20 September 2013

Strands of Chaos

We are several weeks into meteorological fall when the celestial Autumn Equinox happens. Almost as if to challenge the very notion of the balance of light and day this has been an especially chaotic and unbalanced week. In an about face from Midas' golden touch, everything I've touched has become slightly putrid it seems.

Ah, the joyful life.

Chaos happens. Bad things happen. Unpleasant, even. I have been in such a sour state all week as the happenings piled on top of one another that it finally took something so heinously absurd (not putting the parking brake on after spilling coffee on myself when I got to work and my car just... merrily rolling itself into the trees with bang) to make me realize that I need to just stop and breathe for a moment or ten.

I don't know that I am willing to say this is all my fault; my view of Karma is both slightly more complicated and still somehow simpler than that. I will say that I have helped stir the pot with my frustration and unwillingness to yield to the currents around me. I have forgotten the simple rule of letting the world flow through me, rather than filter the world to the way I want it to be.

And so, balance.

These are hard lessons - letting it flow, letting it go, controlling what I can and just letting things be. I am not a patient person by definition, but I am continually in situations that require an almost superhuman level of patience. Or at least, that is how it seems to me.

So, this day requires a lot of breathing. Focusing on gratitude. For everything that I have cussed at under my breath or with some righteous flair, I am finding the reasons why it's okay. Acceptance without being a doormat -- another ridiculous lesson to learn -- and finding my way back to some sort of observational center where I can move through the world and not be in a constant state of reacting to it.

It's a good time of year to be reminded of these lessons. Celestially we come to the balance where the day will match the night and then fall in a headlong rush to the darker half of the year. The nights are longer, meant for feasting and soft lights, laughter, and the dark, nurturing quiet of the winter months. I relish the winter cold unlike a lot of people I know, though I gather as I get older I will ache more and perhaps look a bit more glaringly at the sidewalk needing to be cleared three or four times in a day.

But that is not today, and it is not this weekend. While the summer sheds her greens for autumn reds in the sumac, and the wild grapes ripen on their tree strangling vines, we drink of sweet wines and laughter and bank the memories as embers for winter, to tell tales with and sing songs of. This is our thanksgiving of full harvests and full hearts. We take them, we carry it all forward, and we rejoice.

Virginia Creeper and berries, just outside my office. Totally not edible :) 



1 comment:

  1. oh honey. I hope balance comes more easily now, with less drama and less...of a bang.

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