Fog

‎"Writing is the act of burning through the fog in your mind. 

Don't carry the fog out on paper. 

Even if you are not sure of something, express it as though you know yourself. 

With this practice you eventually will."

~ Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones

Writing Prompt: "taking out the trash"

Looked across the way when 
taking out the trash and
saw silence
felt a darkness
in the windows of the house next door
where drawn curtains and smudged glass
hid more than they revealed
carefully crafted so that Light could neither escape or enter.


A wail rose in my throat
for the poor defenseless beings inside
where the trash never left but
grew and grew
becoming huge piles of refuse that 
molded and mildewed and
stank up the confined space.


Dark
the mushrooms grew
not the magic ones of 
childhood and forest and fairy circle but
those that poison and contaminate and
kill off all the Fire even when it tries to rise and shine.


Don't allow the crap to consume
to build up
to accumulate.
If no routine for taking out the trash then 
create one--
take it to the dump
or put it out by one handful each day
for Mother Earth to transform.


Not everyone is able to use a curb-side service
convenient though it is
for not everyone has reached that stage
and even then
sometimes too much is thrown out
good ideas with the bad
happy memories with the traumatic
because it's so easy.
Who wants to pick through the trash to find
what needs to stay or go?
Asking...
Maybe if I just toss it all then
my house will be clean?
Perhaps.
But then there is nothing to transform with/in
all the elements are mashed together like in a trash compactor and 
so tightly bound that we lose sight of
the True Me
for even the icky, sticky, gooey bits might be important--
salvageable
recyclable.
Can I re-use this hurt?
Can I learn from it and then share the lesson with someone else?
How can the trash become gold?


"One person's trash is another person's treasure."


So might it be with all this supposed
so-called 'trash'
that has piled up inside.
How to sift through it all?


Look at the house next door...
not next door at all but 
the mirror of my own home.
A reflection I stare at but
don't want to see because
who wants to look at the trash and
crap and stinking piles of refuse
that has accumulated?


Bring out a bull-dozer and just push it all into
one huge mountain of crumbling, thick, globs of
manure and decomposition but
that way none of it can be used again and
it's all gone and stagnating and 
pushed down deep
buried so far under the foundation 
that excavating could take years 
lifetimes even.


Okay.
Before throwing it in the trash
at least before taking out the trash
look, think, feel it out.
Can it be transformed
learned from 
reused
shared
and ultimately
put to good use
for a 
truly clean house?
___________________________
This writing prompt is a daily one compliments of Peggy Tabor Millin's Clarity Works. The day before this prompt, I had been contemplating and organizing my plans for offering holistic classes through the local wellness center in our new location; how to share, how to help, how to connect. I had fun with this particular day's writing practice where the words flowed so fast my pen could barely keep up, and provided so many ideas for sharing.