RIPPING FROM SOURCE
Europe, Africa, US
1974-1980

I am born connected to Source
Source being All
S/he being One
As a child, I know that I am part of One
And tap into All

In my first memory
I taste pure darkness
I am standing in my crib
Alone at night
Younger than three
Watching war unfold around me
Feeling the heat of fires

I stand gripping the bars of my crib
Watching full-sized human figures blown to bits
Feeling fear on faces facing death
Scale changes
With everything shrinking
Enabling me to watch
Helicopters flying across my space
Planes dropping bombs on tiny homes
Scattered across the room

During WWII
That Polish room had served as a hospital
That room had been bombed and burned
All around that sacred space
Played out destruction
At its most raw

My vision is my first introduction
To the gifts
I am born to share

Conceived on a mystical lake
I battle entry into this world with all my infantile strength
After a full day of fighting to remain within a watery womb
I enter the world screaming from my cut-open Mama
I continue to scream for endless hours
All through the night
As if I am being tortured

I am brought to see my Mama
I am laid on her chest
I fall into my first silence
We look into each other’s eyes
Into each other’s souls
She gently places her nipple between my lips
And with rage, I nearly bite it off

We stay in the hospital for weeks
I lay in isolation
Bundled tightly
Because doctors suspect my Mama
Of an illness that is never found

Rituals are one form
Of being able to connect to Source
Rituals are also a form
Of being cut away from Source
My process of disconnecting from Source
Throughout childhood
Is through a series of illnesses, raw pain, and grooming

As a child
I am practically always in pain
With mysterious illnesses
I am drugged with regular shots of penicillin
Drugged with malaria pills
Drugged

My hips are unevenly developing
To stretch my legs and correct my potential deformity
I wear a wooden board between my legs for years
It arcs like a bridge
Keeping my legs at a distance from each other

I develop a cavity
In almost every baby tooth
My dentist is the closest adult figure in my life besides my parents
She takes care of me sometimes after school
Feeding me bread with butter and sugar
As if in apology
For slowly drilling God
Out of my teeth

Living in Nigeria
The old drill often looses power
Each cavity is drilled out slowly
Without local anesthetic
I cling to the arms of the chair through the slow drilling of each tooth
And then forgive my dentist
The Source of my pain
As I love her

With each drilled tooth
I am taken a step away from Source
Yet deeper into my spiritual path
Of enduring pain
And forgiving

I display a terror of having my toe nails clipped
It becomes a team challenge for my parents
Sitting on me with much weight
To hold me down
In the ritual of cutting my toe nails
Which with each clipping
Take me a clip away from Source

I meet one of my animal guides on a safari
He is a wild lion standing under a tree
Yet I am not impressed
I tell my parents that lions look better on TV
Since we don’t have a TV
Everything looks better on TV to me

Death settles around every corner in my childhood
Leaving this bodily form is possible
at a higher rate living our life-style
Persecuted out of our country
To live in the vibrancy of the tropics

I check my shoes for scorpions every morning
I step between a viper and little girl one afternoon
I hide when the ju-ju men come to take away little girls

I grow
On land where mass starvation had recently occurred
During a brutal war
I pick up bullet casings in the sands of our school yard
Rubbing them together wanting a spark
Like the sparking rocks at the university

No one helps me understand who I am
No one helps me understand what I am
I am an outsider anywhere I go
In Nigeria, I am a little white girl surrounded by African faces
When I return to Europe, I am the African girl
When we travel, I am from elsewhere

Yet I feel like I need to create connection
To wherever I am
Because I have to arc worlds
I am a chameleon
Taking on new accents
Taking on behavior patterns
Trying my very best to fit into this crazy place
Where no one seems to know who they are
Yet runs around super busy pretending to be important

I spend much of my time observing people
Trying to figure out what they are thinking
Trying to figure out how they are living
Trying to figure out how I can possibly
Fit myself into all of this

Like most of us today, I am given no training
About how to develop my connection to Source
Instead like many of us
I am introduced to a tyrannical church and religion
Where I am taught
That everyone who is not a Catholic goes to hell
That all un-baptized babies go to hell
That it is my job to prevent all these souls
From burning in fires of damnation

I lie awake at night
Worried about how I can help save these souls
From the fires of hell
I lie awake at night
Feeling watched
By a force that thinks me evil

We have a school band composed of drums and recorders
I want to play the drums
But only boys are allowed
So I play the recorder
A special creamy white one

One sunny afternoon
My bible study class sneaks into the new church
That is still under construction
With our beloved priest
We pass an important test in that raw space
And go together to his home
To celebrate

I am not allowed to eat foods given to me by others
I am not allowed to go into unknown homes
I am not allowed to do much
So I decide to join the others
And eat cookies and fruit in the air-conditioned home
Of a priest

Little me in a dress
Stands eating forbidden fruit and cookies
 
The other kids leave
And the priest invites me to his small room
It is hot in there
With the bed unmade
He stands over me
With a white sheet
And I fly right out of my body
Looking down on the scene from the ceiling

I walk home that afternoon
Alone
Standing before a huge wild bush
Covered in white flowers
And falling into those white flowers
Trying to recreate the space of the light and gold
Which is fading more and more

Then my creamy white recorder cracks

I am determined that I am powerful enough
To heal back my recorder
After all, I taste my powers
If I can change weather patterns
Why not fix an object I love?

I create a solemn ritual for God not Source
I taste the difference
I think God to be more powerful than Source
After all, everyone speaks of God and sin
No one speaks about connection and light

In my ritual for God
I state that I would forgive the priest completely
In exchange for a fixed recorder
My belief is absolute
I know who I am
Of course God would fix my broken recorder
And then I can continue on my path
Of being in service

I lay out my recorder on a thick white pillow
I put my small hands on her
I call into the directions
I leave her there
To be put back together
 
I leave the room
After all
Perhaps some magic might be involved

Time passes

I keep wanting to rush the room
But I hold myself back
I listen to a story
About two boys who steal the moon and wander in mystical lands
With singing snakes and haunted swamps

I enter the room
Certain that my recorder will be whole
Certain that the crack through its side will be gone
My fingers touch a book about WWIII
I think briefly about the potential of everything ending
Then I take a breath
I walk to the pillow
To find a broken recorder

She lies broken
And I join her
Draining away the memory of what had happened
With the white sheet and the priest

After that
I don’t recall ever being taken
To the space of rotating circles with gold and light
My games with spirits continue
But I don’t believe them to be real anymore

I begin to forget who I am
Until all I know is that I am a girl
In this world
To do something
That I have forgotten.

******************************WE ARE ALL STARS***************************

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