Somewhere In Between (Song Edition)

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Did I say too much
did I cross the line
in the name of love
did I step out of time

Where do two hearts meet
somewhere in between
or on the edge of truth
it’s not always what it seems

Where the river meets the ocean
and the ocean meets the sky
the way we run until we fall
the way we fall
fall until we fly

You know I would do anything
just to help you shine
except go against
you know I will not go against this heart of mine

So I won’t break your fall
and I won’t toe your line
it’s gonna be your own truth, darling
that gets you through this time

[Chorus]

It’s not that I don’t love you anymore
it’s that I love you different than be before
I love you even more and more

[Chorus]

Hold on
hold on
hold on
hold on
hold on

Somewhere In Between
© 2011 McCall Erickson
All rights reserved

***

[Working with McCall]

[Related: Somewhere In Between, Somewhere In Between: Relationship Edition]

When Nothing Saves You

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I remember the exact moment. Late night grocery shopping. Cookies and pastries to my right. A fellow shopper scrutinizing nutrition labels to my left.

I’d been aching. Big time. I’d been alone. Big time. I’d traveled so far and shifted so much inside myself. (What the hell was I still yearning for!?) I’d been searching through a sea of everything and coming up with nothing. I felt desperate and in need of something to deliver me from my emptiness that night. I looked at the cookies and saw nothing. (And that’s saying a lot because I really love cookies.) I exchanged smiles with the fellow shopper and felt nothing. (And that’s also saying a lot because I really love human connection.) I listened for the song playing over the speakers and heard white noise. (Nooooooo! Not the music, too!)

It was a moment in time. I stood there, a hollowed out statue of my love and loss in the bakery aisle when something rose to say: This is the part where nothing saves you. Not a fellow human being. Not a batch of your favorite cookies. Not a set of 7 or however many steps to this or that. Not a hundred days of meditation. Not a book or a song or a prayer. Nothing. This is the part where nothing saves you.

You’d think that would be the most hopeless, depressing, worthless thing anyone would want to hear at a time like that. But I felt relieved. Because it was the truth. And the cold hard truth feels better to the soul than a soft comforting lie any day.

And because this is the part in any hero’s journey, in any go ’round the spiral where it gets real good. The part where you surrender everything known and bank on the mysterious workings of your soul to lead the way. The part where you find out what you’re made of beyond what you already know you’re made of.

No SavingAnd you damn well better have nothing to hold onto when you get to this point. Because still having something can really get in the way. The alchemy of your soul and spirit have a plan, and your five-sensory self is not keen to it (not yet anyway). You’re being pulled along by things you can’t see and things you can’t explain. You don’t have a prayer, a way, or anything to save you because you don’t need it. Because this particular journey begins where all those things end.

So you can buy the new wardrobe, you can eat the cookies, you can read the blog that everyone is raving about, you can take the trip to Hawaii, you can spend $800 for the latest self-marketing program, but it’s not gonna matter.

It’s not gonna change what your soul has up its sleeve. You might very well be carrying on with life-as-usual on the outside, but when you’re in it this deep, when you’ve traveled this far. When your heart is weary and your bones are too. When you’ve meditated and self-helped yourself into oblivion. When you’ve climbed the 7 steps to happiness up and down and back up again. When your yoga mat doubles as a punching bag, and you’re not sure if God is laughing at you or the Universe is loving you. When you’ve done all you can at the end of every spiritual rope, and you’re falling falling falling… the things that saved you before will not save you now. Because they are not meant to.

You are falling into your own soul, and all you need is that, your truth, the hollowed out grief shape of you standing there in the bakery aisle (the produce aisle works too), and a willingness to do whatever it takes to see it through.

And you’ve got that, baby. Oh, you’ve got it.

***

[ Interested in working with McCall? ]

[Related: Drowning in a Sea of Good Advice, What Keeps Me Going]

 

What’s the Use?

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What’s the use of a question if you ask it in one breath and answer it in another?

Without the time in between to wonder and empty yourself of reasons and things you thought you knew. Without the way it opens and clears and uncovers you. The way it holds you to the fire of your mystery.

woundWhat’s the use of your carbon heart without the pressure of a Dark Night? Buried under the weight of your heavy life. Forgotten, untouched, and alone until the glimmer of a diamond shines through.

Or the use of a lover if she always stays? If you never know what it’s like to call her name, that wanting in your throat, that fire in your gut, ashes to ashes… (it’s too much it’s too much!)

What’s the use of a lesson if you don’t let it teach you? A desire if you don’t let it stir you. A wound if you don’t let it break you. A love a love a love if you don’t let it slay you?

 

Okay. I know this might sound crazy. Maybe even foolish. And I’ll probably hate you for this (and me for asking) later. But oh Beloved, in some life, some time, some moment when it’s just right, will you hold my body next to yours in the whispers of night? Open the door in your chest to the door in mine and let the secrets flow, the fire burn, the sweetness stir between us, planting seeds and tastes and knowings in my deepest well of longing.

And when the morning comes,

before I rise,

leave

without saying goodbye.

Just leave

and don’t explain why.

Leave an empty space so vast, a question so big that a thousand lifetimes of answers could never fill. And then wait. Wait for the songs, the stories, the dances, the risks, the heartbeats, the chances that rise from that place.

You will know which ones they are. You will know them in the quiet space between wake and sleep. In the place where the waves break on the sand and then pull back again. You will know them in a stranger’s eyes. In the grief and the longing and the glimmer there. You will know them in night and day and in the the fine line where they turn into each other. You will know them because you know them.

Ah, what’s the use in this maddening way?

You will know. You will know. You will know.

***

[You might also like: Soul Talk and Between the Heartbeats]

Need a little something something? One-on-one with McCall

Wasting My Life

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I am a bright, gifted, gorgeous, brilliant, capable young woman. If some people knew how much time I spent doing nothing, they would be appalled.

Let me back up.

I’ve done many somethings in my life. College. Performances. Notable social engagements. (Keeping myself busier than shit so I wouldn’t have to feel the gnawing ache inside for something I could not explain and fill it Ben & Jerry’s watching late night TV.) Traveling abroad. Respectable job at a publishing company. Owning a music studio. Touring as a singer-songwriter. (Do I have to go on?)

DylanDon’t get me wrong. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of those things. They were my truth at the time. I loved them and did them with my whole heart and soul. (Therein lies the problem!) Anyone who takes the hero’s journey knows that, when followed all the way through, every amazing something leads to nothing. (Oh my god! Just kill us now! Why should we ever go on!?)

I dunno. Something about realizing that the other side of everything is nothing freed me in unsuspected ways. I stopped basing my decisions on expectations, shoulds, and preexisting paradigms. My inner world grew and my outer world became a helluva lot simpler. (A whole lot less became a whole lot more!) I fell so deeply down the rabbit hole, so deeply enchanted with the mystery of my soul and worlds beyond worlds that I started spinning my life around this strange, yet oh so right, internal axis.

So when people at family gatherings and acquaintances in the post office line say things like, “So….what are you doing these days?” (Laced with meanings: You make no sense. You quit your music career, turned down marriage proposals, have no ambition for typical things. And your ovaries are not getting any younger! For fuck’s sake, what are you doing with your life?), most of the time I just have to sigh and say, “Nothing, really. Nothing at all.”

Because how do you say the unsayable? How do you speak about the life nothingof the soul? How do you describe the worlds that unveil themselves when you strum the guitar just so? How do you convey the alchemy that happens through late-night soul talks with partners and friends and lovers? Or how you’ve seen the sun set a hundred different ways from your favorite rock up in the hills. How the trees have things to say and the sky does too and how “to live is so startling it leaves no time for anything else” (Emily Dickinson). How everything “in here” sings through everything “out there” and how that song is all you care about? How do you explain how much of a something that really is?

You don’t. If it looks like nothing, it’s wasted breath trying to convince anyone that it is something.

If it looks like all I do is wander in the hills and write and ramble poetry and spend endless hours in the kitchen concocting delicious recipes that usually only I eat, or tinker around on the guitar and stare off into space over a cup of tea, then that’s all it is. If it looks like I’ve wasted my ambition, my career opportunities, my potential, my birthing hips, my talents, and my life, then I have. Indeed, I have.

***

[ Working with McCall ]

[ Related: Asking Better Questions, Did I Cross the Line?, Living with Soul Part 1, 2, and 3 ]

Courage, you sneaky bastard!

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Pologram © Tyler van der Stappen

Pologram © Tyler van der Stappen

Courage. We all want it. Like it’s some noble thing. Some magic elixir just out of reach. If we could taste it for a moment, we’d stop floundering. We’d take that leap we’ve been meaning to take, make the changes we’ve been meaning to make, create the life we’ve been meaning to create. Ah, with enough courage, all would be well!

But I’ve never felt more fish-out-of-water than when courage has overtaken me. When it’s cracked the codes to my vaulted heart and seeped like poison water into my rigid bones. Dissolving my resistance. Tricking me into taking a blind step.

I’ve never felt more vulnerable, more exposed, and more afraid than when I’ve had a shot of bitter courage, with nothing to chase it down.

With nothing to hold onto. No rope. No hand. No sound, word, or promise. Just me dangling on a thread of nothing in a space of blinding quiet. (Fucking eerie. That’s what it is.) Feeling like I may or may not have just made a huge mistake. Shame rising up to be tried from the corners of my backroom shadows. The most unenlightened parts of me taking the stage for their turn in the spotlight.

(Wait! I didn’t sign up for this. I took a leap of faith for that over there. Not for this. You must have misunderstood me, Courage!)

And I keep doing it, too. I keep reaching for that enigmatic elixir of courage to give me a boost. (To eff me up!?) To bring my dark to light. Not to fill my gaps, but to make them more apparent. Not to bring me the life of my dreams, but to bring me pieces of myself I didn’t know I was missing. To give me what I need after I don’t get what I thought I wanted. To break what still needs to be broken. To trick me into falling into the fire when I thought we were going flying above it. To burn, to burn, to burn in the depths of my own soul!

So, what I’m saying is be wary of courage. It’s not a desirable thing, really. It’s not what it seems. It’s a sneaky, wily little bastard who will trick you into doing anything for the sake of big truth. Stay away from it if you can. If you have any other options. By all means, stay away!

***

[ Related: Did I Cross the Line? ]

[ Want more? Working with McCall ]

Don’t Make Me Say Love

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Baby it’s a gate
it’s a gate that’s been closing
and I can’t keep it open
no, I can’t keep it open

Baby it’s a stone
it’s a stone that’s been sinking
to the bottom of the ocean
and I can’t keep it floating

Don’t make me say words
don’t make me say love
it’s nothing you’ve been dreaming of
it’s nothing you could dream of
it’s more

Baby it’s a hunter
who’s been stalking where you’re going
pulling back the bow and
letting go of the arrow

Baby it’s a heart
that’s been broken by the arrow
caving in the middle like
she don’t know what hit her

Don’t make me say words
don’t make me say love
it’s nothing we’ve been dreaming of
it’s nothing we could dream of
it’s more

Where do we go from here
where do we go from here
where do we go
where do we go

Baby we are sinking
to the bottom of the ocean
to the bottom of the ocean

***
“Don’t Make Me Say Love”
© McCall Erickson Lyrics 2013
all rights reserved

Waves

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ You might also dig: Somewhere In Between: Relationship Edition ]

If You’re Going to Loathe Yourself

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If you’re going to loathe yourself, loathe yourself.

Don’t skimp, dillydallying around in woe-is-me self-avoidance martyrdom, cursing yourself in cutesy tones and then looking around to see if you’ve caught anyone’s attention. To see if they care.

Don’t give yourself meager portions of half-baked sentiments that wouldn’t satisfy the hunger of a church mouse. Or tell yourself half-true stories that land a million miles from the center of your longing. Or waste your energy cutting everyone around you into pieces only to give yourself sloppy seconds.

Take the knife and stab it into your own heart first. Stab it where it hurts the most. Split open your grief and let it spill to the floor. Hate it for what it took from you. Hate it for haunting you. Hate it for consuming you. Hate it for killing your dreams, for keeping you from doing all you wanted to do and being all you wanted to be.

34269647134642996_smMrKxds_cThere is no room for dabbling now. Stare what you loathe about yourself and your life straight in the face and own it (It is yours, after all. And if it isn’t, what the fuck are you doing still carrying it?)–the mistakes, the whys, the shame, the shadows, the shortcomings, the wtf’s?, the impossibilities, the unknowns, the paths that you are afraid may or may not be written on your soul. And then take off your clothes. All of them. And pull all those hateful things in close to you. Closer. Until there is no space left between you and them. Until the center of where you came from is lined up with the center of where they came from.

And just stay there in that unusual embrace for like two seconds. And don’t tell me you don’t feel something move, something shift, something quiver under the weight of your brave presence. Under the weight of your ownership of you. Under the weight of your truthfulness. Your compassion. Your love.

I mean, if you’re going to love yourself, just really really love yourself.

***

[ Working with McCall ]

The Light That Never Goes Out

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108719778474426533_ErAOc3IU_bThere are so many lights in this world. Maybe too many. It’s hard to know what they all mean and which ones to follow.

There are guiding lights and warning lights and floodlights and emergency lights.

Lights that pull you in and lights that make you want to run and hide.

Lights in buildings and houses. Lighting refrigerators and computer screens. Powered by coal-burning man hours. (I can see my Dad driving his coal truck under the lonely Wyoming sky. Breathing that black soot. Dark shadows in his lungs. Making him cough at night. I don’t like that part about lights.)

Blinding light that makes you lose your focus. Glittery, seductive, dazzling light that makes you say yes when you mean no. Darkness packaged in light and light packaged in darkness. (It’s hard to tell sometimes.)

Borrowed lights, dying lights, and lights that take way too many batteries to keep them shining.

Then there’s the light that dances on a loved one’s face through the curtains in the morning. Making patterns and mazes and magical wonders on sleepy skin. Making you want that moment to last forever. (I like that part about light.)

Ah, sunlight and moonlight and starlight. Starlight that takes hours and sometimes years before we see it on earth. (Light years. There are light years.)

Curious light that shines through cracks in doors.

Brave light that shines on dark closets of skeletons. (Finally! Let them tumble out in a heap of shameless truth bones so we can breathe again!)

Candlelight to honor deaths and births. And special times that have you 94857135873414102_fojEJKyF_bmaking promises you’re not entirely sure you can keep.

Lights you think will burn forever, but they don’t.

Lights you think will burn out any minute, but they just keep going.

Lights that light up dark corridors, making it feel safe enough to travel, only to sizzle out when you’re smack dab in the middle of that tunnel. (Fuck you, light!)

And then there’s the light they tell you not to hide under a bushel. (Let your light shine!) And you do shine! Oh, you do. Except when you hit BURNOUT and need to sleep under the dark covers for a few days. (Which makes you shine even more.)

There’s light you can’t see. Light you didn’t even know you had, but people tell you it sparkles in your eyes and your smile. And shines through the way you love. And fills the room when you walk in. Light that is felt in the way you laugh or make the morning coffee.

And then, there’s the light behind the light. The light that lights all light. The light that never goes out. But here’s the hard, tricky thing about that light:

Sometimes you don’t know which one it is until all the other lights go out.

***

[ Working with McCall ]

[You might also enjoy: What Keeps Me Going]

Somewhere In Between: Relationship Edition

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Something in our souls made it impossible to stay

and impossible to leave.

So we fought the fights that were ours to fight,

cried the tears that were ours to cry,

and tore down walls that we could no longer climb.

All the while, bouncing back and forth between “should we get married?” or “should we live in sin?”

Do we plant roots and settle down or spread our wings and fly?

Break up or stay together?

Give up or keep going? (Because this is hard.)

We asked the questions we’re all supposed to ask.

We asked them. Sincerely. And then tore them all apart.

And somewhere in the middle of unraveling the meaning of all those words while gazing upon each other’s tear-streaked faces,

we found space.

Somewhere in between “I love you so much, don’t ever leave me” and “I hate you so much I never want to see your face again.”

Somewhere in between “I only have eyes for you” and “I’m so free and open that I jump into bed with anyone who happens to stir my honey.”

Somewhere in between loyalty or betrayal (?) free or shackled (?) together or apart (?)

loveandhateblackandwhiteMAKEACHOICEstayingorleavingDOYOULOVEMEORNOT?

Somewhere in between all that, you kissed me

and I forgot my own name

and the sky was the ground, like we were flying where we stood,

like worlds were overlapping and we were in more than one place at once,

and I realized that things aren’t always what they seem.

Yes became no and no became yes and there was room for BOTH and ALL and…

Somewhere in between, we found space

and our souls rose from that space with things to say, with a path uniquely ours to travel,

with karma to lift, curses to break, paradigms to shift, and trails to blaze.

Somewhere in between, we started dancing the truth and spinning the tale that was ours to tell,

a tale so ancient and deep,

stronger than hemp, more flexible than bamboo (this line’s for you, Ty),

bigger than life, bigger than death,

bigger than rightandwrongandloveandhate.

Somewhere in between, it all began.

So it was, so it is, and so it will be

somewhere in between.

Pinhole photo by Tyler van der Stappen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

***

Dedicated to all the amazing souls who have been, are, and ever will be the other half of these paradigm-shifting relationships with me. My gratitude runs deep.

[Related work: Somewhere In Between and Between the Heartbeats]

 

Losing My Will

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photo by Tyler van der Stappen

If it’s true what they say, that the journey isn’t so much about what we have to gain, but what we still have left to lose, then I may be on my way. Because I have lost it. Completely.

It started out innocently enough. Losing my will to pretend, to settle for half-truths, sorta, almost, kinda maybes. So I started saying no. With a smile, a shaky voice, and a lot of apologies. You know, trying to maintain my footing where I still could.

But then it starting eating away at my will to be good. And diligent. And virtuous. Tall orders that I could not fill. (What’s the use of praying when God is everywhere?) So I lost my place among the righteous, among the praiseworthy. Among the…salt of the earth? What’s that?

(But freedom just tastes so good! Truth seduces me like a lie!)

And who could possibly, after even the smallest taste of beauty, maintain a will for sober living? With all the opportunities to get intoxicated on sunsets, and kisses, and touches. With the wind and sun and rain on skin. And being cracked open by love and anger and laughing and crying and all the other gravities of being human, with soul rising from those cracks and spilling over the edges… I’m stumbling drunk with truth!

Oh, and don’t get me started about aging. The way I’ve lost my will to look like a smokin’ hot twenty-year-old when thirty rises up and floods me with passion lava that fills my wrinkles, smooths my skin, pools in areas of lost breast density (I know, right?), and doesn’t care whether I wear mascara or not.

And how can I be expected to settle for a boring fuck, a “wham, bam, thank you ma’am” situation, some kind of stale, ordinary, containable sex, when I have lifetimes of love running through my veins? When there are fewer and fewer barriers between me and my soul on fire. When I have desires so strong they kill me a little bit more every day. When I have rivers to run and mountains to move and magic to make.

Yeah, I’ve been losing it alright.

Losing my will to play small. My will to keep it all contained in a honorable, recognizable format of a life. How could I when my laughter spills over the edge of my grief? When my deepest apologies go unfelt and unspoken. When my destiny sets fire to my character. Up in flames. I am toast.

Gone is my will for right or wrong, for happy or sad, for black or white, for strength or weakness, for this or that, for staying or leaving. Are we coming or going? Are we falling or flying? I don’t even care anymore! I’ll take them both. And the space in between them.

Oh, the space in between! Where the river meets the ocean and the ocean meets the sky. Where a lie is truth and truth is a lie. And transcendence obliterates your mind. Where no one really suspects anything, because no one really knows anything. So you have nothing to prove and nothing to hide. And pretty or ugly, you can only be beautiful there, except to those still standing on either side. But by the time you get there, you don’t care what they say anyway. To them, you’re crazy if you do, you’re damned if you don’t. So, to hell with it.

Enough! I’ve made my point.

If it’s true what they say, that you have to lose yourself to find yourself, then I am lost, I am lost, I am lost.

***

[ Working with McCall ]

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