked him if he was a veteran.

Suffice to say, bad idea (for me anyway). Tragic story ensued (well d-uh Kel). He seemed to want to talk though, and I tried to listen and then I needed to excuse myself and walk away. I could barely tell Maura (my psych) about it. I cried so hard, words choking out of me wanting to tell, couldn't look at her, I closed my eyes. I guess the story was a lightning rod for every other sadness I had witnessed - mine or another's. It is astonishing to me how completely my sadness and shame take over, suffusing my entire body, and I played cat, closing my eyes in an effort to hide. Part of me understands how the mind can work in these ways, yet my heart is so full to breaking, the proverbial lump in the throat - with me even now. I wonder if therapy is just retraumatising, or instead does it serve to tweeze out my psychological splinters? Some pain in the extraction, some lingering pre and post inflammation, then a gradual cessation of all. What differs is I cannot see the site of the extraction (or the entrance for that matter). There is no where on my body to place it. No map. No GPS. My body is surely storing these memories, I have no doubt, in the U-store that is my brain. I guess there are just many remaining, all jockeying for position, wanting to be seen and heard before they will stop haunting. Isn't this the theory behind ghosts? We are here, despite ourselves sometimes, and we call out in various ways (sometimes encoded and or incomprehensible barely detectable). The catch of being acknowledged. Wanting it, but fearful of the consequences real or imagined. And I am supposed to have faith that these are real and my emotions understandably hyperboled, I am supposed to have faith. How does one have faith when those things which seemed faith-worthy in the past have proven unworthy?

Yep, an emotional GPS would be fantastic. I mean this says a lot about what is considered important in our culture. We have devices to tell us where we are in our car or on foot, devices to connect us to other devices ad infinitum. Soon we will have no need of hardware. So much money, so many brilliant minds dedicated to unravelling the mysteries of space travel, launching thousands of satellites into orbit, detecting the most inner working of atoms and matter, billions maybe trillions spent on the Hadron Collider (and concomitant t-shirts). Yesterday they "successfully" smashed two beams of protons together, falling on the heels of their "successful creation" of a mini black hole Nov 8th). I want someone to detect the whereabouts and characteristics of MY dark matter, spend some money and minds on that, assholes!

Until we get the gist on ourselves, we have little hope of replenishing our planet.