Where is my open sea with beckoning shores?
Where are my quiet, calm and silent nights?
And where is my quilted bliss and warming fire?
And oh goddess, where is my rest?
Less than a month from a respite and I have begun to feebly hope.
I am slogging through life this season with a tiredness that has been around so long, I can discern each subtle thread of exhaustion from another. Today, it is the worn out but literarily aware and conscious self instead of yesterday’s barely conscious and vegetative self.
Tomorrow will be the physical tiredness that lies yawning beneath the intellectual curiosity that fuels my technical work.
And although this coming long weekend is dedicated to rest, both physical and mental, I have several areas of my life that are begging for attention.
So I gaze toward the edges of the semester for true solace and comfort. Like a sailor longing for land, any glimpse of solidity to rest and recuperate, I scan the horizon. And just like in previous years, my expectations do not reflect reality. I actually only have about a week off if that long, but you’d think it was a yearlong sabbatical the way I dream and long for it.
What is happening is that my habit of “projecting into some predictably idyllic future” is running amok again. As I admitted to myself this past month, there is no period of openness, or rest or idleness in my life … because I purposefully do not allow it. I fill my time up with things to do because I crave the sense of urgency it engenders within me.
And my life is full because without it I wonder if I would feel lost and un-tethered to life itself. My life is over committed, full and urgent because … I do not trust my own air nature.
All this time bemoaning my earth challenges, only to discover that my problems come from not fully embracing my air gifts. I have been instead living and breathing in fire. My warrior gets more “air” time than my artist self. And she is burning me out.
And so I breathe, trying to discern the vagaries of my authentic self, my winged warrior of the air. I am not a being of fire, one who swallows embers, lifting into the air only for battle. I am a winged one, a denizen of air, one who soars, loves, dives, sings, dances, circles and spins in the windswept celestial temples of air, and only occasionally spirals down for the kill.
And it is she, my winged nature that I need to set free. So I will actually LOOK at my calendar and PLAN my time for this long weekend. And maybe I will find some CREATIVE ways to OPEN up my life and make SPACE for me.
So look up, because you never know, you might just catch sight of me soaring through the skies. Or you may find me resting at the very top of the tallest trees. Either way, I am on a journey of discovery, following an ancient trail into the labyrinth of my very own soul.
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Wish I could be there. Very well spoken.
Katrina,
I wish you all the blessings and power you need on your journey. Thank you for these words. It is good to remember that returning to work (and thus returning to grace) bring a chance for us all to rest and have joy.
Wishing you joy in the Work.
David
Dear Katrina- Thorn reposted your blog and happy am I. Your passion, always so immense, comes blowing out in these words. So akin to my own heart and soul that it makes me have a bittersweet smile.
The Storm is only now coming to the edges of our universe and yet it will sweep and consume all that is. In the end, our beautiful universe will be so much...more? Different? Complete? Who knows?
All I do know is my soul came here to witness and be part in this period. I cannot shrink from the work. I am here with you, fae sister!
Thought-provoking piece, Katrina. Thanks.
I don't know what to call myself either. In Pagandom, I've taken to referring to myself as a Witch at Large. In the interfaith world where I'm active, I call myself a Pagan. Sometimes I call myself an uppity woman or a Second Wave Feminist. I've never really thought to publicly identify myself by my sexuality, het woman, which is very "white bread" and old-fashioned. Not only het, but serially monogamous for the most part. It seems almost a liability these days to say you're het, but I am proudly and happily so. I tend towards intellectualism but only have a BA, which doesn't carry much weight, at least in public and professional worlds, no matter how much you've studied, trained, and can articulate, even teach.
My biological heritage is Irish, Dutch, French Huguenot, Euro-mongrel. My social heritage is Roman Catholic on one side and conservative Methodist, temperance-crusading, women's rights and education on the other, with distinct East Coast sensibilities, now mellowed by more than half a century living on the Left Coast. My maternal political heritage is conservative Republican (altho what my relatives might think of current trends in the GOP I cannot imagine, since they did have brains and they did think and they did have a social conscience), yet I am much farther left in my outlook than any elected official I know. My paternal political heritage is blue collar Democratic, except that my dad broke with his family on politics and allied with my mother's family's conservatism.
I'm a former hippie, a home-birth advocate, a home death and green burial advocate, an opponent of capital punishment and resorting to warfare to resolve humankind's differences. I support the right to conscious self-deliverance. I rejoice in any and all consensual expressions of love and eros. I'm a lover and a mom.
I have never missed voting in an election and I disrespect those who don't avail themselves of this hard-won right. (I have ancestors who fought the Brits in the American Revolution.) I support workers' rights. I recognize our interdependence on this planet, so could be called a greenie. I'm a committed environmentalist in my day-to-day life (in terms of eating locally grown food, expanding public transit, recycling, preserving open space and wildlife, opposing exploitation of natural resources [strip mining, oil-drilling, nuclear facilities, agribusiness, monocultures, clear-cutting timber, overuse of pesticides, genetic modification, etc.]) I want to make the city streets "safe for dancing," as my old friend Tony Serra said when he ran for mayor of SF on the Platypus Party ticket.
Well, you got me going there, my friend. Thought-provoking read, as I said. ;-)
xo,
Macha
Lovely azaleas!
[cough][gag][snort][sneeze]
Just lovely...
I know what you mean.
I feel you. There is too much bs- particularly when people decide that their temperament is tantamount to truthful and ignore everyone else.
I get irked by immature extroverts or closet introverts who ignore you REPEATEDLY and then pretend you're out of line for being upset by the time they can't pretend you didn't say anything anymore. I find that the same people will ignore you if you blow up right away, too, and that it's because they just don't think that honoring what you value is important to maintaining a relationship, or even worse: that you don't know what you value at all and that it's all a mind game for their pleasure or annoyance. Then they call you passive-aggressive, aggressive, moody, touchy and temperamental. I call them "not listening".