Freestyle Week 11

There is a change that’s brewing in me. I can nearly mark its daily passing, ebbing but closer and closer: two feet in, one foot out. Each foot that comes in offers resolution of sorts but leaves questions in its wake. I’m left to wonder about the significance of age and understanding. I want to keep my ears pricked constantly so as not to miss a single decisive moment. It’s not like a crystalline experience filled with new age purples and wishing stones. I don’t have the stone jingle of the runes in a leather pouch tied to my hips. Most of the “crystalline” comes in the breakdown of the body and in the impatience for a sense of that reality. This change is growth. I know that and, as a snake sort of woman, the sloughing off of this tired skin is one of those rare and magnificent moments that I treasure - as this sort of woman. However, the affect of this on my daily life has been dramatic, upsetting and tumultuous. To have this happen at this precise moment has turned my life on it’s ear at a time that my ear needed to be steadily and solidly pinned to the ground.

My schoolwork has been an unfortunate casualty. Oh, it’s not dead but it lies piled and nearly abandoned on the outskirts. The body has allowed for no more pushing. I am no longer able to make it do my bidding lest I console it first with wanton sleep. It acts like a spoiled child with its whining and tantrums. I dream its questions and, though written on the blackboard with scientific symbols and renderings, it asks me to define my goals and refuses to continue until I am certain of them completely. Physics becomes like the idea that it was months ago. It is far removed and something that other people do. I know that I have to fight to retrieve its place in me. It is the same with my writing.

My thoughts are jumbled, incoherent though fully visible on the inside. I can feel them. I know them and they comfort me but they are outside of the reach of display. They come in shadows or twisted in their meanings and my mouth contorts itself around their pronunciation. I sound uncertain when the certainty exists. When I try to explain what is happening to me I feel a bit insane. My family worries after my health and the onset of depression. I have my moments with those thoughts but they aren’t more than moments. I understand the importance of this step into the insanity of thought even as I’m stepping over the clutter.

The house begins to reflect the upheaval. I have changed and rearranged the furniture. I am giving things away right out from under my family. It is too much clutter for so busy a mind. I plan and I scheme my world around the sparse tidiness of my mind’s goal. I need less, and fast. I’ve moved my study space away from the window. The swaying of the trees in spring’s first breath cannot distract me. I am not yet in the birth canal, only recognizing that I am to be born. To rush now would be to come into this unprepared and disorganized. The timing is everything.

I know that this time is passing. This uncertainty of my self in this body with that goal using those words in a place that reflects the cleanliness of purpose is short-lived. And if I am to grow and be committed to that growth, I must suck the life and lessons out of this time quickly. The meaning will come back. The words have never forsaken me for long and the house always manages to stand. This time, this now belongs to something greater. To ignore that would be to bully the body, mind and spirit and to forsake my future in the process. This time belongs now to the spirit. The rest of us have naught but to wait.