Celebrating The Holiday

4/20: a day when a lot of people who already justify a portion of their lives justify a little more

And here's how it sounded...

Growth is what I aim for
wants
Growth is what we aim for

Recollections of a Familiar Past

1/9/07 - NH 59 - Early PM

My stomach won't release whatever tightness it seems to have so friendly with in the last several days.
I have no doubt that the bowl of cinnamon Puffins & milk along with the reheated (and let it be known overly large) portion of last night's lemon, cilantro, tofu shell pasta have some part to play in the present exacerbation of this discomfort.

Damn appetite.

But the altruism in me tells me that if pain and my stomach have become amiable I really have no place telling them to stop being friends.
I would hate to be told not to continue a new friendship. I feel like a parent and my stomach is my child.
The pain is that little boy with the dirty hands and the mismatching shoelaces who eats more than one cookie without asking or saying thank you.

But my child is homeschooled, afraid of people I don't introduce to him and cannot continue a friendship with pain away from me.

I kind of have to be friends with pain, too.

Pain left & now my stomach is mine again. It seems almost Oedipal, our relationship.
Perhaps that's why stomach has seedy friends from time to time; to keep me from being too completely attached. To make friends with other stomachs.

Smote In the Darkness

It had been days, weeks, months since the peasant boy had seen anything other than bleak hilltops hemmed in by cracked and dry valley floors.

Little comfort, little attention, little solution.
He felt little in so many, many ways.

Thus his whole person gave way to a frailty matched only by the withering plant life sparsely peppering the deathly landscape.

He was wilting away much like the now prostrate ferns once so lush and mysterious.

No crown, no royalty, no little blue flame in the palm of his hand.
Only the memories of these.
Memories seeming now torturous at their present lacking.

His whole being ached of loneliness even though he was so close to many sets of eyes and ears.
Those with whom he occasionally found his path combining held him up while his bloodied soles drank in a temporary relief.
But what of when he was alone?

His pace grew slower and more demanding while his thoughts grew heavier and heavier, weighing his head down until it bobbed consistently upon the flat of his chest, his chin bruising his bony ribcage.

Finally he stopped to rest and for a second caught the briefest whiff of the life he had led prior to the Downfall.
And then it was gone, the taunting reminiscence dancing from shoulder to shoulder until his head grew tired of turning and trying to follow it.

He knew he couldn't stay motionless and yet for that time he felt it the only way he could even partially collect himself.

If only the blue flame would come back again.
If only he could be a prince again.

In considering the dawn

Waking this morning I felt something of a blithe reticence to leave my bed.
It wasn't anything about getting more sleep or languishing in a cuddling lethargy, I felt it more like a pull, a gravity toward the state in which I found myself at that waking moment.

As I silently considered the reason for my slow-to-rise presence I realized that this was a sacred moment, a carefully constructed time for me to dance on the hem of the skirts of meditation.

I allowed the seconds to pass, each considered a gift.
I held to a sense of appreciation for the beginning of an all new day.

Aslan's insistent and annoyed scratching at the door offered opportunity for me to turn my newly wonted peace into action as I waited for his patience to halt his noise. Once he came to a quiet rest (sitting rigidly, staring at first me then the still closed door as if to say, "no, really, take your sweet time. It's simply peachy having no opposable thumbs,") I shuffled off my red boucle blanket and opened the wooden door, allowing his feline pride a sense of satisfaction and reiteration that he did, in fact, control everything, including me.

At that point I decided to appease Newton and stay in motion. I followed Aslan, further opening the wooden door, smiling to myself as it's reverberating creaking once again reminded me of the chuckle of an old gypsy hag. Once in the kitchen I set to grinding the Stumptown beans and filling the pot.
With the coffee brewing I started the shower water and sought a fresh towel. Seeing as how I had neglected to do my laundry the night before I was forced to reuse the bright yellow picnic blanket-sized terry Mum had gotten for me before I left for school the first time.
It always had a way of comforting me with more than its absorbency.

Throughout this whole series of actions I somehow managed to maintain my calm inner flow. My zen, if you will.

And this brought about an unexpected, although much appreciated opportunity for me to once again deliberate to keep myself from judging.
As silently as before I said to myself, "today I will not judge, today I will not judge."

It's no Buddhist chant but it seems to work for me.

And now I'm into my full-fledged day, looking forward to my next interaction, my next moment, my next treasure.

A Sinking and Swilling

Expectations make me sick to my stomach.

And I do mean quite literally.

When there is some sort of a perceived external requirement for me I become far too worrisome and end up losing what little focus I might have had to accomplish in the first place.

The sad truth is that I tend to over-inflate, if not fabricate altogether those perceptions all on my own. I make them, project them onto others and then they return to pile up on my shoulders and head.

I just want to find status quo.