"Awayness"
12/08/2003 07:46 p.m.
"Mark Yourself Away" the top of my screen invites.
So simple, so intoxicating the invitation.

Away. It’s how I feel, where I want to be right now. Just away. Not on vacation. And not away from the poetry site or people, family or courses, but just to float away a while from my own everyday beingness.

I mean in the Jane Urquhart, down east kind of definition, as in her lyrical novel "Away" . The Maritimers and down easteners really understand that need to follow tangents and curves unseen to disappear, sometimes, go missing. Emotionally and physically gone.

It’s not a trip you tell everyone you’re taking, and then save and pack up for, somewhere to which you have reserved tickets. Nor is it chemical. You want to be fully cognizant and pure-headed. Sleep is almost the route, but not even that does it.
Go without leaving a trace to connect you to this life, for whatever length of time it takes.

"Away", the novel begins with an epigram, this Irish triad:
"The three most short-lived traces: the trace of a bird on a branch,
the trace of a fish on a pool, and the
trace of a man on a woman."

The last line doesn't seem credible to me. Did a scientist write this, not a lover? If true, how tragic it seems. The closest embryo to my "awayness" yet was listening to violin, harp, and choir in different venues this week, from a restaurant, where a celebration of a life was held, to the Church on Sunday morning, lifting me off into a beautiful escape. Then, in those moments, I was starting to be away.

I just know I need to find a way to feel this absence, because I need to follow some external, private path without being able to reached by anyone. Not to elude them, to test if they miss me, I don't even want them to miss me. I want no weight at all of being looked for. Just to be somewhere else unimaginable, and for some reason I can't explain or analyse or remember or foresee. Somewhere that cares not that I'd be invisible, naked and immeasurable, ungradeable even. Even to myself. After all, I'm not an egg in a carton, or an inventory item. After all, I can't always be slotted in the same places and peg holes chronically associated with. I say this from no external demands or pressures, except perhaps what I've let myself feel, leading me a little burned-out, and exhausted lately. But it's kind of a peaceful, happy journey I will take.

Perhaps like Agatha Christie did once (not for as long a period as depicted in the movie Agatha,) but the writer did actually disappear from the world's being able to locate her, for a week. In the movie she sets it up to look like suicide but has another purpose. My "Away" is not even negative. Nothing dark or self-endangering. It's a positive, peaceful removal of myself to somewhere I can hear God and Destiny or perhaps, just a beautiful silence, for a while. And not be heard myself. Or see anyone.
Like a Buddhist monastery, perhaps?

"Mark yourself away," the top of my screen invites. Making it look easy as a click.


I am currently Detached
I am listening to my imagination