Thursday, October 18, 2012

Into the Magnet . . .

It's been one of "those" weeks.  The entire world's weight is stacked on my shoulders in concrete blocks, I'm juggling twenty things that all happen to be on fire, and all I really want some nights is just to curl up and have a good cry.  Everything always seems to fall due at the same time.  People choose the same weeks to be undependable, or to guilt me into taking on extra work.  It's like bad weeks are a magnet that collect chaos and stress unto themselves.

My flu is finally gone, although the cough is still lingering a bit.  It left quite the path of destruction in its wake, as I was incapable of accomplishing anything for a full two weeks.  It's good to have my health back, but I feel like all that piled-up work has just body-slammed me to the floor.  I started trying to pick up some of my old "releases" again:  started planning a new story, got out the jewelry supplies, bought a bike, even tried to find a new novel to hold my attention.  But, honestly, I think my usual stress relievers really just added more.  My mind is devoid of inspiration for writing or crafting, I need to buy a lock before I can use the bike, and the books I started all frustrated me with tedious plots that simply could not captivate me.  What I really want, even need, is the wet nose of a dog pressed up against me.  But that will have to wait.

I don't want to give the impression that life is dreadful, or that I regret being here.  It isn't that way at all.  I have found that when life goes well here or when it goes poorly, it all seems to clump together - one thing piled onto like thing piled onto another mirror image of the thing before it.  I think back to when I was a child and used to enjoy scooping up pins, thumbtacks, and such with a large magnet my mother gave me.  The entire magnet would be so covered in the silvery-colored metal objects that its blue hue was quite hidden to the eye.  That's life here, expressed in one image.

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"Passage—immediate passage! the blood burns in my veins! Away, O soul! hoist instantly the anchor!
Cut the hawsers—haul out—shake out every sail!
Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough?
Have we not grovell’d here long enough, eating and drinking like mere brutes?
Have we not darken’d and dazed ourselves with books long enough?

Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go, And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

O my brave soul!
O farther, farther sail!
O daring joy, but safe! Are they not all the seas of God?
O farther, farther, farther sail!"

~Walt Whitman, "Passage to India"