Earth Update #84

(An update from Earth in Spring of 2014 recovered from dataset BL857386)

I've been detaching.

Netflix to make the housework bearable. Flavour to make the housework bearable. So sick of the grind that all I can see is the grind - make food, clean up, make food, clean up, rest, make food, clean up... I barely left the kitchen yesterday, that gorgeous day of sun and fun and holiday. I relegated myself to the duty and my duty done, spent, I went to bed. Is this how I am best spent?

I feel quite sorry for myself. So I indulge my addictions to flavour and tv because those indulgences overlap the housework, give it texture and a way to keep my mind from noticing the repeating monotone drudge. If I can't have a life, at least I can be entertained. The things I'd rather be doing don't overlap with housework. Housework never ends.

At least, I let that premise lead. It's easy to be petulant when you're run-down and short on time.

Today I cut the carrots for the stew. Without the tv for distraction, I boiled the stock, spiced the meat (sorry, chickens). Calm overtook me. I was cutting carrots. I was cutting potatoes. I was mixing stock. I was just doing that. I was in the doing of it. Quiet and stillness around and inside me. I was the doing, and the doing was me. I stepped outside myself and saw this avatar of Cheryl Making Stew. I knew myself one with Essence, with a Knowing that the perceptive instruments of this human machine can't compute. I don't know how long it's been since I felt that way. Weeks. I felt such longing it almost knocked me down. Oh, yeah, that's why I was detaching. No time for this intensity. No energy left over to devote to life's devotion.

So we're back to pace, back to slack. Not enough slack. Too fast a pace. Even without employer, as soon as I touch other humans, I don't set pace. Staying calibrated in this rapid a current takes discipline, energy, and that's not an answer I want. I want slack to feel more comfortable, not demand so high a price. But we get there together, or we don't get there. And I'm tired.

(Even my purpose distracts me from my purpose. The world conspires against clarity, which terrifies the creatures here more than death.)

Three Minutes

We need more time to do nothing.

Last night, driving home from Kung Fu, the pinks and oranges of sunset glinted in my periphery through the trees. You should stop, myself told myself. You should stop and watch.

But I'm driving, I reasoned. And when I get home, I have to empty the dishwasher, clean the kitchen, make lunches and fold laundry before I can spend time with A and go to bed. There's no time to stop.

Yes there is, myself told myself. Just for a minute. Just for three minutes. What difference will three minutes make?

While she was talking, my body had already turned the car down Beaver Creek Drive where I know there's a good place to stop and see the water. So I said yes, of course.

I pulled over, near the side of the water. I turned off the ignition, silencing the loud music to which I'd been rocking out. It felt like one beat of silence. And then...

the car suddenly filled with a wall of noise - a buzzing, croaking, clacking, singing, calling, solid brick cacophony. Or, another way, an unrelenting ocean of earth's song. I found myself completely and absolutely immersed in sound, filling my ears and nostrils, my lungs and heart and liver and pancreas and kidneys and uterus and all the spaces between the pores of my skin.That sound was me. I was that sound. I walked out on the concrete pier.

Hidden from me, frogs, insects, birds and animals sang loudly to the dusk with my spirit. Flocks of small, dark birds practiced precision aerial maneuvers against the glowing pink-orange sunset, cheered on by geese and warblers below. Fog billowed its smokey effects across the water's surface, as even the clouds joined this earthly celebration. Reflected upon the rippling surface, Sunset smiled a glowing smile of recognition and love to herself. Mosquitoes danced with excitement at the prospect of piercing my fresh flesh.

We humans are not a part of this party. We are not welcome guests. The birds warned each other of my arrival. The little animals scurried away from the harsh sound of my shoes on gravel. Only my stillness allowed them any ease. We have placed ourselves apart from the celebration of life that the rest of the planet is having. More, we have treated all other parts of nature as enemy, now vanquished enemy, devalued and enslaved. No wonder they don't want us around, no matter our intentions.

And yet, in my stillness, they accepted me among them. They did not stop their party for me, and my spirit joined their song to refresh and refuel that essence in my otherwise distracted existence. My heart opened with gratitude.

Three minutes made a difference, after all.

We have established society on top of nature, without regard for nature, even our own human nature. We need time to just be with what is, for our well-being and to begin repairing the rift we have created.

CULTIVATE SLACK.

Goofy (another Bad Mom post...or maybe not)

Goofy

"Mom,  you look goofy."

A dart, straight into my heart from eight years old. I feel embarrassed, maybe a little betrayed.

"Do I?"

I suppose I do. I'm wearing a blue jersey dress with some kind of swoopy neckline, over black yoga pants, with pink and neon green runners, a grey granny-sweater and a knee-length patterned scarf. I have no make up, and my hair dances in chaotic curls. I do look goofy. I smile.

"I'd rather be goofy than uncomfortable, I guess."

And it's true. No point in worrying about whether I look goofy or not. I used to watch my appearance closely, try to control it through the day with brushes and make-up and fussing. I used to take an hour to dry and style my hair in the morning. An hour! Of my only human life! Every day! And all for how I looked. Ridiculous. I'm beautiful to the people who see me, and the rest - why am I making SO MUCH EFFORT?

I'll make a little effort - if it's important, if it's an event or a celebration or a formal kind of thing. But I got myself a nice wash-and-wear style that sometimes is even more beautiful than my fussing ever produced, and I bought a few pairs of yoga pants which pretty much cover most of my leg-covering needs. This is as much attention as I allot to my appearance, of the limited attention I have left in this single life.

Maybe I don't mind looking a bit goofy. It surprises people when they find me such a serious being. Maybe I kinda like it.

Then there's the side benefit. Because I read a "Christian Dad"'s blog a few weeks ago, with all sorts of advice for women on how we should dress so we don't put his brothers at risk of transgression about us (that means, don't trigger their sex noticing). And it turns out, I follow almost all his rules. The jersey dress - it shows my curves, both the stomach I want to hide and the ass that should be hidden, lest it attract undue sexual attention. So I wear yoga pants under and a sweater over, and in case my protruding bosom attracts attention, I cover with the scarf. I'm following all his rules, because the truth is, he's not wrong - if I want to avoid unwanted attention, there are aspects of dress that encourage or detract. Which sucks, of course, but look at me, so obedient.

Since I've adopted my eclectic, wash-and-wear style, the only people who notice I'm beautiful, maybe even sexy , are interesting people. The mundanes don't even notice I exist. And how could I mind that?

Anyway, I think I'm kinda cute, just the way I am.