It is a treaty only two days old but bearing up well considering the odds for successful transpersonal mediations are rare, particularly if done sans the aid or blessing of an accomplished guru or highly-paid life coach.
However, I've yet to test drive it in the real world as I'm still clinging tightly to that boulder of compromise while remaining mired in the quickening sand of afterthoughts; and as of this moment, I still have no plans of climbing out.
It is surprisingly warm bathed in the thick, slightly coarse sludge of mental and emotional despondency, and I find a fair amount of solace in being held above muck-level by the finicky physics of raw anxiety and non-clinical depression. Besides, I am fascinated by the uncanny strategy in their collaboration to outwit the gravity of apoplectic despair by merely shifting sides.
Anxiety drills hard from the inside and creates a sort of neurotic buoyancy that elevates my mood through chronic activity while the soft grinding of apathy provides a kind of stationary landing that holds the body steady and prevents the head from slipping completely under and drowning in the grasping mire of non-being.
Of course, my daily dual hours on that damned elliptical have ameliorated any excessive physical frustration as well as taken up a handy chunk of my mornings, which leaves me fewer daylight hours in which to brood or slam the world with bursts of misplaced anger. It's all good. Theoretically.
Now, if I could only get out of my way enough to just work for work's sake, I would likely be further along than I am. Apathy is absolutely my worst enemy. It underscores all creative musings with the broad black stroke of what for? and leaves my senses to idly scan the room for clues of purpose while those naysaying nodes of thought race to my frontal lobe with objections to every possibility no matter how lame.
But I'm not panicking. I've been at this place throughout my life in routine doses and durations (although the timing can be fairly random and unpredictable) and I know historically that my karmic addiction to change precludes the permanency of any disposition; maudlin or otherwise. The only constant is change. The only constant is change. The only constant is change..... I wonder how redundancy feels about that?
What really needs an adjustment is my resolve, as it appears that dredging up the resolve to bring forth better days is the first step in the transformational process.
If only I just weren't so full of f***-you's, I'd stand half a chance of willing myself to take in the world from a point of acceptance instead of from this hastily-crafted divot of marbleized regret with all these veins of bad habits, poor choices, wrong turns, unfinished business, broken promises, useless undertakings and all-out failures converging to form a solid slab of Who-gives-a-damn.
I could pave an entire city with that slab. Perhaps I have.
There is also the strong symbiotic collusion between the elements and the soul to take into consideration; which, if you examine the unusually lengthy rainy season we've been subjected to here in the Midwest, it provides my present dark night with a plausible foundation.
As if the continual injury of heavy winter snows was not enough, there comes the additional insult of all this spring rain. Perhaps they've adjusted their attitude meters for such a dismal meteorological pallor in Seattle and are able to thrive in spite of the relative lack of sunshine, but we've been given no choice nor preparation time in Tornado Alley and can't seem to shake the idea that we've been sucker-punched by Mother Nature in a big way.
I'm not the only one trapped far to the left of happy around here, and you can tell the level of desperation on the infrequent warm and sunny days when everyone with an independent option and half a brain is spending as much time out of doors as possible. The parks and sidewalks are so dense with pale denizens- clearly exhibiting signs of deficiency in vitamin D- that it looks like a city under siege after a long drought.
There are definite needs not being met by nature, by me or by man; and God is not nearly as comfortably close as I'd like Him to be.
But tomorrow is Friday, and for some ridiculous reason, in spite of the fact that Friday- and weekends in general- have long outgrown their significance for me in terms of being days of respite and reverie quite different from the rest, I still feel those tendons of residual hope tense in my heart at the memory of it all and that unoccupied seat of freelance abandon begs for a willing rider as much now as it ever did before.
I suppose that the learned patterns of joy are just as tenacious as the acquired experience of sorrow, and if the constitution of hope is more resolute than that of pessimism, then the short odds are that I will get my mojo back soon; or at least retrieve enough of it to rejoin my imagination and create again, as well as resume a more reasonable regime with that damned elliptical.
For now, however, Friday also signifies garbage day, which means I have to trudge through the soggy, backyard terrain with my trusty bucket and garden shovel to pick up the dog poop, collect the trash from all the indoor containers, cut up the boxes for the recycling bin and gather and tie the large, black plastic bags containing another week's worth of our detritus. As much as I distain the mediocrity and drudgery of these pedestrian waltzes with normalcy, they are also providing necessary distractions from my temporary march with the f*** you's, and I'm trying not to hold too much of a grudge.
The other day I received a very unexpected but lovely Mother's Day card from an old and dear friend I don't often see or hear from much anymore in these days of newly-redefined filial demonstration; and in the card was a holy medal that had once belonged to her deceased mother; a terrific woman with the resiliency of the tides. My friend wrote that she had wanted to pass the medal along to me in the hopes it would help me in my challenges with my son. It could not have come at a more appropriate time, and I was deeply moved and filled with gratitude for both the gesture and because of the significance.
It is a beautiful, contemporary medal of The Blessed Mother, and I immediately placed it on the chain I wear and never remove that holds a few other very precious medals and charms I've received from friends and family over many years; all of deep importance to me.
On the back of this one is inscribed: Our Lady of Mental Peace.
Who says the universe never hears us?
Everything is going to be alright.
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