Reading from another writer's posts (from 2009) (here, I reference her as "the beautiful blog-writer") I recognize synchronicity on several levels, feel the curtains part, the breeze blowing in, and I am grateful for the feel of the sun----even if it's only on my back, even if I know now that in this place where I have lived almost four years, people like to say, "Don't like the weather? Wait five minutes," and the sun will likely be covered again. But that's okay. At least it's not perpetually HOT, as it was in Louisiana.
Feeling as if I'm on this sort of threshold----as I described to two of my older, wiser friends in our weekly journaling meeting recently, when I said one of my favorite words is "liminal"----returns me to a sense of mystery. I feel my vision pulling back, back, back, as if I'm a bird flying very high, surveying the land with a soaring sense of freedom. But to get there, it seems I must first have been trapped for a while.
THIS is how it happens for me: I feel stuck, feet muddy and gathering more as I trudge along heavily, beginning to wonder whether that's me hanging from the rafters in the dark attic. No. No, it's not me----at least, it's not how my life will end, I don't think. And I am not at the end now, even though some days it's felt as much, as if I think I am preparing myself, which (of course) we all are, in some sense, each day.
Reading apocalyptic fiction (and nonfiction), in part, has brought me to this place. Margaret Atwood's ORYX AND CRAKE and AFTER THE FLOOD, and now Kunstler's WORLD MADE BY HAND, and THE WITCH OF HEBRON, watching THE HUNGER GAMES at our local cinema. Why this theme? Chance? It wasn't purposeful but it has been synchronous.
Saying what's in my heart, on my mind, isn't easy. Words are more like constellations scattered, and when I've read someone who's said it (what I am feeling and thinking) so beautifully (as the referenced blog-writer did), I wonder "What's the point of my trying to say it any differently? What's the POINT of my additional (small) pebble thrown into the pond?"
Well, the point is, I am curious about what's down in the depths of me, stirring, and if I don't dip down there and attempt to put words to some of it, I feel I'll lose my muddy mind! Of course, that's a bit of melodrama, leftovers from my teenage self.
More than melodrama, I am looking for what the beautiful-blogwriter calls, "forbearance" now. Why that word makes me want to cry, to weep with sad joy, is in part because it's a word of my grandmother's, a word that once would have made me scream and shake my fist at the sky (I do not WANT to forbear, I'd say, I want to CHANGE, to do things differently, which really meant I see now----I do not want to get old and die), yet now I remember, again, how Mamaw learned forbearance in her aging, in her self-enforced positivity and naivete.
I feel all screamed out (and, if anyone's reading this, it's not [usually] a literal screaming, my neighbors in particular would be happy about). Screaming doesn't help much most times, and though it may appear interesting in a young person, it's rather frightening coming from a 58-year-old, not to mention exhausting. I think I shall try forbearance. And I can only hope that my dear friends and loved ones, near and far, are able to use it with me.
