Prompted by Lucy The Eggcademic (she/her) on 12.27.20 in ILLUMINATION: What do you feel when you look at the sky?
It’s Not Difficult to Touch the Sky
It’s actually easy if you know where to look
Thank you Lucy for casting this gauntlet directly at my feet, and I beg your indulgences regarding my decision to respond not with a poem. Thank you universe for my ability to restrain myself from jumping right in, as I am oft prone to do. Instead, about 8 or 9 hours have passed, which included some much-needed sleep, and being just back from my anti-dissociative constitutional, which today I prescribed a little after midnight, I see a prose-response worthy of our prompter, my audience (both readers and writers alike), and my art.
Lucy’s poem is wonderful.
She starts with a “classic” meme and then masterfully distinguishes its meaning from her own interpretation of the prompt. I agree with her evocations. I have often held the same emotions. Before you say I read the poem and “those are thoughts, not emotions,” are you sure? Might they be both? People often introduce an expression of a thought/idea/belief with “I feel…”
Now I digress for a moment. I have no doubt that the meme is well known to “memers,” which is not a word (a bunch of letters connected to make what sounds like a word does not elevate it above internet slang) and certainly is not in my diving-tool which was published in 1968, a year after my start of this life cycle (nor is it in the current on-line Merriam-Webster). So, stating my perspective only, with the use of memes just starting to grow in popularity 25 years ago according to Wikipedia, “Classic Meme” is an oxymoron. “Quintessential” conveys the meaning without being oxymoronic. I’m all for word-smithing and love being a word-alchemist to create irony or some other comedic effect…ok enough of me being a 53-year-old-pedantic-fart…
(oh God I love writing)
Meredith’s conception of God, or the Great All, and how we and our souls fit in, is that when our souls leave the Great All to take human form we contract with the universe to experience certain painful things on Earth that are not spiritual so we can learn what is spiritual (love, kindness, compassion, charity, etc.). At the end of our conversation I was crying. I thought at the time it was the emotion of having a quest for understanding realized.
…
In Delray I would wake before dawn and go running barefoot on the beach with the moon, Venus and Orion keeping me company, feeling connected to the universe. Realization of connection to the universe — that is why I cried with Meredith.
That was from my December 2013 Self-Portrait.
So, the feeling regarding touching the sky that Lucy and I share is: connection.
Now, that my glider has risen as high in the sky as physics and my need to breathe allow, let’s dive!
My first thought about the impossibility of touching the sky was that we touch it, we breathe it, every day, as the atmospheric zone we inhabit is part of the sky. That very logical interpretative answer turns out to be literally false. I looked up the definition of “sky” in my deep-dive-companion — always with me whether diving from heights or to depths — and am delighted that my initial thought was wrong:
The vault of heaven; the upper atmosphere, place of weather; Heaven, the dwelling place of God.
I touch God and God touches me every day.
“Excuse me, while I kiss the sky.” — Jimi Hendrix
I am purposely not connecting all the dots to the thoughts of my subtitle. One of the greatest teachers of life-lessons I had the pleasure of being a student of was my uncle when his Dr. Jeckyl had Mr. Hyde in check. One of the best lessons I learned with regard to imparting knowledge to another in a document is to let them complete the thought for themselves — it provides them with a sense of accomplishment and saves the teacher from being a preacher. If they don’t get it, the wise will ask.
😍
Rama-crate
YG