Well Well Well, here is some stuffffff that changed my life:

Ps-I hope i don't get sued 4 using it!!!!!!Pleaaasseeee

The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon...
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.

© Mountaindreaming, from the book The Invitation published by HarperSanFrancisco, 1999

Fierce Longing

There are moments
when making love
when a door
to something else
opens.
I am never prepared.
There is no preparation
for the way it takes me
and leaves me.

Sometimes it is brought
by a movement of tenderness:
soft lips that brush my forehead
and murmur my name
as the fire burns through
me making
my hips rise
and my blood moan.

Sometimes it is brought
by a moment of great courage:
eyes that dare to meet
and hold mine as the flood
of silky amber honey
takes us both over the edge.

And sometimes
it is brought
by the sting of what is not
and the memory of
tenderness and courage
that has been.

And when that moment
catches me
and tosses me
I am helpless.
The words spill
unbidden
into the night:
"I want ... I want ... I want..."

Unfinished
they leave me
dangling
suspended over the chasm
of my own bottomless
desire.
Reaching
aching
grasping
for that fleeting something
I glimpsed
or imagined
just beyond.

Gone before
I could name it.

The breath catches
a strangled sob
tears me
opens me
and I fall back
eyes wide and
dazed
on damp pillows
my face
wet with tears.

And his eyes
stare
bewildered
frightened by the fierceness
of my longing.

Oriah Mountain Dreamer © 1995

Perpetual Present

I try to memorize him
with the soft pads of my fingertips.
Closing my eyes
and slowly tracing
the cheekbone's rise and gleam
the moist, fragile skin around the eye
the jawbone
square, angled, tight
roughened by the days relentless growth.
I will my heart into my fingertips
and move them through the soft curling
hair on the broad chest
rising and falling
rising and falling over the heart.
My hand moves down the hard belly
And I find
I cannot remember,
in every detail,
the line of his face
I touched only a moment ago.
It has already begun to fade.

And I had wanted to hold it forever.

He strokes my arm
runs his broad fingers
down the naked curve of my back
over the smoothness of my thigh
draped across him.
Is he trying to memorize me also?

We cannot hang on to this moment
Even knowing it is the last moment.
Life pulls us
like a great tidal wave
sweeping us forward
dragging us into the perpetual present.
Our memories of this moment
will change and be shaped
by new desires and disappointments.

And I will forget I knew even this.

Oriah Mountain Dreamer © 1995

I have loved to the point of madness. That which is called madness. That which to me, Is the only sensible way to love. ~ F. Sagan