Bends In The River

There are themes cropping up everywhere like garish flashing pop-ups that you can't close down even when you pound your computer screen with a hammer. Themes such as the economy and what it means to each of us personally to clean up George Bush's ass of a mess; how change doesn't always announce itself in advance; impermanence.

I spent four hours cleaning my old house to get it ready to sell. Four hours in which I got up close and personal with the rude mess that life leaves in it's back draft. What's left when you've gutted an old habitat to move to a new one is poignant and telling. I was cleaning out our refrigerator, scraping old crumbs and wiping up sticky juice, thinking about two women I had conversations with earlier in the day that got me thinking.

I believe I may have been carrying on about six threads of thoughts at one time. As is so often the case, I find that my mind occupies opposite territories at all times which makes it awkward at to explain how things work in my head. It is in my nature to collect objects and to fill my environment with those that are most useful and beautiful to me. It is also in my nature, though greatly obscured by my predilection for stuff, to strip myself of belongings, of furniture, of anything not completely necessary for breathing.

I have just described my exterior and my interior. There is a part of me that hungers for the austerity of empty rooms full of weather and silence. There are always curtains, and the expansive windows are always open. The atmosphere is crisp and fresh and it blows through my body like a cold baptism. My old house gradually reached the ideal of my interior landscape so that I while I cleaned and the house lost the dog hairs, the sticky fingerprints, the dust, and the scraps of life that had littered the floor, I began to see my soul in real time, reflected in my environment. My soul looks like a scoured unencumbered house waiting for the next Starling to come with it's feathers, happy chatter, and it's rich treasure of nesting materials.

My soul is a crossroads. A place where other souls stop to take a drink and then change direction.

I see so clearly my eyes have no color.

There are two things this day has reminded me of:

Life is delicately ephemeral and that is a large part of its gorgeousness.

The conversations we have with ourselves are the most important ones we will ever have.

Today a dear friend described her belief that life is a river and that each event in her life is taking her where she needs to go down her personal waterway. She can't always see around the bend but she trusts that wherever the current is taking her is where she needs to go. I thought a lot about this as I scoured the old life off of counter tops. I see life the same way.

I have thought of life as a river for a long time. It's not really a thought as much as it simply exists as an unexpressed image. It might be water. It might be pure energy. It might be a river of liquid light. Life is definitely a river of something. Life is a current and my brain, being off kilter has had a tendency to try to swim against the tide. That's what mental illness feels like. Like you're always swimming upstream.

So many of us are coming to bends in the river that we can't see beyond. The whole country is approaching a bend in the river blind. As above, so below. It's important for all of us to trust that whatever experience we're headed for, politically, economically, personally, or ecologically, we are headed exactly where we need to go. That's the only direction life flows in. The forward direction. The comfort isn't in the outcome. Tragedy could be where we're headed. Hardship can visit us all at any time. The comfort is in knowing that if we go forward with some trust that we're going through exactly what we need to go through we have the potential at all times to come out of the bend in the river intact, possibly stronger than we went into it.

If we don't come out of the bend in the river at all?

Then we have the opportunity to sink with grace. With honor. With wit.

How we talk to ourselves while navigating the waters can determine what kind of voyage we have. It's more important than how we talk with others. Be kind to yourself. Be your own mother. Be your own friend. Give yourself good advice. Enjoy yourself. Light your own way in the dark. It isn't something that you either have, or don't have; it's something you work at every day like every other important relationship in your life.

I am tired all the way through my muscles. I am satisfied with this day's work. I am lusting for sleep. I will drift now.

Let the strength of the river carry you beyond the bend.