The leaves are as crisp underfoot as one might expect this time of year, and occasionally car windshields need be scraped in the morning, though not by me, thankfully. The household jobholder rises in the dark to embark on her daily trek to work, where tasks accumulate and must be repeated endlessly. There is a reason that is not me.
I tried it once. I had a job oh, twelve years ago or so, and I stood at bus stops in dark, frigid Edmonton winter mornings waiting for a bus that was always a few minutes late and too crowded for comfort. I wrote poetry on my commute and prayed for escape from the grind.
It’s not that I think I’m too good for honest labour. I like to work. It’s the early rising, the regular schedule and the long hours that kill me.
I have skills worth money that I’ve worked hard for many years developing. I want to practice them. My problem is marketing. It’s ridiculous for someone with my skills and talents to be wondering brokely when her next twenty bucks is going to come from. Marketing, marketing, marketing, marketing! Argh!
I stare at the screen meaning to start designing my brochure and promotional materials, my mind locked up, trapped in a vise of uncertainty. How to present myself? What words, what images will show me in a good light? How to avoid giving a wrong impression? Questions interlock like a steel mesh, answers all on the wrong side inaccessible to me.
There’s got to be a better way, or at least a way. A way will be shown soon, because it must, and that’s how it works.
That thankless straggler struggling in poverty who was me in the past didn’t deserve her fate anymore than any sufferer does. It was a tough cross to bear and I’m grateful to her (me) for bearing it with as much dignity and fortitude as she did, even granting the times she (I) melted into anguished puddles of despair. Those days are gone, and with sighs and relief I greet the new dawn of some other way as the power that has lain dormant in my backroom stirs to swelling shining life. This is me, being optimistic.
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Moving into the juicy Halloween darkness, all witches and black cats and cauldrons, images that frighten in a fun way like twiggy broomsticks arrayed in ragged silhouette across the face of the moon. Samhain ghosts are friendly, or we pretend them so, dressing little children as ghouls and stuffing them with so much candy it makes them ill.
There’s a meaning in that message and no need to look deep to find it. Listen to the dry whispers of the leaves rustling, the voices that hint at shadowy knowledge that we almost know, and tell me the secrets in the wind.
Well, now we’re into November, and that strange wind of discontent blows hard on the heels of Christmas, already creeping into the shopping malls and radio stations of the nation. It’s insidious, the commercial jingle-jangle tangle of dread and anticipation. This year, I fear, I shall be left to my own devices to deal with my Christmas craziness that recurs every year. I lose it, I forget who I am, I gape in expectation of some kind of magic that always almost happens, and I cry, oh yes, tears of sentiment, of grief and relief and unidentifiable confused emotion flow freely.
This year, the question is, where should I be for Christmas? With my beloved who is now someone else’s lover? Despite my open heart which is mostly okay with an unusual situation, at times like this my enlightenment recedes into myth while fear, hurt, insecurity, jealousy, betrayal and all those beautiful human stirrings recur to stick like burrs to the roof of my brain.
Should I spend Christmas with my children, now admirable adults who see me as someone who once meant something but now exists mainly in the shadows of their past? Unless, of course, I scratch on the glass for admittance as I did last year?
Or should I simply stay here and face my fears? Questions, and questions, and answers changing hourly.
And always the truth, that ever-sought and rarely-achieved carrot bobbing ahead, leaving its crazy trail which I follow with mixed results. One piece of truth, named, leaves a dozen lies, unnamed. Is there a way to say it without omitting essential bits whose absence alters the evoked image in crucial ways?
The language I use is limited and so is the time I may devote to the unfolding of the tale. Still, I must worship at truth’s altar, however broken and incomplete my efforts. The resulting word salads and collages may confuse, but I am compelled to include all that I can under truth’s umbrella.
I love, I hate, I fear, and I accept. I grieve, I am relieved, I embrace, and I forget. All these emotions are present at once in any given moment or situation. The emotions are not wrong, nor are the situations which evoke them, and I need not judge either or attempt to change or manipulate reality in any way.
The river flows, I am a dancer, it is the music which moves me, and my movement affects the flow which in turn affects me. The symphonic synchronicity of life is infinite, and miracles are merely how it is supposed to work.
I love my hate. I fear my grief. I grieve my forgetfulness. I hate my love. I fear my hate. I accept my hate of love. I embrace my fear of hate. The infinite fractal convolutions and combinations of self, the revolving and evolving emotional interconnections weaving me ever more firmly into the fabric of all existence, able to be it all, feel it all, accept and embrace the pain, the pleasure, the exalted transcendence of perfect union, that so-fleeting moment of eternity that recurs just often enough to remind me that it is, until I forget to remember again.
This is what happens when I embrace darkness, torment, possessiveness and pain. The shell of the egg cracks which feels like my heart breaking, then light floods into every cranny of self. There is a purpose, I insist, a meaning, a pattern behind this complicated chaotic order, but there is no designer with blueprints and plans in hand.
It happened, just as my own complicated and purposeful flesh happened. I am the consciousness that embodies and contains all that exists inside my skin, but I did not design me. Neither did any One stand outside the universe to direct its austere bearded attention toward the vast task of fitting tab A into slot B, crafting reality to fit its specs.
Notice, I am not saying there is no God. I exist relative to my body. God exists, relative to the universe. But God is not separate from the Whole (as God would have had to be in order to design or create it); God IS the Whole. And I’m almost certain She doesn’t wear a beard.
