I do not trust the masculine to take care of me, to be able to handle all the rage that I feel inside. All the wild, chaotic, destructiveness that is me. I am love, of course, I am love. We are all love, but right now that love wants to show up as righteous anger. I feel rage rushing through my body as I feel into how disconnected I feel from community. I feel rage as I notice the thoughts that no one truly knows or values me. (and a quiet voice inside my head says, “who doesn’t know or value you? Would that be you who doesn’t trust, value or know yourself?” Bloody hell! I feel crazy. Everything inside me is falling apart. Everything I thought I knew about myself feels like a lie. I am not love. I am anger.

I AM ANGER.

I AM ANGRY.

At the world, for being so polarized. At myself, for being willing to put up with this smaller version of myself that I show to the world. At myself for not valuing my big energy.

Big breath. The thoughts above were what was coursing through me as I felt a wave of rage take over.

After a few missteps, I headed towards the labyrinth, walking briskly. As I headed into the labyrinth, I found myself moving faster and faster. A little like a whirling dervish. I had the feeling I got as a kid when I was spinning as fast as I could, arms flung out to the world, just surrendering.

I was through the maiden spiral and into the mother spiral before I even realized it. I kept moving, noticing how I wasn’t paying attention to where I was in the spiral, only that I was moving, no real thoughts, just fleeting ones that I couldn’t catch (or wasn’t interested in catching.)

I came to the center section, the unknown, and realized that I want some way to just spiral around in there so that I can get spit back out when I’m not ready to stop and stay in the unknown. I spun around and headed back out, almost running. I don’t even really remember what happened for me on the second time through the labyrinth, but by the third time I noticed that I was singing “One Note Samba” in my head. “This is just a one note Samba, based upon a single note. Other notes are bound to follow, but the root is still that note.”

I am a one note Samba. And, in the past, I have judged that as bad. Just one note, one repeating note. What I notice about this song is that what’s so cool about it is that the singer is singing that one F, over and over again, but the chords are changing around it. So, it plays a different role in each of those chords. It’s not just the “root,” the “tonic.” It becomes the seventh and the third, etc. And each note’s position in a chord changes it slightly.

So, as I move through the world as my one note, others are shifting around me, creating other chords, and I am shifting, retuning, as others shift and re-tune, to create ever different chords.

And then the note changes, and the words reflect that: “Now this new one is the consequence of the one we’ve just been through. As I’m bound to be the unavoidable consequence of you!”

“There’s so many people who can talk and talk and talk and just say nothing, or nearly nothing.”

“I have used up all the scale I know and at the end I’ve come to nothing, or nearly nothing.”

What’s interesting to me about this is that those last two lines are chromatic runs, up and down, using every note in our western scale. So the contrast of using a lot of notes and saying nothing feels powerful to me.

“So I come back to that first note, as I must come back to you. I will pour into that one note all the love I feel for you.”

“Anyone who wants the whole show, re, me, fa, so, la, ti, do, he will find himself with no show, better play the note you know.”

I am one note, and I am looking for the beauty in that one note, all the love and anger and sadness and fear and joy and creativity in that one note that is me!