The idea of speaking into the wind is that your words come out and they scatter, they're lost without record. It's one of those pretty images that comes up in fiction. Livejournal is my wind; I write here and it's gone. I spent about a month recently checking posts from 'a year ago today'. I stopped, fairly quickly, because it was obvious to me that there had been both a lot of change and a lot that remained the same. Those times haven't yet passed and healed over. They still leave long fresh scars in the present, and they effect situations that are not yet unfolded.
I haven't been posting my thoughts very much lately, because I've been happy. I don't think when I'm happy, really. It's something I experience without (comparatively) any analysis. It's also something I'm afraid of: I worry that if I touch the illusion, if I acknowledge it, then it will shatter.
It always does shatter sooner or later, of course. In my 'happy times' it may even shatter just as often, it's that I'm more buoyant and I rebound from these shatterings quickly.
I've had a very happy time. You know the expression, time flies when you're having fun? Time has flown by since I met Chris. Things have been placid with the Juggler, and I've been a good girl there, keeping out of any situations that could spell trouble. Things have been... I don't know, it's a new relationship, of course, but good, with Chris. Good, at mimimum. I've met some people I really like. Work has been going pretty well. I've been sick a lot, but keeping up. This Christmas I got together with my family, and my brothers seemed to be doing well. I haven't seen mom a lot, she seems tired often, but it's wintertime and we all slow down then. I've had great roommates, though movement has left me a little unsettled.
Just tonight I've heard something that makes me afraid.
You know, all my life, deep under my skin, I've had the idea that success was all about trying hard, doing the right (or the expected, or whatever) thing, that if you followed the rules you'd get what you want. It's not so, of course. I still don't believe that, however. I don't believe it where it counts, and because of that I make great efforts to follow the rules and do the things that are supposed to get me what I want.
I still, I've said this before, I don't know how to deal with a world in which there is so much random chance. That is, where what you do doesn't have much in the way of bearing on the outcome of stuff. I also, would you believe it? I'm a romantic. I believe in big things, ideas like 'kinda always' and 'almost perfect' and stuff like that, in big overarching lifetimes where strings play.
Despite that, for the last few months, how long has it been? September, October, November, December, that's four? For that tiny blip of time that passed so quickly because I wasn't watching it, for that I have been happy.
Look at all this past tense! I do all my reacting before the fact. I react when something hasn't yet happened, before it's certain to, I react when it just is a possibility in the vague future. I REACT, in capitals, and go screaming through the stratosphere, and then when the thing happens I am very calm, and nothing can shake me.
It's a good system if it's imperative that you don't react at the time of crisis. It's terrible if you want to minimise the total reaction, terrible if you want to react only to things that really happen.
I've picked up some good tricks for dealing with that sort of system from Chris. The biggest trick is just this: if you feel yourself reacting, don't talk. Don't argue, ask, fight, don't make your reaction public. Instead, figure out what you need right then, to deal with that reaction: a hug, some time alone, some space to vent. Get that. There will be time to react later.
This system works beautifully in my relationship with Chris. There is time later. We both have a good understanding of what 'later' means. Things aren't often forgotten, and if they are, there's no blame given or taken. He reacts the same way I do.
Do you know, when I got together with the Juggler, we were the levelheaded ones. There was Jan who I was with at the time, who was a High Romantic. There were Kynnin and Mouse, who were being silly-new relationshipy about each other. Then there was us, the practical ones.
I lost that for awhile, my own ability to be levelheaded. It's back now, but it was gone for awhile. He loses it to sometimes, for little bits of time, not as obviously as I do but he does lose it. We don't work as well during those times.
Where is my garden? My garden is at the Juggler's house. My home is spread far and wide across the city, North Vancouver to Van proper and there are even tendrils that still reach to Mission. I was in the forest on the UBC endowment lands on Christmas day and it was full of holly and ivy, evergreen plants that choke out the natives of the forest, and the alders were full of witches' brooms. The days are cold, and when I go outside I tense all my muscles against that, coming home aching and sore.
Where is my soul? My soul is where it has always been, in my future. I chase it, but I never catch it, seeing it in imagined scenes of peace and continuity which, though they do happen, pass so quickly that I miss them in an eyeblink. I notice them only when fear reminds me that they can be over.
What do I do? How do I live? Do I live in an eyeblink, a life full of security and serenity that's interrupted occasionally and over before I know it? Do I live in constant reaction, in apprehension and discomfort and experience?
My need for the soil strengthens and weakens over the years. Right now, it's very great. I'm beginning to want soil of my own. Between me and the good rich earth and the sunshine, the people around me can blow where they will and I will in the end stand fast.
But, do I want to stand fast?
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