The Day of the Moon

My hatred of Mondays is common knowledge.  I decided to look behind the "veil of Monday" and find out what might lurk beneath.  Monday's name is derived from the old English for "moon day." Maybe that's why the old nursery rhyme says, "Monday's child is fair of face."  Moon beams don't leave a tan.    On this Monday, I wonder how my life looks from the moon.   Would the moon look down on the earth with envy or with pity?  Would it look down with both?  Would it foresee a happy ending or annihilation?  It's a good thing I'll never travel to the moon and find out.

Instead, I'm earthbound, at least in this life.  In my next life I want to be a particle of light streaking across the universe.  But all that will have to wait.  Today, I'm stuck here with my flaming bag of problems and few solutions.  I'd like to be that particle of light right now. 

The decision to move down to my home town was not a good one.  Sometimes finding out what won't work is the first step in finding what will.  We are messy, noisy and grossly inconvenient.  We are also a lot more but you have to get past that first list of adjectives before you can really enjoy what we are.  I can't move my family to a place where they aren't wanted.  We really were on our best behavior.  God help us all on a bad day.

Yesterday,  I understood why solitude was my favorite companion as a child.  It was were I found solace and comfort.  I understood why I spent a lot of my life trying to fade into the background.  Fading doesn't come naturally to me or to my children.   Fading is a tragic waste of human potential.

I don't know what we are going to do but I am very clear on the why of it all.   Up above the moon looks down on all of us with compassion.   Maybe I've been unfair to "Moonday."   It's not as bad as it seems.

Monday

"Monday, I'm not ready for you."

I struggle to stay awake during the first hour of my work day.  A certain point behind my left eye starts throbbing.  I take off my glasses and give myself completely to rubbing out the ache with my fingertips before I realize that I'm doing all this in public.

Exactly, what is in this spot that it should ache so?  I soon discover that the front lobe, an area of judgment, foresight and voluntary movement is in the front of my brain.  I'm pretty sure that area isn't working at full capacity this morning and doesn't have a reason to hurt just yet.  Ah,  Broca's area. . . not only does this handle the spoken word, it also handles the written word.  I feel a certain pressure to come up with something to write about.  In my mind's eye, I get a mental picture that looks kind of like this:

If that doesn't explain a headache, I don't know what does. 

This pressure to come up with a topic, something meaningful and relevant is a pain this Monday morning.  I'm trying to connect my headache with some higher meaning, some greater relevance and significance.  Maybe a headache is just a head ache (even if it looks like a brain explosion.)  No symbolism, no greater relevance just a pain in the head.

Maybe this is exactly where its relevance lies.  Maybe it's relevant because it isn't relevant.  (If you don't have a headache before reading that sentence, you might have one now.)  Not everything is pregnant with meaning.  Things happen, situations are what they are.  Life isn't always neat and tidy like a novel or a blog entry.  Things don't begin and end with me.  Not everything taunts me from the sidelines of life and dares me to unlock the mysteries of existence. Some times things just are.

Reminding myself that I'm not the center of the universe comes as a relief.  The next logical question becomes, "Am I the center of my own inner universe."
Followed by a quick, " Do I want to be?"
Addressing the pain behind my eye, I toss it these two questions.  Pain devours the question without a thought.  I stand blinking as I stare at this vacuum, I have just created.  I now longer feel a headache.  I'm not even sure I feel a head with a brain in it sitting atop my shoulders.  Blink. . . . blink. . . I stand at the edge of an abyss.

Finally, these words rise to the surface, little air bubbles escaping a black primordial ooze,  "It doesn't matter."
This is not spoke by the voice of apathy.  Instead, this voice sounds like good old-fashioned common sense. "Forgetting oneself is the beginning and the end of our being."
The voice adds these words and takes me to another region of my brain, that of old memories.  It is here that I am momentarily detained.  I sit and watch.  Apparently, the martial arts action of the Kung Fu television show does not trigger nostalgic memories in the same way that the moments of confusing contradictory "zen" dialogue do.  I begin to replay a mental episode much like this:



My headache leaves as quickly as it came.  I realize that I've found something to write about after all.  I write about nothing.  It might be Monday but I've had much worse.

Empty

"Empty" was the word this Monday morning.  At first I resisted it.  "Being empty can't be good," I thought.
But it is Monday.  I have a cold.  I'm tired and just want to be in a warm bed.  "Is empty really that bad?  Could being empty be better than being full?"  I rode this thought all the way to work.  "Yes," I say quietly to myself.  "Being empty means there is always room for more."

Fighting against emptiness has been a futile battle.  How often I have waged this senseless war, looking for things, people and situations to fill a chasm within.  This chilly, sleepy morning, I decide to rest on the shore of this emptiness.  It laps gently at the edges of my awareness.  As much as I want to sit and rest on the shore, stray thoughts pull me away.  Maybe not thoughts. . . but feelings.  Feelings come spinning out of the dark center of emptiness.  They wash over me.  "What are they trying to tell me?"  Pulling myself closer to the emptiness, I gaze within it.  A warm, soft darkness envelopes me.  This emptiness is no stranger.  Exhaling slowly, I float on a sea of nothing.

Outside, a soft mist sent from a leaden sky covers my windshield.  Glancing at the speedometer, I note that I'm going the speed limit.  A car behind me doesn't ride my bumper.  Its speed matches my own.  Lost in empty thoughts, time stood still.  I was glad to discover that I had not.  The rain stops.  My wiper blades have nothing to sweep away.  "Yes.  Some times empty is a good thing."

Once again, I'm back on emptys shore.  I remember the anxious ripples from a morning memory.  An anxious father fumed over his son's ample use of maple syrup.  I think he tries to control too much of what refuses to be contained.  I think of the father and son, not the syrup.  I left the house, chanting "Relax, relax."
I spoke more to myself than anyone else.  Relaxing is hard in the company of the chronically anxious. 

Inhaling, I image my anxiety flowing out of me and drifting away lost in the battleship sky.  Enjoying its absence, I remember how much life has taught me about letting go.  My enjoyment is fleeting as all enjoyment is.  I focus on the memory of an anxious partner.  I worry that he makes life harder than it already is.  How did it happen that I became the more easy-going of our pairing?  I never expected to be the more lenient, more playful, more flexible.  Hadn't life tried to make me the authoritarian figure? 

At times, I feebly try to live this role, to be the authority figure.  It doesn't fit me.  I tired easily, never forgetting what it feels like to be on the receiving end.   I flashback to a feeling of oppression when I hear tirades about abandoned socks, stray legos, forgotten homework and lights left on.  Some times, I rage too.  It's really a waste of precious energy.  Briefly, I tango with my frustration about the morning's maple syrup.  In that anger, I must confront my own inability to "let go."

Heavy thoughts fill the once empty void I was trying to enjoy.  These thoughts, I release into the gun metal sky.  They float heavenward like a sacrificial offering to a better self.  The emptiness returns.  I sink into its soft warmth and turn on a neon "DO NOT DISTURB" sign.  It mentally flashes across my mind for all the world to see.  If, only the world could see it. 

The day does not.  It comes knocking.  "Go away!", I yell.
It doesn't listen.  The students around me now are either too active or not active enough.  I do what I can to encourage or squelch their behavior and then let it go.  Some days, I feel almost invisible.  Maybe, I am an apparition, floating in and out of the physical world.  Maybe, one foot is trapped in another dimension.  I think of the transmutation of energy.  The thought captures me and carries me away.  It appeals to my Monday frame of mind.  Is this another way to fill the emptiness or is it what rushes in when one clears the space?  I may never know.