imaginative exhaustion

I am filling his sink with everything I don't know what to do with.  Because it makes it not like a sink; not as much of a reminder that it is dry.  Unused.  I don't like the parallel I draw between that statement and myself.

So I won't draw that line.  Instead, perhaps I will play with circles.  Like how things from the past circle back around.  How old tapes play in our heads and we need to find ways to change the track.

Smiling is something I typically tend to do easily.  I remember my first year of teaching.  One of the janitors made a comment about how I wouldn't be smiling so much by the end of the year, apparently thinking I was some immature, empty headed blonde with no experience... I remember how I realized, again, that what I am on the outside at a glance, does not tend to match what I am made of at my core.  It is misleading.  I sing, I laugh, I dance or walk in strange ways down the hall.  It has little, if anything, to do with my level of happiness.  It's just what helps me get through the day. 

I told a couple people who didn't know about my loss yesterday.  One had no words.  Literally.  Didn't know what to say and so said nothing, just kept eating.  The other just repeated a few times how they were sorry for my loss.  I have a tendency to say "Me too" when people say that to me.  I wonder what they think of that.

Listening to Tori Amos...the line "set fire to your plain" is one that wakens things inside me.  I was talking with a friend tonight and two small, moderately interesting things intersected for me that never really did before.  It occurred to me that I am both a free spirit and a complete romantic.  Those things do not fit comfortably in the same puzzle.  I think the juxtaposition of those conductors have caused me a lot of heart ache over the years.   Yet, there they are.  Still. That and determination, dedication, stubbornness...

Another good thing:  I found out that a friend had John's memorial service recorded!  Oh, the joy I felt, small, but bright, when he told me that!  So many people shared such amazing sweet stories...I wonder how long it will be before I can listen to it, once he gets it for me....

I wish I could write a poem tonight.  But I am tired in a way that tightens my back and make the space behind my temples tight.

I will try to sleep.  I will try to know that I am not really alone.  I will try to invite my guardians to come and be with me tonight, bears and foxes and monkeys, each a symbol for someone and something, each an image from one dream or another, from books, or the Chinese zodiac...perhaps I can imagine a moonlit lake, clusters of lotus flowers blooming

In my dream I could be something other, someone different...perhaps I could be a mystical, magical someone, beyond feeling pain and loss, full of wonder and love and energy that glowed....and as I enter the water, each pore could soak in the strength of the universe, connecting to everyone and everything that ever was, and the ripples from my body entering would reverberate...because none of us are truly alone...