Sunday

Happiness replaced negativity so much faster than I predicted, and nothing really happened to make me feel better except the advent of the return of equilibrium. And that makes me happy. Perhaps committing it to words helped my cause.

Moving

My brain is fighting a brave and fierce battle with a spill of negativity in its many pathways, like a sickness that hovers and saturates the landscape of my well being. I wait in enthusiastic anticipation until it heals and passes. I know it will heal and pass, and I want it to happen quickly, but it doesn't work that way. I've learned this lesson so many times and it doesn't make it that much less painful, knowing that it's just a matter of time.

Slow

Sunday I was an audience member in the play "The Wizard of Oz," and I cannot think of a better way I could have spent my afternoon. Aside from the amazing performances, energetic and talented dancers dancing, scarecrow falling with grace and perfection, and magical characters filling the theatre with sentimentality and sweetness, I finally took the story's message into my brain: everyone only and already has exactly what they need inside of themselves, and as soon as they know it they will find it. All that singing, dancing and fantastical characters and scenery had consistently distracted me from the obvious. I had understood it and heard the message the first time I read the book, with the lion and the scarecrow and the tin man, but this time, I didn't realize it was true for Dorothy as well. When I knew that, it all suddenly clicked and somehow that realization offered layers of new dimensions of understandings for me -- how we make all our choices and how only we can hold ourselves back.

Repetition

Life keeps processing on, with plants to water, mouths to feed, walks to take, and words to write. The sun is pink and shining directly on my face this morning, and it feels like Groundhog Day, today, the day from the movie where everything happens all over again but it's another chance to get it right, better than it was the last Monday. I spent much of my time yesterday outdoors, working in a botanical garden, weeding and raking, and walking around in the cool, early spring weather.

Elephants in the Room

My eccentric grandmother had the habit when I was young of using her own drama to convince me that whatever surprise she had to offer was special and rare and wonderful, and it never was. Whatever it was, it was disappointing, meaningless and empty. There was something wrong with everything, whether it was something she cooked or sewed or bought (I think most of what she said she bought were things that someone else gave her that she didn't want, or that she dug out of her attic). Her house was full of beautiful hardwood carved furniture and her house looked unlike any other house I'd ever been in, as it reflected a mind that was bizarre, eclectic, and from 14 hours north (New York City) of where we were. Clutter with bold colors of red, gold, turquoise and black and old furniture crowded the house. The house smelled of moth balls and if anything was removed from the house the smell stayed forever. When she died, she left behind mountains of stuff that was so old almost all of it fell apart or was on its way to disintegration. Every week or so I have dreams I am back in that house, and last night I was there with zoo animals. There was an elephant on the screened-in porch, taking up the whole porch, and there was a tiger in the living room. They were resting on the floor, and they were sad because they wanted to go back to where they came from. The first time I heard the expression "the elephant in the room," it was at a work meeting, and I had no idea what the expression meant or what the elephant could possibly represent. I feel I never really know what that elephant is supposed to be, and, because it's a big elephant, and a euphemism for something that everyone sees but ignores because ... (why?) ... I feel forced to feel that I should know but I don't.

Time

At a college planning meeting, I heard a few informative and helpful words from a retired public school counselor who is from my hometown. At least 10 years had passed since I had last talked to him, and the way I remember him is that he had brown hair and a brown mustache. He is a friendly, funny, smart counselor and at one time he was a coach. He is the kind of man who a person would feel able to talk to about anything and it would be understood and accepted, as the best of the counselors would be. That brown hair was all gone, and he had much less of it and it was all white. He remembers me, or at least he claims he does, and I hope I did not offend him by telling him I remember him with brown hair, but he accepted my observation and laughed. I started to think about how, now, today, 10 years seems to have passed so quickly, but children grow up in that time and grown-ups may undergo a complete transformation simply because of mother nature's magic. One's perspective on time is ever-evolving as one travels the long and lovely path of years.

Infinity

I read recently that the author of a book I've been reading believes that in our infinite universe, it is a given that life will repeat itself infinitely. Our experiences, thoughts, lessons, patterns, habits, fortune, misfortune ... it is all simply a system of repetition. The more life experience I have, the more I believe it.