Rampling's Rainbow Glass (Long Version)
Rampling sitting in steel bars ... play on language ... The way rambling becomes harder when we cannot move ... Something in us knew we would end up here ...
Our primary teachers were grand ... The ones who taught us before school did ... Before the military and Vietnam did ... The word Myanmar splits open ... My ... an ... mar ... My scar ... Someone put multiple meanings in the same sound ... Children running soiled ... Those who came from further back ... carrying scars and other wounds of wars ... and silences ... They knew a lot about coming back to a destroyed home all messed up emotionally and psychologically ...
We recognized the glossy eyes because they had seen it on a scared mutt and Sister Charlotte ... The knowing passes down through lines ...
A small person cannot hold what we brought back from the forests of Vietnam ... It takes someone with room inside ... Our relatives were too close ... They saw babies turn into something else and could not bear the sight of it ... The distance ... Although ... they could look at us without melting ... Maybe they did ...
Every day in the jungle ... someone was holding space for us ... We did not know it then ... just trying to survive ... But back home ... in a kitchen ... a grandmother was standing and sitting on a porch staring at the street ... Feeling in her bones when we were possibly in grave danger ... Continents apart ... The thread between never broke ...
They made themselves large enough to be a place ... That is what grand means ... Not impressive ... but instead ... Spacious ... She started making that space before we were born ... Grand was our primary teacher because she taught us ... someone is waiting ... when we did not know and could not imagine coming home ... Grand made herself big enough to hold everything we would bring ...
Foundation to find truth could be an organization ... the type that helps Vietnam veterans ... Could be the tiger swamp underneath ... Could be what you touch after everything else crumbles to wet weeping earth soil ... Something told us with whispers to dig ... before we climb out of anything waiting to become change ... Our unusual language becoming Common identity ...
Military gave us specific words to use ... Government provided us months of babbling ... Then one day we noticed the spoken air and worded surfaces were too disturbing ... Like wearing another nation's military uniform ... The message conveyed was the issue ... not chosen ... The right words were somewhere ... written on disciplined deep blue nylon polyester fabric ...
So we did not change a thing ... The less readable words were the lie ... and the more readable words recognized us first as Vice ... then Vet ... then Sweet Bread ... Honey that got baked into something we could share ...
Listen to this profundity slide ... A higher source planned this slippage centuries ago ...
Veteran is clipped to become Vet ... Someone who fixes characters who cannot speak for themselves ... The word knew what would happen to us before we enlisted ...
Words corrupt themselves while we were not looking ... Was what we did over there a service? ... Suddenly ... we are not heroes ... only addictions ... Something shameful done in secret ... Vice and Service living close together ... one letter apart ...
Honor patronized becomes sweeter ... Thank you for your service ... honey ... The word that was supposed to mean something turned into drinking tea and breaking bread ... Taste where it is at now ... The words given to us do not fit anymore ... so we make up new ones ... Our language knew ... Waiting for us to listen a lot better than we usually do ...
No group process tones ... The careful voice combined with therapeutic language ... The way we are all taught how to share in a circle ... There will always be someone rejecting that ... Official tones do not reach what needs grasping ... We cannot get to the tiger swamp with what they trained us to use in a group ... Swamp knows when we are using borrowed words ...
Some words have third degree burn unit temperature ... that take skin off ... Someone in the room knows which words those are ... Nobody writes them ... We say one and the wind shifts ... Body knows before our mind catches up ... Words carried here glowing ... They have been waiting behind someone's teeth for decades ...
Same words burn and freeze ... Nobody moves ... temperature drops ... or spikes ... Something was said that cannot be unsaid ... Maybe it was always that room and we just pretended the walls wanted us to leave ...
Witnessing incidences where personnel take their uniforms off ... Ritual of becoming a civilian .. Buttons undone ... flag folded ... Closet door closed ... The war should really stay inside the decorated uniform ... But the jacket with medals watches from the dark ... It knows something pacifists do not ...
Body stands at attention after the uniform came off ... Message lost now ... Spine perfectly straight ... Chin up ... Ready to receive orders from the unknown ... Posture encoded deeper than cloth ... Written into ligaments and bones ... Body is still enlisted ... Honorable discharge never reached the hollowed figure ... Waiting for instructions that may still come ...
Razor wire has a sound ... It is extreme tension mixed with scrapes ... Metallic singing before something gives ... Spotlights hiss before finding a prison perimeter ... Sounds made somewhere we have never been ... Practiced on others ...
This is the part that will not let go ... All senses hunting for enemies ... for anything that might become a trigger ... The enemy was very patient ... Waiting for us to flinch and come back with a gentle nervous system ...
These sounds existed before us ... Generation after generation looking for ears ... The sense that would carry them ... pass them to our children walking into what was waiting ...
We do not always know what triggers trauma ... The trigger knows us better than we know ourselves ... It even knew our Mother's maiden name ...
We do not always know what triggers a flashback ... Maybe a car backfiring ... We nod and say yes ... But knowing does not help ... The body might react before the mind has time to say ... just a car ... The soldier still in the jungle reacts before the sound stops ...
Not just a helicopter upside down or inverted ... Memory flips things that are falling ... This wrong-side world ... The way blades spin ... Sky where ground should be ... We see it on TV and our gut knows which way is up ... Gravity remembers ...
The nose is the oldest sense ... It does not ask permission ... Diesel fuel at a gas station coming from a truck ... Suddenly we are back ... The nose took us there ... The smell was waiting ...
Red orange on black 3:47 digital clock ... So specific ... The color ... The hour many Vietnam vets wake up ... When the deceased come to their appointment ... We see it all floating in darkness ... Chest tightens ... Red orange on black made an agreement with our nervous system ... They will keep the appointment until you ask for help ...
We move into that hour every night like walking into a room where something terrible is always going to happen ... Since 1969 or 71 ...Some rooms never empty ...
Precautions ... safety plans ... protocols ... The foul language ... We put it all in place because we cannot erase the minutes ...
Retreat ... is a military and healing word ... Fash backwards ... Go somewhere soothing and safe ... War and after-war ... Retreating from battle ... Retreating into ourselves ... Somebody knew we would need these places ... after we came home Built them before we came home ...
Rampling is the turn ... Sometimes we need walls and bars ... Not to lock us in but to keep everything else out ... To keep ourselves from coming apart ... Cell as also sanctuary ... Cage as kindness ... We put ourselves in there because it is the only structure that matches what is happening inside us ...
The animal needs walls so that what is inside the animal does not scatter ... We are the wild animal sometimes ... War made us wild ... Walls are the only shape that fits our punishment ...
What we cannot say out loud ... is that we are grateful for the prison bars ... They knew what we would become ... They will be here when we are ready to let the whole cell change to heavenly light doing its thing ...
The uniforms are in a closet ... Not burned ... Folded and put somewhere dark ... We cannot look at them or get rid of them ...
Military makes perfectionists ... Hospital corners ... Crisp edges ... Folds are obedience that outlasts service ... We fold the uniform perfectly because we cannot do it any other way ... because our hands recall the training ... Are still enlisted ... Creases hold information we cannot fully comprehend ...
Uniforms know our body ... They memorized us like a pressure ghost ... Some nights it tries on our flesh and blood shapes ... and feel it from another room ...
Turn towards healing ... The military gave us fast words like ... Efficient ... Yes sir ... No sir ... Now we are learning a different language ... Words that have extra space in them ... Words that do not stand at attention ...
The words were spine straight soldiers waiting for orders ... Now we are finding civilian sentences that slouch and wander ... Words that do not snap to when we enter a room ... They know something stiff words forgot ...
Rooms we never entered ... Rooms under hackberry trees ... Rooms we were not ready for until now ... The rooms were there the whole time ... We just could not see the doors ... Doors appeared when we were finally ready to see them ...
Our two-sided hands do what they were trained to do.
Hands that held weapons and dying friends ... Two-sided hands ... One side knows how to kill ... One side knows how to hold ... Hands do not forget either side and they are waiting to find out which side they really are ...
Trigger hands do not recognize borders or think they are still in Vietnam ... We cannot convince them they came home ... Something in the fingerprints still carries the soil there over seas ... It is not supposed to wash off ...
Letters we sent home ... ones that lied ... ones we did not send ... ones that told the truth ... We do not have copies of any of it ... They are lost forever ... The lies and truths ... We will see them again someday ...
Someone is learning to relax before the war ... In the distance ... Watching from outside ... We are not sure we know them yet ... They are still in there ...
That is why we needed to find a place to be ... A bridge or reason for everything ... under a hackberry tree ... at a table ... We need somewhere to learn ... where words slow down ... For years the place has been ready to receive us ...
Chronic moved in ... Here is where it gets tender ... The trauma is not a visitor anymore ... It is a new roommate who pays rent and has rights ... We did not invite it ... It just showed up with boxes one day ... and had a key ... Found where we keep the coffee ...
Chronic made itself at home ... it has thoughts about how we are taking care of our plants ... and knows secrets about us we have not told anyone else ... And somewhere inside that knowing ... there is something that looks like mercy ... Chronic has seen everything ... Maybe that is the closest thing to forgiveness ...
We had to find the right kind of table ... A table is where we sit across from each other ... where we put food down ... where words are between us ... The wrong table and nothing works ... The right table and something can begin after looking for us ...
Tables matter the way ... doors ... windows ... the height of a ceiling ... matters ... We spend our lives at tables and pretend they are not keeping track of everything ...
The table's shape ... height ... what the worn surface remembers from before ... The scratches are a kind of hand writing ... We sit down at a table and we are also joining in mind everyone who ever sat there ... Some of them are still visiting us there ... we just cannot see them with our eyes ...
Some tables held too much ... we can feel it when we sit down ... Our body knows before we unpack anything ... Before we say a word ... We sit and something in our heart says ... This table is full and cannot hold any more ... Grief soaked into the wood ...
Other tables are still waiting to be useful ... They are not traumatized tables ... They are tables that want to hold something ...
Rampling's table knows who is coming before a door opens ... Now we are in uncanny knowledge ... It senses who is approaching ... Maybe it is the footsteps or something the floor is saying ... The table and Rampling have been whispering to each other for years about what is coming ...
From looking all around our nation ... we ended up riding bicycles in our own backyard metaphor ... We traveled and researched ... Called and visited ... Filled out forms and asked experts ... And then the answer was here the whole time ... It watched us pack our bags and leave ... Knew we would be back ...
Where one big hackberry tree is now rainbow glass ... Tree as a church nobody built ... Light comes through and breaks into colors ... This enlightening cathedral grew itself ... longer than we have been observing it ... Research for PTSD happening in prismed air ... Air that changes with each season and knows about Mother of Nature cycles ...
The hackberry was not waiting for us ... It was just being a tree ... Doing what hackberries do ... Turning shadows into highlights ... Breaking light into pronouns ... We are not that special ... The tree would be doing this even if we never arrived ...
Something in its underground roots had been counting daily answers ... Answers were arriving before the questions ... Stored in the network ... Accumulating ... These roots go deeper than we can possibly know ... They have been in conversation with something underneath for a very long time ...
The tree has seen familiar people circle back to it before ... We are not the first ... The tree sees patterns we cannot see ... Generation after generation circling ... Leaving and returning is part of it ...
From that experience we had to alter our language ... After the hackberry ... After the table ... After the old words stopped working ... new words were forming in rooms we had not discovered yet ...
Before does not exactly fit the shape of after ... Simple and devastating ... We changed ... The words that fit fall off now like pants that belonged to someone we used to be ... We can hold them up and see that they used to fit ...
Words were already written on the fabric of the old pants ... On the lining we rarely looked at ... Waiting to be read ... Written in a language we could understand ... Someone wrote them before we were born ... Someone who knew what we needed most ...
Some words live two lives ... this is the key ... Words are not single things ... they hold multitudes ... They are wide enough for contradictions ...
The word ... Contemplative ... on a folded paper means Godly sitting still ... candles ... silence ... and the absence of urgency ... Contemplative at ground zero means survival ...
The same two words ... War Zone ... Rubble still smoking ... Contemplative here means staying alive ... Watching ... Calculating ... Silence is not peace here ... it is danger ... Listening for what is coming next ...
Same word ... different weight ... This is the work ... Not picking one or pretending the church bulletin version is the only real one ... Not pretending the ground zero version is the only true one ... Holding both ... Something taught the word how to do this ... Now the word is teaching us ...
The grace notes ... Church and war ... Peace and survival ... Before and after ... The words that can do this are the ones we need now ...
This is about healing that cannot wait for perfect conditions ... We have this idea that we get through the hard stuff and heal from the hard stuff ... But that is not how it works ... Healing has to start while we are in it ... While the smell of a war zone is in our nose ... On duty wearing what needs mending ... Someone high up or low down figured this out ... Someone who would seen too many soldiers not come home too late ... They started a group after following instructions that they could not explain ...
The uniform becoming a witness ... We do not usually think of clothes paying attention ... But they actually held soldiers together ... absorbed sweat ... fear ... and blood ... Memorized someone trying to survive out in the human killing fields ... Now they are absorbing the words from a healing group ... Sound of someone saying something out loud ... with buttons listening ... thread making ... This is what war does and what healing sounds like ... How it communicates in ways we do not understand ...
Buttons are designed to be hard ... Their job is to hold fabric together ... not give way ... But something is happening to the buttons nobody planned and it is called Rigidity ... A uniform changing while we are wearing it ... fastened into our damage ...
Thread knew once ... before it got sewn into service ... it was cotton and wool ... Grew in a field somewhere ... Knew sun and rain seasons ... Then it got spun tight ... Sewn tight ... and told to hold a soldier together ... It forgot what it knew about giving way to wind ... Being soft ... Now it is remembering ... Real strength is not constant tension ... It is also knowing when to give ... Now the tread is relearning one fiber at a time ... Whispering in a language older everything imaginable ...
No one sets out to build a sanctuary ... We just think ... this an olive wood table that can serve as a beautiful altar ... receiving light source close enough to help us feel more warmly embraced ...
Something is also guiding our hands ... Instructions we cannot sense ... We are the slowest student the Holy Spirit has ever had ... no worries ... Spirit has been teaching innocent slow students since the first person was declared to be a student ... Since the first tables was made to function as an alter ... Spirit is as patient a hackberry tree and has been waiting for us to arrange things since before rooms were built ...
A sacred light source falls exactly where it should ... We did not affect or do this ... Something knew what was needed before we even knew there was a need ... We were just hands borrowed to move things ... while we were also being moved inside ...
A tree just does what trees do ... Lets light through ... Turns shadows into highlights ... If that heals someone ... fine ... If not ... also fine ... The tree is not invested in outcomes ... Is not filling out reports ... measuring progress ... or applying for grants ... The service Hackberry is just being a tree and that should be enough ... We can learn something from that way of thinking ... Just genuinely being who we are and letting the byproducts fall where they fall ... But we most likely will not because we are too busy trying too hard ... Too busy judging what a measurement or healing center is ... The tree knew we would be affected by society's persistent arrogance ...
Roots know more than what a tree knows ... Underground ... in the dark ... they have been in conversation with many things ... including a sacred unseen with eyes source ... Something that was here when this land was an ocean ... taking in water ... minerals ... and information ... Sending messages through fungal networks to Mother of Earth's trees ... Roots have also been preparing a space of feeling and seeing soldiers left during 1963 ... When they did not come back all roots grieved in their own quiet way in the dark ... Roots made agreements with the Soil and Light ...
Before the Gulf of Tonkin escalation ... Before most Americans could find Vietnam on a map ... Our service hackberry was growing its branches just right ... Positioning its leaves just right to break light in exactly the right way ... It knew shoulders holding baggage was coming that would need comforting ... The tree knew closed eyes were coming that would need a spectrum of light hues behind lids ... It recognized us when we finally arrived ... and had been dreaming about us literally forever ...
Rainbow light has intelligence ... That sounds crazy until we lean under a giant tree ... Light knows what needs warming ... It finds the clenched jaw ... with its fifty to sixty years of data ... The branched light knows where we hurt before we do ... It lands like it was sent to the correct place ... Not at all random or accidental ... The light knows and reports back to the roots ...
We talk about weather when we mean grief ... Sleep when we mean terror ... Food when we mean ... I do not know if I want to live anymore ... The right words might not exist ... English does not have a word for what happens when we come home from war ... and our body is here but some essential part of us is still somewhere that no longer exists ... So we use approximations ... and substitutes ... Words that circle around the thing ... and underneath wrong words ... something translates meaning for us ... during when we need it most ...
The body is a primary source and does not always need language ... When we chat about the weather ... our body hears grief ... When we talk about sleep ... our body senses terror. The body does not care if we get the words wrong ... It just cares that we are trying our best ...
We are learning to read ourselves again ... one character at a time ... Character as letter ... Character as the self we are rebuilding ... Something is teaching us ... It is graceful and patient ... Does not rush. One character today. One character tomorrow. Eventually we will have enough words to make a sentence ... Our story might take a lifetime ... That is okay ... The Holy and Sacred Good Spirit taught language to the first humans ... It has all the time there is ...
Words are just scaffolding ... They give us something to hold onto while the real work happens ... The work is underneath ... in breath and silence ... in the way someone's hands move when they speak ... in the space between sentences ... In the not-saying that happens alongside the saying. The something was here before fire and the wheel was invented ... It has been lifting grief out of our bodies ... Terror out of sleep ... Soldiers out of war zones ... It will continue to lift things up after we have passed ...
What is being rooted extends far underneath ... Healing is not just happening on its own ... It is going down into soil we cannot see ... We sit under the hackberry tree and think we are over roots that are growing ... Roots that in the future will hold us up ... Preparing a space for pain ...
The tree has been here longer than our difficult trauma ... Before a draft or war ... Service hackberry does not take sides or judge ... It just keeps turning all scary darkness into shaped light ... and pronouns ... Being a house of worship no one built ... The tree has seen trauma countless times before ... The tree is a natural passage and we have not figured out yet what it is an opening to ... Maybe we just go through and figure it out later ...
A service hackberry does not call itself a healing center ... It does not apply for funding or track outcomes ... We should stop calling ourselves healing centers and just simply help others ...
Until we can say the right words for what happened ... until we learn that wrong words work equally as well ... Light will land on us and soften our buttons ... Roots will continue to be in conversation with the nourishing underground gently rotating upward ... without our labels for what it all is ...
The epic table we found fits eight but works better with six ... Eight and conversation fragments too much ... Side discussions start ... Someone always ends up outside the gathering ... trying to hear ... Six and there is still room to breathe but not enough room to hide ...
Wood grain running lengthwise like it is pointing somewhere unknown ... Then one day someone looked closer and said ... The grain is pointing in too many directions at once ... and now we cannot unsee it ... The sacred table now altar grain knows where it is going ... Late at night ... when no one is sitting there ... the altar grain is aimed at the tree it came from ... What if a seed in a slightly chipped rainbow glass jar knew before where its tree and roots would be planted? ... Fascinating ...
If we have to force a conversation ... something is wrong ... Somewhere there is a mistake ... If a person starts talking before they meant to ... If someone says the thing they wanted to say without knowing they were going to say it ... then we found the right table ... and table found us ... The table has been waiting for these types of conversations ... It grew rings for decades to hold these words ... sentences ... and stories ...
Rainbow light from the hackberry tree moves across the table as hours pass ... Time made visible and tangible ... That is what light does ... We sit talking about the weather when we actually mean grief ... and the light shifts very slowly ... It starts on one end in the morning ... and by late afternoon it is touching the far opposite edge ... Light also can be an honest clock .. Since the table first felt the light ... They have been scheming in a good way ... We are just an excuse for the two to meet ...
By the end Sacred Spirit Light has touched everyone at once ... It found closed eyes and clenched jaws ... Places we did not know ... Grief that we hid inside ... Terror projected during sleep ruminating ... The light touched something we do not have a name for and changed something we did not know could be changed ... Light reports back to the roots ... that file it away with decades of invisible data ...
Rampling is still sitting there ... She did not leave ... Most people think healing means moving on ... All those human phrases that assume we have to go to here or there to be okay ... But Rampling is still sitting in the same place ... Steel bars do not disappear ... Cell doors do not magically open ... Rampling did not walk out into some bright new future where everything will be forever fine ...
The steel bars with hard light are still there ... We can feel their shape and see their shadows ... They carry a weight ... The natural light source did not say ... That is all behind you now ... It just changed what the bars were made of ... They are still bars ... But we can see through them a lot better now ... and that changes everything ... That is the thing nobody tells us about healing ... We do not get to leave ... we just get to see through a lot better where we are at ...
Steel remembers it was ore ... mountain ... stars burning that no longer exist anymore ... The prison steel bars turned back into light because that is what it was before someone made it into bars ... The steel going home and taking Rampling with it ...
Someone else planned all of this ... What we cannot see ... what we cannot get behind ... We were sitting in the wrong seats the whole time ... Light moved across as hours passed ... and the hackberry dreamed ... and someone else was drawing patterns ... Blue never ends ... That is a fact ...
Something knew about Rampling ... Before Mother of Earth knew her name ... Before there was a nation to send soldiers to ... Someone planted the hackberry tree sixty years ago and something positioned its leaves just so ... Made sure the transformation was possible ... before the war was fought ... Before the seed fell to the soil ...
We show up and talk about the weather when we mean grief ... and something else works underneath ... We are the only ones still catching up ... Maybe we are supposed to be slow students ... Maybe Spirit likes watching us figure things out ... Figure out what all of the roots have been whispering to each other in precious darkness ...
Rampling is still sitting there ... Something else planned it that way ... We are just starting to notice now ...
- Oyparaploo
