I tend to compartmentalize, rationalize, justify. Bad runs are tagged by years. Strange, even as I try to break the time barrier and the concept of minutes, hours, days, months, and the most important nanosecond in which decision changes the course of life. And life, of course, may have begun centuries ago and may go on for an undefinable period of time that cannot be comprehended, much less measured.
Be that as it may, in human time, this year labeled 2006 started out as badly as the two before in promise. Without Christmas there was no recognition of the New Year. Two children died. Cash was drained to soup levels. Home and hearth were jeopardized and as two gypsies, we considered following the crowds to the new Land of Milk and Honey in the deserts of the west. Things are changing now; it appears that with an excellent offer of employment for the man we once again can breathe and start tomato plants on tables lit by daylight bulbs down in the cellar. I need to find someone to want my skills to bolster back my confidence, or else increase the business in the shop to survival levels, but that is not as urgent as it was.
Proudly I look down upon the pile of books I’ve read, forgetting that I have no place left to shelve them. Happy to see spaces in the lineup to be read, already planning what to fill them with as soon as I am able. Discovered Faulkner and Marquez these past few months, and that alone provided soul and mind food. Aristotle, Plato, Boethius have affected me, and there are so many more to learn; I can’t imagine who I’ll be when this human span of year is into heat of summer sun, covered with the leaves of Fall.
The hardest thing right now–and I think that it is temporary–is to recover the creative side of who and what I am in time. It has been necessarily overwhelmed by the practical instincts of survival and the demands of reality. I need to reach the intersection where the road fans out in invitation of promises and the unknown. I see it there, ahead of me; I just can’t read the signposts yet.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
I’m so happy for you, Susan, and glad you are staying put. I know too well that living in limbo and clutch of fear in the pit of the stomach and I ecstatic that you have moved back into the light.
Your output is astonishing. I wish you not luck, because talent finds a way. 🙂
One can only stumble in the dark so long before night-vision comes to assist. I’m glad too, because at this stage in life, there are stakes that still are useful in supporting growth.
This was my first time reading your journal, so I don’t pretend to understand the particular darkness you seem to be rising from, but I certainly understand the concept from my own past…it’s funny how it can seem a completley different world on the other side…
DNW
Dark, but so eloquently written Susan. Know that I am cheering for you from the sidelines. May better times be forthcoming for you.
Those bad runs can seem like another world has opened up and swallowed us. But there’s light on the other side. Best wishes.
My silver lining, on my ultra-tight budget of late, living in a little town with a library smaller than the one at my high school, has been rereading favorite books. I’ve found sometimes that years later their depths open up to me in a new way I either didn’t notice before or have forgotten.