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Morning. I’ve been sleeping more but not feeling any more rested. I am too busy even in my dreams. Life’s been nothing more than fast stripes of color and sound whipping by me most days. My official last day of work is October 15th. I’m ambivalent about the date because it’s about a month later than what I was originally planning. After much discussion about all the things that needed to be done prior to moving, David and I decided that it would be better to play it safe and have the extra thirty days to get the other house in order. Even though I know that’s sensible and that a September departure would have been upon me before I could do half of what I want to get done before I leave, October seems so far away to me now.
I’ve been in that awful state of procrastination and lethargy which usually precedes my most gargantuan undertakings. I have so much to get done that it’s easy to be overwhelmed: a trial every week to clear my dockets before I leave, a languishing literary journal to update before everyone gives up on me, submissions to send off, boxes to pack, errands to run…an endless “to do” list. I’ll probably feel much better once I attack the knee-high grass that sprang up in my backyard while I was away. My gardens are a mess. I couldn’t bring myself to do any real planting since I knew I was leaving. I feel so selfish for that. I look out on the unruly mess and hear Gaia whisper. Where are you? Why do you avoid me? I’m as ashamed as a child who’s neglected a parent. It’s not my land. It’s so much more than that. It does not belong to me; rather, I belong to it. I’ve been so busy with the moving and the working and every other thing that matters so little when I actually get outside and remember what it is I really am. I have become distanced from what literally and spiritually grounds me.
And herein lies the beauty of journaling: even as I sit here writing, I arrive at the solution for myself by realizing the problem. I see it in what my words turn to without any conscious intention. Every good thing I have ever done for myself began in a circle traced with my feet or my hands. Circles traced in the air, on the ground, circles of water or birdseed or flowers. My circles, the ones that I am connected to and that sustain me, exist outside. Sometimes they are as small as a blanket on my grass and sometimes they are as expansive as the universes beyond anything I can see in the sky. The problem is that, in all my hectic running around, I somehow moved outside of my circles. The irony is that I moved outside of these circles by not being outside, or by being outside in such a thoughtless, transitory way that there was no honor in my movement, no center. Movement without a center has always been poison for me. I’m quicker to recognize it now that I’m older. My solution is to get outside and reconnect with my mother earth and my father sun. It takes nothing more from me than to place myself within the circle of their arms, taking a long slow breath and remembering who I am.
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with such applause in the lecture room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
----Walt Whitman
I’ve been in that awful state of procrastination and lethargy which usually precedes my most gargantuan undertakings. I have so much to get done that it’s easy to be overwhelmed: a trial every week to clear my dockets before I leave, a languishing literary journal to update before everyone gives up on me, submissions to send off, boxes to pack, errands to run…an endless “to do” list. I’ll probably feel much better once I attack the knee-high grass that sprang up in my backyard while I was away. My gardens are a mess. I couldn’t bring myself to do any real planting since I knew I was leaving. I feel so selfish for that. I look out on the unruly mess and hear Gaia whisper. Where are you? Why do you avoid me? I’m as ashamed as a child who’s neglected a parent. It’s not my land. It’s so much more than that. It does not belong to me; rather, I belong to it. I’ve been so busy with the moving and the working and every other thing that matters so little when I actually get outside and remember what it is I really am. I have become distanced from what literally and spiritually grounds me.
And herein lies the beauty of journaling: even as I sit here writing, I arrive at the solution for myself by realizing the problem. I see it in what my words turn to without any conscious intention. Every good thing I have ever done for myself began in a circle traced with my feet or my hands. Circles traced in the air, on the ground, circles of water or birdseed or flowers. My circles, the ones that I am connected to and that sustain me, exist outside. Sometimes they are as small as a blanket on my grass and sometimes they are as expansive as the universes beyond anything I can see in the sky. The problem is that, in all my hectic running around, I somehow moved outside of my circles. The irony is that I moved outside of these circles by not being outside, or by being outside in such a thoughtless, transitory way that there was no honor in my movement, no center. Movement without a center has always been poison for me. I’m quicker to recognize it now that I’m older. My solution is to get outside and reconnect with my mother earth and my father sun. It takes nothing more from me than to place myself within the circle of their arms, taking a long slow breath and remembering who I am.
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with such applause in the lecture room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
----Walt Whitman