To Be or Not to Be Claimed

Can I allow myself to be claimed without being possessed? I bristle at our human need to possess property, things, people, to claim as ours a house, a parcel of land, a spouse, a room of one's own. As a friend Donna says, it's all on loan, all of it. When we were designing the art school we had a tin can that was used to collect quarters every time someone said "my or mine"; my students, my classroom, my department, my whiteboard marker. We struggled for years trying to maintain the collective and cooperative ours over the possessive and competitive mine. We finally had to concede on some things like whiteboard markers for sanity sake, but really, the concept of fasting from "my" is a good one. The more I give away, sell, separate myself from detachment in a fasting sort of way, the less I can relate to those who continue to cling. Something as small as a board member from a former workplace not being willing to let go of a button maker long enough for me to borrow it for a festival, it BUGS me to no end.

On the contrary, another friend taught me that being claimed can be a grounding experience. Claimed as a best friend, as a life partner, as a valued employee, as a child of God can root us and help us self-identify without clipping our wings and censoring our flow. Yes? Maybe? I believe, though, we must be willing to relinquish all, fast from all our attachments, before we can experience the liberation of this type of claiming.

My name, Wendy, means wanderer. Whenever I feel trapped, inhibited, tethered, reined in, I become seriously irritated, refusing to see that these reins may be just the thing to keep me from going off the deep end as I wander the edges of life. MY best friend keeps an ankle bracelet on me (metaphorically) because she knows I can drift off into nothingness when I'm needed right here in the now. I know I can take this bracelet off any time, so rather than feeling possessed by her, I feel cared for, rooted in a relationship and never abandoned. She helps me find the French translation of A bandon, "to put in one's power, to liberate."

Disorientation

I walk the edge between begin and end
beyond the tether of created self.
I am not afraid to move.
I am afraid of standing still,
utterly still in this gray silence -- this 2:00 a.m. space
where the crow has long since cawed away
the busyness of a day,
where my purpose of being
is not yet linked to memory or knowing --
utter stillness, before the morning dove has begun her lament.

I am awake
spinning in the space between --
vertigo of the soul.

The East opens beyond the sun
The West, an ocean abyss
I am direction-less.
North and South (heaven and earth)
a fading filament.
Storylines, brittle with age.

In this center threshold, this 2:00 a.m. space I am,
at the same time, both leaving and left behind.
Self and other --

We desert and are deserted
forsake and surrender
to be in our being
define in our defining.
We are both form and motion
noun and verb
abandon and abandoned.

A bandon,
to put in one's power.

To be in one's power
we must yield completely.
We must relinquish our claim,
our right --
to what?
Certainly, to our hold on other
and apparently,
to our hold on self.

We must spin without reference
without spotting
disoriented
sick with dizziness
we must continue to spin and spin and spin
until we collide and fall
until we have spun ourselves into laughter
until we have spun the new.

A bandon,
liberation.