Metaphor

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I believe that many of the illnesses we contract are physical metaphors for a psychological reality.  Our psyches are attempting to impose order on a chaotic world.   Illness breaks into our lives and sometimes fractures it into pieces.   Bronchitis has left me breathless for over a month now.  I no longer have the air intake ability required for my daily 3-mile walk.  I grieve the loss.

At a time in my life when so few options seem to be available, I have trouble breathing and filling my lungs with wonderful, cool air.    Life seems to have gotten a vicious hold on me and it is hard to breathe.  This comes as no surprise.  I am impaled by the shards of my inner landscape.   I feel squeezed by circumstance.
There is no breathing room.

But, what do I do about it?  Beyond the obvious, seeking medical care, how do I process this illness, this slowing down, this "confinement" into something useful?  Illness feels like a prison but I can "know why the caged bird sings".

Years ago, when still a child, I noticed that I was more apt to get sick in times of stress.  Every Christmas vacation found me with a cold or worse.  One year it was a hideous layer of chicken pox.  All that condensed family time was an incubator for illness.  The expectation of the holiday was too great. Something had to give.  What was given in return was a bad cold or flu or . . .a hideous layer of chicken pox.

Illness comes and causes us to slow down.  Not only does the body need rest and a chance to recuperate, the mind needs a break as well, a time to really look at all that is unhealthy in one's life.  It's an opportunity to make changes.

My body is telling me it needs breathing room.  It tells me that I need to slow down and figure out how to get better.  It's telling me that I need to give myself room. . . the mental space to be myself especially when under so much pressure to be someone else.  It's really the only healthy thing to do.

Silk

 Image credit

Silk.  Only one letter separates this word from sick.  I've had a lung-extracting cough for over 2 weeks and I'm tired.  I haven't been able to walk all week.  My soul has come to rely on those walks.  It feels sick without them.  My body, my spirit, both sick.  And so, my mind slips into silk. . . a silly little escape. Sick is exhausting.    Saturdays should shimmer with potential.  Silk shimmers.

I can feel the cool, smooth fabric on my cheek.  Silk is soothing, erotic, exotic.  Ah, the Silk Road.  My mind slips into the smooth regular rhythm of my feet as they hit the hot, sandy dirt beneath them.  I walk from no where to no where with the promise of silk connecting my beginning and my destination.  Silk is all that matters. But, the dessert is hot and I am tired.

Day gives way to night.  A cool breeze stirs the walls of my tent.  I wear a garment of the sheerest silk.  Seven veils have I.  A 1001 and one nights stretch before me like a silken ribbon.  I weave tales upon each one.  These tales fall from my lips, silken pearls of wisdom.

I swaddle myself in silk and close my eyes.  I am in a cocoon.  Reality will just have to wait until tomorrow.  Today, silk is all that matters.  Silk.

From Whence Cometh the Light

Shimmering Saturday

Image credit:  S. Sturgeon

Shimmering and I are at war today.  I want nothing to do with shimmering.  I want things to be clear.  I have had enough of uncertainty.  Where is the light coming from and why is it taking so long to get here?

I want my life to shine brilliantly.  I want to be a star burning in the heavens, parading triumphantly across the night sky.  Children on earth will look up and say, "There shines Carollus Maximus." 
But delusions of grandeur can never last.  They are never real.

I am a butterfly, captured in a display case.  A steel rod pierces my heart and holds me fast.  Am I less beautiful than a star? 

Maybe, mine is a different kind of beauty.  Fingers of light play across my wings.  It doesn't matter where the light comes from.  It still shines on me.

What Lies Beyond

Shimmering Saturday

(My sis, Janet used this as her profile pic on Facebook.  It seemed very apropos for today.  Thanks, J.)

As I started my Just 10 walk this beautiful, summer Saturday, I didn't expect the walk itself to be my topic.  Yet, the act of walking sat at the center of my thoughts.  Walking became more than walking.  This is what I discovered beneath the ordinary act of putting one foot in front of another.  I found that beyond my walk wisdom waits.

I love the idea of walking but I don't always enjoy the reality.  Along the way there are usually several points at which I just want to turn back.  My feet hurt.  My back hurts.  I'm tired.  I don't feel like walking.  Fortunately, my body is wiser than I am and it keeps going.
 
This morning I was doing a lot of protesting.  A back injury in my thirties left me with some nerve damage in my legs.  Many a morn my legs seem to be going a different directions than the rest of my torso.  A lovely bout of shingles this last year added a dimension of imbalance to my already wobbly legs.  Often the world spins at a dizzy rate and I struggle to hold on.  Some days I leave the house feeling that I must look like a drunken Raggedy Ann or old marionette with some evil puppet master pulling the strings.  If I got stuck thinking about what other might be thinking, I'd never leave the house.

This morning my legs were busy doing an odd sloppy lurch.  I wanted to turn back but my body was smart enough to keep moving forward.  I thought about how easy it is to take walking for granted.  It's really much more complicated than it seems.   Some times we don't appreciate something until it's taken from us.  For a moment, I wanted to indulge in self-pity.  "Why does everything have to be so hard?" I moaned.

My body replied,  "What are you talking about?  Hard?  I'm the one doing the work.  This isn't so bad.
When I feel dizzy, I pick a point on the horizon.  I focus on that and concentrate on balancing and walking.  I think I'm doing just fine.  Considering your age and what's happened to you, you're doing pretty well.  Now, stop complaining and get moving!"

I had to smile.  My body is a lot smarter than I am sometimes.  I thought about all the things that slow me down in life.  I thought about how my body has compensated for what it lacks and how it gets by.  I thought of how all the injuries, "the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune" have changed me.  It isn't always for the worse.  In fact, these slings and arrows, while painful have been valuable opportunities.  They have taught me how much I have to be grateful for and how amazing I can be.

My walk today was so much more than a walk.  It took me to a place I never expected to reach.