Sometimes It Rages

"Sometimes it rages...even when it's calm, rock a little..." - Stevie Nicks, Rock a Little, 1985

***Tea and Backstory***

I found my old Xanga tonight and ran across a lot of my old writing from 04/05. The following is an excerpt. BTW, yes I am a writer. I publish poetry now under the name WEST. I even have a WEST MySpace. It was kind of hard reading this, but very thought provoking. Enjoy
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sometimes it does rage, even when it's calm... maybe this line defines a greater part of me, and of my life, than i've realized or admitted. i'm a constant cycle of change. a classic Libra, i've long suffered from 'greener grass' syndrome, for as far back as i can remember. well, at least as far back as i've been able to make my own choices.

those of you who know me (or have been reading this blog for at least several months or more) know this. for those of you who don't know (new readers) a little backstory:

i grew up near a very small town (not *in* but near the town, yeah, out in the country) outside Oklahoma City. for 18 years, i lived there, i had friends, i didn't give thought to leaving. it was my life, and it was all i knew. all of us out there cascading through the days before the internet. once upon a time, i had my music, and my muses, and i became a writer...

by the time high school graduation came around, however, i was ready to fly as far from that place i'd long called home as i could. ever since i did leave, a month after graduating, i've in a sense been on the move ever since. but where have i gotten? a treadmill of different locales, or would-be-locales...

then, in February of 2004, my mother died. my dad had gone on a couple of years before, and the world exploded, at least for me...
the desire became even stronger to leave. i'd moved from Dallas back to Oklahoma City to be close to my mother, in case anything happened. Along the way, i got to reconnect with several old friends, make more new ones than i could be grateful for, and spend time with her. thankfully.

when she died, i went a little nuts for a while. i moved from apartment to apartment, unsure of what i was going to do or how. i got on anti-depressants immediately, to avoid the coming storm. a good idea, and a bad one. they helped, but they helped suppress the emotions i needed to be feeling. only now, a year and a half later, can i even begin to think about her or look at pictures without being overcome with emotion and emptiness, and that's only half the time...

i came very close at one point to abandoning. that is...i nearly sold my car and much of what i owned, and i was going to take my journal and some clothes and head west, in search of some sort of meaning to my life, in search of a 'me' again... needless to say that didn't come about. for the better? perhaps. i may never know.

but the desire was partly fueled, at least geographically, by the trip i took just 2 months after she died. i went to the desert, the great American Southwest, for the first time since i was a kid, and only then with my parents to Carlsbad and back to the rolling plains of Oklahoma. that trip changed me in a lot of ways that i still carry with me today. and it made me realize now more than ever, since my whole life had changed, there was something else out there, and in a lot of ways it was a new start. after all, it had to be...

now there's the future possibility of going to Orlando, and i've still always wanted to see Chicago, but then i think of the west as well...where i left a huge chunk of my heart. someday i know i'll go back for it...

my goal for over a year was getting out of Oklahoma. now that i've done that, it truly feels like many boundaries are just gone. i returned to the place where i was born and raised, one parent gone, and the other went as well. with the exception of the ties that i will always carry with my friends there, my life in Oklahoma is over. i'm no longer tied to that land, and now i see that even more clearly than before. the sky is open, and the world's still out there to explore.

i wonder where it will take me, and if i'll ever stop moving...
i wrote this last night, listening to this very song...



The Bittersweet of Letting Go

I’ve driven red through those mountains
Turned turquoise beneath open skies
Danced interwoven new dialogues through my mind
I closed my eyes once
And let it all go…
I headed west
No. regrets. Nothing to lose
A year or so ago I was a danger rumbling under brush
A drought fire waiting to ignite fast and hard
1 am, all fresh from death
And Amarillo through the fog and rain
Do you remember the rear tire…?
7 am blowout at 105…
Wow, myths are true about western people
I was true for the first time in such a long set of days
And months
A pendulum bearing swing
Back to the center
My charkas are highways heading into
Sunset desert; Stevie my guide
There’s something about putting footsteps
On a place someone else did thousands of years ago
A migration…
Do you know what it means…?
What it feels like to let the world go
Release yourself to the desert sun and the sky
You
Break
Apart
And reform,
My own siege perilous
And I’m reborn
I’ve driven high through those mountains
Felt the hum in my bones of those valleys
I loved you both, but life was fragile
And didn’t come with a set of Robert’s Rules
Dancers together now, I know
And somewhere under the sunset and chill of falling nights
I’ve got to cut myself in half once again
To let the rest out, and go on
You’re in my very being, DNA altercated and modified
You taught me my values, my thoughts, my fears
But when you’ve lost everything
It’s got to be a fresh start from there…
I’ve got to be anything now
To look out for myself, alone now
When parents die…
We’re pushed to the front of the line
And I’m not taking anymore chances with my time
It’s got to be a fresh start from
Right
Here

06/21/2005 ©Jase Donaldson