Not Starting, but Beginning

Ah, ha ha. The sun's going down and I have totally blown another beautifully cold day in front of my computer... Yesterday I did that on purpose, mostly. Today I did it out of total and utter laziness, just to avoid all the other things I have not yet begun, limited to but not including: getting up early, doing yoga, painting the kitchen, sanding the bedroom, cleaning the something or other, repotting the plants, mending my sweater, buying a soup pot, making soup, learning how to use my camera, reading, cutting my hair, clipping my toenails, learning a thing or two, blah blah blah etc.

I did manage, however, to spend a pretty penny on a ticket to Paris. Not being much of a city- or people-person (or one particularly infatuated with European culture) I have to wonder what the hell I'm going to do there for three days on my own, much less seven more with my sister and her husband... Wander, check. Eat, check. Get lost, check. Look at stuff, check. Talk to myself, check. So how does this differ from what I'm already doing in my living room?

Actually I'm rather looking forward to going off on a little solo adventure, if only for a few days. I seem to recall enjoying the hell out of New York the last time I was there (albeit with my dear sister as steadfast companion) and wishing we'd had more time, so chances seem good that I'll find something to love about Paris. I guess if all those supposed masterpieces and obscene buildings get to be a drag I can always go find something unnameable to eat.

On another note entirely, I'd like to share a few thoughts about the past year, while they might still be timely.

A week or so ago it struck me that, for the better part of 2009, I diverted quite an enormous amount of my personal energy into, paradoxically, trying to divert my energy. I struck down my thoughts, drowned myself in doubt, belittled my heart, swallowed my voice (and perhaps my pride...), heckled my inner child, neglected (if not abused) my adult body and generally treated myself--and, I suppose, by attrition, others close to me--like crap. You may think I'm being too hard on myself here, and you may be right, but the truth is that I spent far more time working to tear myself apart than to get myself together (bearing in mind that, with any hope, one might follow the other...). Partly this was (like sitting around all day yesterday) intentional on my part, a rather childish attempt to avoid the difficult work in front of me which, ironically, was all that dragged me through last year. But this subjugation of my truer self began to take its toll, and it was just after the Solstice that I began to realize that I was not just losing steam, I was losing life energy, my chi, as if my whole person had been perforated. This was, for those of you familiar with the Tarot, the year I began to truly understand the meaning of the suit of Swords.

Perhaps most striking to me about all of this is that during this time I tried, again and again, in myriads of ways, to crush my senses. I didn't want to know the story that my breath told me, or feel the blood in my belly, hear a song in the grass or let my eyes rest on stars. I lost strength, I lost time, I lost my wilderness. There were moments, yes--some which I've shared with you here--but for so much of the year I toiled to stamp out the life inside of me, that I cannot help but wonder how much easier things might have been, how less strange to me, if I had made another choice.

I have no wish to dwell in regret, only to put this down here, now, so that I might continue on in a different way. The last time I read my cards there were Swords, many, but also hard-earned Coins and sweet, full Cups. In the promise of a new year, I offer you all this wisdom from The Medicine Woman's Roots and hope that you will take it to heart, in your own way. May we all come to our senses, sooner or later...truly.

Oh, yeah, and my car won't start, so it looks like I'm going to have to waste a whole 'nother day here tomorrow. Darn.