Dear Reader:

I'm not one who likes to complain (oh, who am I kidding - I LOVE TO COMPLAIN), but I sometimes feel as though I just can't do anything more or deal with anything else.  End of the road.

Today was one of those days.   I would like to have a day where everything around me is frozen in stillness and I can do all of things or maybe just avoid doing all of the things that I can't seem to keep on top of in my daily life.    I really feel as though I need to re-arrange my life very soon so that I don't have to feel this way so often.   Just when I'm getting good and peaceful and grateful and Zen, I'm zapped with some sort of Dark Force which makes feel tired and overworked and unloved and all sorts of yucky.   I know everyone goes through this.   I know.   But, this is one thing that I miss about not having a life partner.  Someone who might notice and give me a little boost of some small gesture of kindness and support.   Of course, I also realize that many, many people have life partners that don't appear to be any kind of support in this area, so perhaps I am just fighting the good fight alone like everyone else!  

I think it might have to do with the fact that I feel responsible to be a stable and calming force for so many other people.   Rooted and grounded.   And I truly love doing just that, most of the time.  Honestly.   But, every once in a while, the Dark Force sweeps into my life and I find myself wishing that I could be the one who goes careening off center, every once in a while.   The crazy, out-of-left-field one who needs someone else to ground them.   Why am I always the calm, mature one?   Most likely because I came out of the womb as the calm, mature one.  Ha, ha.  So unfair.

Anyway, it may be that I feel exhausted because I am a woman.   According to the world's most hilarious headline, the one that goes along with this picture -

"Study Finds Women Need More Sleep Than Men Because Fighting The Patriarchy Is Exhausting"

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.  No kidding.  

Also, I love that comforter and sheet set.   Maybe I need a new comforter and sheet set.  No.  That's just retail therapy....   Pull yourself together, Lisa.

Ah, maybe I'll survive.   I just need another really funny TV series character, like Leslie Knope, to over-identify with and to give me the will to carry on with my treadmill of life activities.

Or maybe I need a summer with childcare and low work commitments.    Or maybe I need a trip to South Africa.   Or maybe I need to prepare and give a performance of the Brahms F Minor Quintet.   Or maybe I need to look forward to the possibility of a sabbatical in the Fall of 2017.    Wait, those things are going to happen!

Look at that.   I think I just buoyed myself.    (I'm still loving that bedding, though....)

Today is the first day of Spring.   (I am totally ignoring, passive-aggressively, this cold weather and gray skies).    My favorite season, dear reader.    I should be giddy.   I recently came across this Theodore Roethke quote:

I love this.   I couldn't find out if it is from a poem or if it is just a random quote from an essay or something.   In any case, it did lead me through some of Roethke's poetry which was a great way to spend an hour or two....   His poem - "The Waking" is particularly evocative.   Here it is:

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so, take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady.  I should know.
What falls away is always.  And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.


I've read this poem several times now, and it keeps giving me more to think about.   First of all, it's a villanelle.   I love the repetition of the villanelle form, but I also love the word villanelle.   Maybe it's all of those "l"'s.   I also, for the record, love the words inscrutable, nonplussed, vapid, dormant, and peripatetic.    Among others.  

I also love the whole life/death - waking/sleeping metaphor and the whole acceptance of just allowing life to teach you things in the way in which it is going to teach you things.   No struggle.  Just learn "by going where you have to go"  and "walking softly" on this ground.

But, I digress - hey, I haven't done a superfluous poetry post in a while!  

"Deep in Their Roots, All Flowers Keep The Light"  - OK, I need another cross-stitched pillow with that on it.   The light is down there, folks.   In the roots.   Someone needs to coax it or allow it to move upwards.   Spring.   New Beginnings.  You see what I am saying, right?   I AM THE METAPHOR QUEEN!  Or rather the QUEEN OF OVER-INTERPRETING METAPHORS!

Before I go to bed and rest another night (getting rested to start another day of fighting the patriarchy, dear reader), I am going to ponder all of these ideas in my heart, whilst I do two loads of laundry, clean the dishes and prepare for tomorrow's inevitable Monday-ness.   I will learn by going where I have to go.

Thanks for reading!