...has it come to this?...

...it's not as heavy as it seems...

spent most of the weekend, when i was driving around (especially when i was alone), with the windows down, the music loud, singing at the top of my lungs, and it made me feel better than i have in a long time. i know something's missing, but i'm not sure what. i know something's wrong, but i don't know what. it's on the tip of my tongue, on the cusp of realization.

it would be easy, easy, easy to fall into the trap of regret, of remorse, for breaking or losing or misplacing whatever element is that's left me feeling empty. it would be easy, easy, easy to put it down to age, to put it down to disappointment with where my life is now...but, with the exception of not living in New Orleans, my life is pretty awesome. i've never been a long-range thinker when it comes to my own life; my desires, my goals are simple. there was no need to plan long-range. and i still see no need to plan long-range; i've got mechanisms in place for retirement, etc.

when i was younger, i didn't think i'd live to this age: figured i'd eventually kill myself. either i'd find the courage or the right motivation and follow through. obviously that didn't happen, and it's not likely to happen, despite periodic moods of self-destruction. not to sound cliche, but i have so much to live for, and i do enjoy living. but believing that one would be dead, and planning was unnecessary, means that the habit didn't take, and i don't see long-range, other than practically - seldom emotionally, or psychologically, or whatever.

maybe i'm too moody for long-range planning. one way or the other, my path will take me Home; i am sure of this. maybe my husband's pagan fatalism is growing on me. maybe my existential leanings are growing again....

...turn mistakes into gold...

i don't really know what i want in life, beyond living in New Orleans, and traveling....gonna rise up, find my direction magnetically....i have the husband, the love; my family; wonderful friends; a steady job with just enough money. i don't know what else i need or want in life. my enduring worship of self-denial perhaps has compromised my ability to identify pleasures and desires, or, when i can recognize them, to admit them, ask for them, pursue them, or otherwise obtain them.

but this is life, yes? exploration, discovery, determination: to learn, about the world, about the self. to reach beyond despair into understanding, and through it, contentment.

Another day that whispers...

....leave it all behind, start over, get away, throw away keys and kindness....

But I would never. It's madness, plain and simple, and I recognize that voice anywhere. It's saved in the databases of my brain, recorded, preserved, archival and accessible. It's evidence and comparison, witness and perpetrator.

Mostly: I'm tired of people again. Tired of this body. Tired of fighting this flesh. Tired of not knowing how I feel, and when I do know how I feel, I can't express it meaningfully. I feel like my times, they are a-changin', and I'm not sure why. I'm grateful for it and am ready and willing for change. I think it's time. Don't know how things will change, in what way, but it is time for things to change. Time for a new phase.

There are days, like today, when the world weights heavily. Not that the weight of the world is on my shoulders - it's not, and I don't feel that way: it's that everything seems so much denser and more complicated than usual. I feel like despair is close at hand, and depression creeps in. I haven't been able to conjure a manic fit, real or faux, for some time now. I need them, periodically, for balance, and for accomplishment. I hope one hides behind the horizon, and that it comes to me soon.

Birthday: twelve days away. Mom wanted to know if I wanted a party, like last year. I said no; just family, at the country house. Badminton, boardgames, and a bonfire. Homemade Mexican food. I want it to be a small, cozy, quiet affair. Older I get, the more quiet I want, I need.

I wonder, sometimes, if that need for quiet isn't my introversion asserting itself more aggressively and rebelliously, since my job demands extroversion, and because I've given my heart to my loved ones in the guise of the jester, the Self saying Be calm, they will love you anyway, even if you aren't talkative and laughing and ready for anything; they will love you even should you be high priestess instead of fool, temperance instead of empress. It's a strange feeling, trying to trust that one is worthy, to accept the truth that one's loved ones offer every time they open their arms and hearts: that one is worthy, that one is loved, regardless, that one's love is always echoed, reflected, returned.

Comes on, like gangbusters...

...the desire to hide away, to sequester, to lock the doors - literal and metaphorical - and leave the world behind. Even better: on a train, non-stop, to everywhere: private sleeping car, big windows, warm blankets, hot coffee - full of chicory, caramel, and milk - when I want it, Captain rubbing my feet, helping the circulation. Want my days full of books and papers, music and videogames, sleep and seclusion. I love the Road, but these bones need warmth and soft, still and easy. This mind needs quiet and peace, solitude and slow.

It comes: the mania, the depression, the inevitable emptiness as the year dies. I'm never sad to see a year go; hope persists because change can happen, and change comes with time, with movement. The year must die for the next one, frost melting for the soil. The year must pass away to make room for the next. Hope needs room.

I need hope. I need quiet. I need...so much.

...ever learn to keep your big mouth shut?...

...because when it comes to Home, I can't be silent, ever. Going this weekend, admittedly for some sad business, but my bond with Her is so great, even my sadness is overcome.

My sister is returning to NY for the holidays, to spend them with her husband. He's in his residency at a hospital up there and can't take off for the holidays, so she's going to him, which any couple in love can appreciate. But it means we won't have her for the holidays, and that makes me sad. But: one more huzzah before she goes - the immediate family is all going down to NOLA to see her off at the train station. The parents are driving her, and my brother and his wife are riding with the Captain and me. We're staying in a hotel down near the Quarter, near the train station, off Canal.

The caravan of cars (all two of them) will leave Friday afternoon. We'll check in to the hotel, unload, go grab some dinner, and then head to Christmas in the Oaks. Saturday we'll see the sister off, have breakfast at Cafe Du Monde, wander around, see my aunt in LaPlace, then head home. It'll be a brief visit to the City Beneath the Sea, but any visit is worth it, any time I can spend there is precious, heirloom of the ages, anchor of the manic spirit.

...let me see the lines on your hand...

It's supposed to rain at Home this weekend, but I don't care. It doesn't matter; just being there will be enough, and being there in the winter, in the cold and the wet - never is She more beautiful than then, except at Mardi Gras, when She loses all abandon.

But never am I more happy than being in the City Park Botanical Gardens during "Christmas in the Oaks," when the Gardens are draped in Christmas lights, and it's cold, and the sky is amethyst. If I have the Captain with me, it's fantastically better, but being alone there, too, is also wonderful.

This week will be difficult - all I can think about is going Home this weekend. I doubt I'll get much work done...

...but I'm going Home, if only for a little while, and that makes everything okay.

...thought I couldn't tell how to fall out...

...And I'll be anything you ask and more...

Those that know me and love me best know that I am an introvert, that extroversion is a mask I assume for my job, to function in society. Solitude is one of the greatest balms for what ails me, and most of my friends understand and respect that.

Then, I ask, why are some of them - including the Captain - disturbed by my silences? Silence for me is energy conservation, thinking time, and sometimes just a natural downtime, like for anybody else. Then why does it seem to bother others so? I think, just like everybody else, that I'm entitled to some downtime, to some wordless time, to some silence.

I want to tell people, when I'm wrapped in silence, that it's okay, nothing's wrong, I'm not mad, not upset - just in a natural state. Yes, silence is natural for me. I need it, like any other natural introvert.

...I'll be anything you ask and more...

....and no, I wouldn't let you think so...

Why is my silence so terrifying to others? My job means I wear a mask of extroversion, but those that know me best know I'm a natural introvert. Those that love me respect that introversion.

But even those that know me best, that love me, that respect my introversion, seem sometimes thrown by my silences, anxious to fill them, anxious to cover them? I wish they would just accept them for what they are - energy conservation, thinking time (of which I need much), and a little natural downtime.

...escuela...of the flesh...the bones...

...they thwart me. I thwart me. So very good at it. Here am I, in the midst of my favorite month and the beginning of my favorite season; I am guaranteed restlessness; respite from the heat; a short but gentle forgiveness of my joints; insight, enlightenment, clarity...

...or so I hope. The older I get, the farther away from certainty I get. The one thing I am sure of is that I hate living a surface life, and I hate having to shut away so much of the real Self. I get tired of carrying the Captain's happiness and mine at the same time. I get tired of human courtesy, human contact. I have faith in the healing properties of solitude and autumn. I have little faith in the capacity of people to comfort me at this point on the compass.

I dream of quiet evenings spent in productivity and efficiency. I dream of solitary travel, as painful as it would be. I dream of being healthy. I dream of moss-grown brick courtyards full of the sounds of water and the street, being Home, knowing that I was in the arms of Home. But even that hope dies as the years pass. It's not so much hopelessness, really, as it is practicality - the knowledge that a lifetime in the practice of learning to overcome most desires - since desire breeds pain - would somehow lead to a karmic outcome: the unfulfillment of one of the most potent desires of my being. It was as though it were enough that I should find my marital soulmate; that I should find my friend soulmates. That I should be able to keep my mother and father and siblings, and see my siblings happily married. More than that? I should not expect.

And perhaps I am wrong to expect more. After all, an apprenticeship to will, to discipline has its price. I should take my treasures and be content. I have accepted that peace is beyond my reach. I have accepted that restless is woven into the fabric of my being and follows the same paths and roads that my blood and breath follow. I accept that. I...just haven't learned to live with that yet. And some days it's harder than others.