A clown puts his makeup on upside down
He wears a smile even when he wears a frown.
John Prine.
Motion is as constant and as needed as the air we breathe. Even when we can acquire a sense of stillness, motion plays an integral role. We are always on the move........feeding curiosity......a wandering of wonder. Stillness allows for internal travel of thoughts and feelings.
Even the most unaware sound asleep person is in motion......a conflict in motion. Perhaps they are moving more than the person who feels a sense of integration and has found a way to be smiling inside too. It's like finding yourself in a new grocery store not knowing which aisle the familiar products are shelved. You end up having to take MORE steps, retracing, backtracking, wasting energy while searching for what you want in a disjointed manner.
He wears a smile even when he wears a frown.
John Prine.
Motion is as constant and as needed as the air we breathe. Even when we can acquire a sense of stillness, motion plays an integral role. We are always on the move........feeding curiosity......a wandering of wonder. Stillness allows for internal travel of thoughts and feelings.
Even the most unaware sound asleep person is in motion......a conflict in motion. Perhaps they are moving more than the person who feels a sense of integration and has found a way to be smiling inside too. It's like finding yourself in a new grocery store not knowing which aisle the familiar products are shelved. You end up having to take MORE steps, retracing, backtracking, wasting energy while searching for what you want in a disjointed manner.
The outward actions of a person in constant flux with their inward churnings purposefully try to silence, to ignore, to suppress the call for attention. It can look like the person has it all neatly pulled together. The outer wrappings looks GREAT............all buffed and tanned and shiny.........not a blemish in sight. However, when the heartburn heats up to a boiling kettle whistle, inside we are constantly trying to swallow it.........swallowing big gulps of hot air. That takes a lot of energy.
We have the capacity to suppress, regress and digress........we rationalize while trying to synthesize two human stories that can't mix in the long run. No matter how much we shake it up..........no matter how we try to blend them, an outward smile can't cover up an inside frown forever without the frown belching through the skin. You need time coupled with desire to let things settle.......to intersect.
And, when you find a place where a settling happens................where you feel a sense of comfortable freedom to let your mind catch up to your heart, it can be a place where the smile on the outside filters inside to calm the waters enough to understand the reason for the frown.
2 comments:
This is a beautiful piece. When I write characters, especially women, I try to include action vs. emotion. So many time we judge people, and more harshly women, for their actions when in truth, they are just unhappy. Unhappy people behave poorly. And get judged, belittled and rejected for it. It's a sad cycle.
Claudia....interestingly, I had a very similar conversation last night about what you refer to. And yet, I hadn't thought about it while I was writing this piece because I had started it a week ago.
I agree, and I think women are more apt to stay busy and hidden in the many roles we play and juggle and lose their inner core more readily than men. The harshness and the judgement which seeps out at others and at themselves to me reveals an inner turmoil which they keep pushing deeper and deeper down. Their actions seem disconnected to their true feelings.....feelings that are connected to losing touch with who they really are.
We are taught to be selfless providers who put others first at all times.......and yet, what is the first message given just before taking off in a plane? Put your oxygen mask on first before you help someone else.....
Frederick Buechner writes about the fact that a bleeding heart doesn't help if it is allowed to bleed to death.
thank you for your comment! You pulled something out of this piece which was underlying it.
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