ruminating on my laundry list of loss
average life with average losses, yet
each one sticks to me in the darkness

“When we suffer anguish we return to early childhood because that is the period in which we first learnt to suffer the experience of total loss. It was more than that. It was the period in which we suffered more total losses than in all the rest of our life put together.” - John Berger

Perspectives

glancing at grief's silhouette
small far away insignificant
i prefer the dance with denial

"I have a very highly developed sense of denial." - Gwyneth Paltrow

I had three snippets of human interactions that stuck with me from shopping today:

A gentleman speaking to a clerk about stopping by their shop last night at 10pm only to find out they were closed. She replied, "Yes, we close at 9pm, I mean, who in the world would want to buy vitamins at 10 pm at night."

Leaving Fred Meyer's late in evening, the woman in front of me turned around, and told me she just can't believe how they treat people who shop at night, all the good meat was put away, bakery and deli closed. "They are just plain prejudice against people that shop at night."

My favorite a Trader Joe's, my cashier shared her approval of my purchase of 10 fruit bars. She said her friends asked her what the strangest thing she sold a customer. "I told them it's not what they buy, it's number things. Why would anybody need 7 of something, not 8."

Our perspectives are interesting, shifting, not always multi-dimensional.

Paramount, NY, 9:34 A.M.

In the morning tiny bells go off
that alight a darkened path
Reluctant as pinpricks
dawn pierces sleep
with nimble fingers
I am unwoven
      the rich yoke of slumber
      unraveled thread by thread
until I am naked and glistening
standing before the newness
of another day
a tiny form birthed of white linen
and restless dreams

I am reading a book of poems by Jewel called a night without armor. I enjoyed the wording of her poem (above) and how well it painted a picture of arising.

i am not yet talking to my grief
but gently whispering so as not awaken it
from it's solemn slumbering world

slogging along in the murky darkness
carefully keeping my eyes closed
surely what i can't see isn't there

"She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts".  - George Eliot

Pondering A Relationship With Grief

"Sorrow you can hold, however desolating, if nobody speaks to you.  If they speak, you break down."   - Bede Jarrett

dancing around the edges of grief
flash frozen and hidden long ago
living memories safely stored in blocks

"It's so curious:  one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief.  But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses."   - Colette

Pondering, still just pondering . . .

Day 40 - Winter Feast For The Soul

"What nine months does for the embryo
Forty early mornings
Will do for your growing awareness."

- Rumi

newly furrowed soil settles
on the precipice of habit versus change
who knows what may take root

"To be at peace we must first learn to accept ourselves. Coming to peace with who we are, what we have, and what we do is the spiritual basis for the acceptance of others."- Joan Chittister

 restless night of twistings
down psychological alleys
way too many phantom dawns

May we accept the inevitability of change