Part of the desire to escape from all the discomfort of life is funneled into things like writing this blog, painting things, breaking and burning things, taking things to the dump and bringing them home, time spent on the phone, whatever it takes to give myself the idea that I am doing something that expresses any meaning. I know it doesn't, of course, and that on the continuum of meaninglessness, my life is probably somewhere in the middle, but even so, ultimately, there is no continuum either.
Life has kindly shoved a knife in my shell to force my tissues to start separating from it, at least in the sense of clinging to my habits and routines. Circular thinking is only allowed to take place at the level of going in to a room and standing still, wondering what I went there for in the first place. What was I doing? Oh yes. Laundry and there's no towel to stuff in the window because the laundry outlet pipe has to go out the window without letting the cold air in...... Or was I looking for stamps to pay the bills with?... Hmmmm. It will come to me eventually.
I went from having almost continual solitude to an hour or so here and there. I went from staying up for hours at night to flopping down at a reasonable hour and maybe waking up at one as well. Thought about food a lot. Not so much time to do that now, seems less important now with my daughter and her 2 kids living here in this small house.
I am bad with transitions. I like to solve problems quickly and move on to the next project, but I have a household full of dreamers now, people who live in the immediate instead of the practical time.
I have begun to suspect, that like any change that happens, birth, death, disease, one comes out of the experience in a different place, it feels, [as I look backwards] like a series of reincarnations. When my daughter moves out into whatever her next new phase will be, I won't be in the same place as last year, as 6 months ago, as last week. I won't be going back to spending days on end selfishly absorbed. It will be time to reincarnate for me too.
For now, life asks that I clean, that I sweep, that I keep the house going and the animals fed, that I take the time I have to myself and not squander it in rudderless drifting. It is generous of life to give me specific things to do while a transition that I can't see is being made. It is good to know that it is enough now to chop wood and carry water.
Life has kindly shoved a knife in my shell to force my tissues to start separating from it, at least in the sense of clinging to my habits and routines. Circular thinking is only allowed to take place at the level of going in to a room and standing still, wondering what I went there for in the first place. What was I doing? Oh yes. Laundry and there's no towel to stuff in the window because the laundry outlet pipe has to go out the window without letting the cold air in...... Or was I looking for stamps to pay the bills with?... Hmmmm. It will come to me eventually.
I went from having almost continual solitude to an hour or so here and there. I went from staying up for hours at night to flopping down at a reasonable hour and maybe waking up at one as well. Thought about food a lot. Not so much time to do that now, seems less important now with my daughter and her 2 kids living here in this small house.
I am bad with transitions. I like to solve problems quickly and move on to the next project, but I have a household full of dreamers now, people who live in the immediate instead of the practical time.
I have begun to suspect, that like any change that happens, birth, death, disease, one comes out of the experience in a different place, it feels, [as I look backwards] like a series of reincarnations. When my daughter moves out into whatever her next new phase will be, I won't be in the same place as last year, as 6 months ago, as last week. I won't be going back to spending days on end selfishly absorbed. It will be time to reincarnate for me too.
For now, life asks that I clean, that I sweep, that I keep the house going and the animals fed, that I take the time I have to myself and not squander it in rudderless drifting. It is generous of life to give me specific things to do while a transition that I can't see is being made. It is good to know that it is enough now to chop wood and carry water.
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