Archives for category: Summer

It’s a lovely overcast Thursday, a chill morning of pleasantries and catching up – we have family visiting from afar. 😀  A quick trip to the local market for breakfast sorts of provisions of more variety than we usually keep on hand makes the morning feel special. I love fresh figs, English muffins, hot lattes, Greek yogurt…and the charming company of our visiting son and his girlfriend and the fun of seeing the world anew, through their eyes.  What a good day so far.

Even the garden seems particularly lovely, in passing, as I go to and from the store.

'Graham Thomas' on an overcast summer morning.

‘Graham Thomas’ on an overcast summer morning.

The ordinary joys of life and love, of family and business, of the world and of the home; today these are more than enough, they are substantial and precious.

Tomorrow is Friday; therapy, errands, and more visiting with family. It’s going to be an eventful weekend and I’m eager to live it. There may be very few opportunities to write with any attention…I expect I’ll likely find myself wondering where the days have gone by Monday morning, and whether I can manage a few minutes to write over my lunch, in the office, during the week. lol

Observing life with pleasure, and not feeling much chaos and damage…let’s see where the weekend takes me!

It’s been an interesting week; more of some things (arthritis, affection, intimacy, discussions of the future, analytical workload, headaches, adulthood, vulnerability, satisfaction, contentment, excitement about the future being discussed, sunshine)  and less of other things (pointless conflict, frustration, tedium, nightmares, ‘extra’ bandwidth at work, whimsy, self-restraint, subtext, cool weather).  It is summer, and already the mornings grow light just a little later, and the workload gets just a little heavier. I’m not bitching. It’s the end of my work week, and I’m home, feet up, cold water to sip on, and the entire world at my finger tips. It is a quiet evening.

My head aches viciously. PMS and fatigue. My back torments me beyond wanting to casually call it something as simple as ‘pain’. I will take an Rx pain reliever tonight. 😦 I hurt. It isn’t any more than that, though – a physical experience of discomfort.  On other levels I feel serene, calm, balanced, emotionally comfortable, cherished, wrapped in love… nice world to live in. I think about other worlds, other pain, but the thoughts drift through my head space like clouds, casting a momentary shadow and moving on.

Therapy tomorrow. Shit’s getting real lately – I don’t look forward to it, although I know that even this is part of the journey, and that my therapist really knows some things, and that I am ready for this.  I’m struck again and again by how profound this experience is.  I’ve been in therapy before… it’s hasn’t been solidly effective or actually changed anything, in the past.  At best, I felt some relief for weeks or months, and been helped past some moment of crisis – and that has had to be enough to get by on.  This? This is an entirely different experience. I don’t talk much about therapy.  It’s incredibly personal, as experiences go, and extraordinarily intimate and naked and raw. It doesn’t translate well into spoken language, much of the time, because the things that strike me most are subtleties and…completed sentences, finished thoughts, provoked epiphanies, sudden connections…and something else. Something I feel about me, sense within myself, recognize as being changed…and I don’t know what to call it or how to describe it.  I know it is important.  BUT, I no longer look forward to it, at least for now.

….

…Huh… I just had one of those baggage dropping, altered-state creating, moments of weirdness… nothing went wrong. I think it went ok. Which feels weird. Now I don’t want to write … because I don’t know what just happened or what exactly is ok about it.  Being a grown up is hard sometimes and I don’t always understand it.  I’m just going to add some pictures, and finish the moment on a metaphorical note.

Close up...

Close up…

... or from a distance.  Perspective matters.

… or from a distance. Perspective matters.

 

 

 

Let me get what is true and obvious out of the way, first, as an effort to find clarity; it is a lovely summer Saturday, sunny and mild.

"Sheer Bliss", and a breezy, sunny Saturday.

“Sheer Bliss”, and a breezy, sunny Saturday.

It is also pretty disappointing as Saturdays go, at least for now. If it just sucked from the moment I woke, I think it would be less bothersome that it sucks right now. Unfortunately for my present mood, the morning was lovely, and I developed expectations of how great a day it could turn out to be. It fell apart unexpectedly, largely due to the vagaries of the human primate experience in the close quarters of self-imposed captivity, hemmed in by walls and windows and expectations and needs. Because I’m not very comfortable with dealing with my own anger – or frustration or disappointment – with some sort of genuinely adult skill and graciousness, I’ve ended up being more than a little discontent in general, disconnected, and finding little pleasure things I could be doing instead; they entirely lack any satisfaction or enjoyment for me just  now. That’s enough to render the moment complete suckage, for the time being. Very human, and very reflective of a lifetime of following the lead of my emotions as if they were a powerful current with irresistible pull.

I am returning to my ‘now’ again and again, taking a breath, and putting ‘things’ on pause to feel the moment, hoping to find some small pleasure or delight in it. I mean, seriously? For fuck’s sake – there are easily a million people in the world right now without enough to eat, without a safe haven from a storm, or respite from war, or a secure home to live in, or affordable medical care, or the simple decency of being accepted by their community…all I’ve got to bitch about is that my Saturday isn’t as pleasant as I’d prefer? It’s not exactly a global crisis, is it? I can do better than this.

Still…sand in my oyster. This has every potential to be an awesome Saturday, full of laughs and good fun with people who matter to me. How do I create a pearl? (I find myself contemplating the possibility of a ribald ‘pearl necklace’ joke of some kind here, but come up empty-handed. lol > sense of humor still intact)

So…

…It takes a few moments (ha! sometimes much longer) to write one of these – at least it does for me – and it is now quite some time later than it was when I started. I mention it because over the few minutes writing, feet up on the ottoman, toes warmed by the sunlight pouring in through the skylight, the soothing trickling of aquarium noises, and the bump of bass in the background, I am finding myself slowly letting go of my anger, finding a more compassionate perspective to embrace, and time begins to slow down…the day is still ahead of me.  My day. I can do a lot with that. I can take care of me.