I worked on this blog post on November 6, but didn’t publish it. Reading it over, I think it expresses very well exactly where I was.
From my journal for Monday, November 1
Headache. Feeling a little bleak. — peach colored clouds in a pale blue-green sky, my tree glowing red-orange. my soul is nourished by the color. now a wind shakes the branches and leaves fly —
I had a lot of things to read, but it was all difficult. The Web of Meaning was in the place where he talks about how well-entrenched the capitalist system is. Etty is examining herself for faults and trying to encourage better behavior, but I find it hard to get exactly what she’s talking about. And in April ’93 I was having a bad time with headaches & nausea & lethargy & having trouble with organizing tasks. I think it’s both systemic yeast & menopause, but it’s not fun. I went to Kripalu for a week of R&R, & had a bad headache the whole time. I’m just beginning to see how mercilessly I push myself.
So I had no comforting reading yesterday. I do find my blog comforting. Even it it’s about a bad time, that reminds me of what I’m up against, and also I seem to have got past a lot. Or healed a lot. I haven’t felt afraid in a very long time. Most of my discouragement has to do with the damage to the earth, and some of it with no community of like-minded souls. But I realize that I do trust that the world I love is held in compassion by a larger cosmos. It is painful that I have no community who “get” what I offer, but I don’t see that as being because I don’t have anything worthwhile to offer. It’s because Western culture is so badly off center. I am wounded, yes, but so are most people, and unlike most of them, I have worked to heal my wound. And I do believe that is a positive contribution to the human energy field.
3rd cup. coffee. When I sat down to breakfast I realized I had started to read Enduring Lives. It was in the pile of books and I knew it would help. In the introduction is the quote about the medieval world view, that there is an invisible realm that interpenetrates the visible. This morning I started reading what she has to say about Etty and she understood much better than I did what’s going on with her.
When I went out with Mocha it was incredibly beautiful outside. Sunny, breezy, not too cold. Wonderful colors, the oaks up by the road have gone their amazing brownish red. I had an odd double feeling: almost joy in the colors & the breeze and sorrow in the knowing how fragile and fleeting it is. Something that I felt when I knew Bella was dying.
What’s really strange is that even this recent difficult time has not broken my connection to the wider, more inclusive, participatory, sacred cosmos. I can still feel it there, under everything, like the floor that caught my pieces after starting S.E., like the “goodness beyond goodness.” I thought that if I got to this stage I would be happy all the time, but there’s still a slightly scary unfamiliarity. I think it’s because I’m breaking all those old family rules — Thou shalt not think thyself so great, Thou shalt constantly push thyself to prove thee deserves to live, Thou shalt do everything right, etc.