Stone Temples

Seems like I am obsessed with temples – ancient stone temples, huge Medieval churches, my body….and the holiness of these temples and the mystery and the stories untold and the sacredness. I want to sit in quiet, still temples deep inside myself and deep inside them. I want to touch that holy place where man should not go.

And I wonder what is the mystery there. And why it is covered in stone.

But I know, I know the secrets just like everyone knows the secrets. Some can put words to the mystery, some cover up the words with symbols and rituals and liturgy, some sing the mystery or paint it or dance it. Some are hardly aware it exists. But everyone knows the secrets, they just manifest in various forms.

So I sleep deeply and waken in a coldness that feels like dead bones in the winter woods. I try to warm myself the only way I know how, and suddenly my fantasy turns too real. I am overcome with physical release and the door to the locked part of the temple opens and out pours the mystery in the form of feelings, with images attached that I cannot understand. It aches and it aches like the temple in my soul has suddenly been abandoned by all that is good and loving and safe. I cry and cry and cry and run to Larry’s bedroom to be held. He’s there and he holds me. I tell Prowler to shut the door for me, I cannot reach the handle and I cannot push it shut against the waves of emotion. And it needs to shut or I will drown. Prowler is there and he shuts the door.

But like all epiphanies, this one fades (thank god) but does not disappear. Like all sacred temples the walls are now etched with new words and pictures that tell the mystery. But I cannot speak them, or dance them, or sing them. I cannot paint them or even hold them. I can only make them ghosts in this world.

And so I run to the holy places, the churches and the temples, the woods and the sauna, my bed. I sit quietly and still, listening, and the words are empty of the real thing, the real mystery that aches. The real mystery is that no holy place inside me can be touched by the hands or swords of men. The real secret is that though It hurts and destroys and changes and desecrates, It is not as real as the temple’s holiest of holies where no man should go. The greatest mystery is that the sacredness remains, untouched, because not only should no man go there, no man can.

I am so lonely.