12.9.13 All Over Again

I went by my cousin's new stained glass studio; then wandered about one of those old brick factories, enormous and meandering, labyrinthian, really. Artists and writers and creators at every turn. Filled you with remarkable ideas and unusual paintings and crafts, like a fine dinner with an exquisite wine. 

Sated, I left the building in the newly frigid cold, glanced up at the sky, and there, was this.

Oh, I know. There are sunsets and sunrises and sky clouds and all sorts of things all the time. All the time. On Instagram, which I did have fun frequenting for a bit, there were nice people to social-media-wise get to know, who would share photographs of skies and sunsets and their lives and other remarkable things, from Africa and Dubai and Norway and Argentina, and we would comment on each other's photos, and I would just sit there, awash, with the sheer volume of different and changing sunsets, or cloud formations, the world over. That shift and change and change again as you stand and watch, in wonder, feeling more like you are watching someone you are getting to know, by watching, than some old cloud passing by on some old everyday. 

So I wandered over toward my car, and of course, watched this whomever, who had a refrain waaay back that you cannot see in this shot. Still, so many different songs in one sky production at one time, and of course, then, is simply passes by . Overhead. Noone really seems to see. Or looked up, shocked, at the sight.

But there you have it. We in our busy busy lives.

I once learned a great deal about busy lives and anxiety and choices, the real time choices we have, if we care to become a bit quiet and watch and feel and allow things to digest and go. Here is a story of a dear one who gave me that gift.

Once I knew and loved  a client and eventually friend, in her late 80's.

Clairvoyant, English, a poet, living those very tough times we often live at that time of life.

So I was her Shepherd, and would visit her at rehab  post stroke places and call and hassle her offspring for her needs and would go by her home when she was released, sometimes with the phone on the blink, nice home, mattress terrible, and align her spine and carry her in her meal and do a few other things and listen to the loveliness of her self.

But one thing I noticed was how stressed she was by all there was to do.

She had no job and all day and difficulty with many things, but the sense of urgent distress

was, to me, a choice.

And as I watches and listened and loved her, I saw this in her, and then in myself. A gift.

That you can truly have many many things and plates spinning and lives at stake...or  you can have choices. And its our choice to become aware that shifts us from one state to another.

Which means, our bodies are allowed, with a sigh of relief, to shift from

the pretense of terrible, horrible, urgent stress...wringing hands and all...

to a state of choice. Of real acknowledgement of what would be good and helpful and important and at times urgent, and to make our way to being capable of sitting with that. The whole Yes thing all over again.

Yes, the smallest kid needs shoes.

Yes, the electric bill is late.

Yes, the tires are a bit bald.

Yes, I fall into bed like the dead!

Yes, I wonder why our country is still at war.

Yes, I hope school/work/clients are not cancelled tomorrow.

Yes, I can sit at the window after I finish......

and sit and breathe. Slowly. Deeply. Quietly.

And just watch the little noisy Sentry inside of me

bark , shrill, about one thing after another.

My failings.
My regrets.

The things that must needs be done.

And I can sit back and see it all, and watch it come through me,

the great sadness,

the grief,

the rage,

the frustration..

and then watch it float away like a cloud.

And then I am clear. Lighter. 

Things look far simpler.

The facts all the same.
But the silly untrue anxiety soaked take on it?

Gone for a bit.

Til it's time to sit again. 

And watch the night sky 

and the treetops in the wind

and let all the things

get felt and then released

all over again.