Exploring the cave, spelunking the "Ann Cave"!.

So in the deepest, craziest times I find myself in this cave. Exploring my thoughts, my emotions and my dreams. Beating down anger, soothing hurts and sadness and singing in gladness. I can find these things in my cave, my "Ann Cave".

One visit I was caught between a crevasse of decision, groping for a rope of understanding to pull myself out.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=57754403&searchid=da48f280-b6c5-49ac-8a26-bb4454f8b436

Another time I was teetering on a precipice, thinking about impact, falling and the depth of the fall.

I have left paintings of thoughts and dreams and drawings of intuition rendered in visions. I have navigated stalactites and stalagmites. I have looked for the entrance that holds a ray of light in a cold dark place. I have searched in my cave during my winter and in the stifling heat of passion and sadness of summer.

I have sought out underground streams of wisdom and clarity. I have stirred the sediment in the pools of condensation, to find my heart still confused when I walked away.

I have sought to find others that live in my cave to hear their movement and signs of life but find them ghosts in my imagination. Sometimes I have not been alone. I have been in my cave with loved ones in spirit and held their hand tightly. I have heard them cry and wander without words. We have searched for some loved ones and their light, the inner light that guides and shines. Following their light to try to join it with our own.

I have heard my breathing, heard my thoughts from my own voice although those thoughts were never spoken. I have heard music, air rushing while I am still. I should hang a chime in my cave.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=40812867

It has been a territory I am familiar with. There have always been deep dark caches of rooms to explore. Yet I am never alone, not without my thoughts and feelings and memories. Some things terrifying are also comforting. Familiarity is depth and shallowness all in the same moment.

Enter at your own risk, choose to sit outside, listen from the mouth of the cave for the cries and songs. It is a place of refuge, a trap at times. I can sleep for days in my cave and emerge unchanged but refreshed. I can sit for hours and feel as if I am leaving the cave another woman, another spirit. Sometimes it is the journey and not the destination that changes me.

I have a feeling that comfort comes from within. Amenities are carried in and frugal to those on the journey. No journal is kept, nothing recorded. Too sacred for words and too fleeting for capture. Revisiting is reviewing. Return to its depths. Knowing that returning to the cave is just as important as leaving it.