+light+impermanence+being present (the fountain from another angle)Several weeks ago, I found myself browsing through old keepsakes and photos; I found something that I didn't expect. In the photos, letters, etc., from six or seven years ago I was a different person than I am today, in a way I couldn't identify....and I don't mean different in a better way, but lacking something somehow. I'm smarter now. I feel more spiritually developed now. My career is going better, my friendships are deeper, my romantic relationship is going better...but something is totally missing, and I haven't been able to figure out what it is...
My husband helped me put a name to my mystery. "You've lost your ness," he said. From You, Me & Dupree....you know, your name + ness...what makes you the essense of you.
"You're right. The heck. I've lost my ness."
So, like Peter Pan and his elusive shadow, I sat out to find my ness. Like 'shadow,' it's right here, I know it, but I can't quite seem to pin it down.
I talked to my journal about it. I talked to my dog. Then, I talked to my friend, L, who was a good enough friend to nervously say, "Do you think it could be the weight? That you're not as healthy, as fit as you were?" This may seem crazy, but I hadn't thought of that. Even my dog is more happy and energetic when he sheds extra pounds. I am careful to regard the spirit's effect on the body, I said to L...but I seldom think of the body's effect upon the spirit...My body is my spirit's medium in this lifetime. If I do not care for it, that is all the less it may express itself in the beauty of the human spirit. Chalk one up for L. She moved up a notch in my book for being real, for the quality of her heart, her intent. That is a piece of the puzzle, for sure. I think I still have some sleuthing to do, though.
Among the nostalgic evidence four paragraphs up were lots of pictures, of a thinner me, of course...about 40 lb thinner, but I was more vain too, and what a lot of people didn't know is that my fake nails and 8 different colors of highlights and fancy make up were adding up to credit card debt I wasn't prepared to pay for on a student income...So, yes, I was prettier (to the point that when people see my old id, they say, "that IS NOT you!" (Thanks), but inside I knew I was living a lie, sort of...
Also among my findings were the reminders of one of the strangest experiences I've had....a series of letters and a song/poem written to me by a man who fell in love with me, sort of from afar, when I was about 20. He was much older, probably between 30 and 35. I didn't know he was in love with me for a very long time, but I knew that for weeks roses and short poems were being anonymously left on my car, and once at work I received anonymous flowers with the message, "You are cared for." He did not act creepy, never pressured me in any way, and did not mention his romantic feelings for me except in a packet he once gave me with a letter and a song for me as well as a song he had written for his young daughter. Honestly, his feeling freaked me out, and I started avoiding him some. I just wasn't mature enough to handle it well.
Steve (that's his name) was in chemotherapy at the time. He had just gone through a divorce, and was working at Applebee's for some unknown reason, even though he had previously taught junior college music courses. His daughter had been recently whisked away to another state, and here he was alone, no more career, living with cancer...He felt like he had fallen off the top of the world, that he had lost his creativity, his life force, his essence, his smile. Among other things, you might say his "ness."
What so attracted him to me, he said, was all of the life I had in me. And I did. I shined with life back then. With hope for the future, great idealistic hope...with poetry and nature and health and vitality. I thrived.
The rest of the Steve story is almost unbelievable. Steve finished chemo, no evidence of cancer. Shortly after, he was driving home from visiting his little girl, and a semi-truck swirved into his lane.
Paralyzed, they said. But luck, or what you want to call it, had it's way with Steve again. He would be able to walk, but with pain and extensive rehabilitation. Standing would be like having a knife in his spine. Walking would be as a newly born foal.
In the mean time, he comes back to Applebee's to cook quesadillas and Tequila lime chicken as soon as he is barely able, although he can scarcely walk and should be considered disabled...something about red tape, beauracracy.
One day, Steve passes me a quesadilla or salad or something for my table, and he says he has good news, for once. "I won my law suit (from the trucking co). 4 million dollars (or something like it). I'm quitting."
Shortly after, I moved to finish my degree. I lost touch with Steve. Several months later a mutual friend of ours tracked me down to say that Steve had taken him and others to concerts all over the country, that he had shared his millions with compassion and lightness. That he was full of life. And that his cancer had come back fast and strong. He was gone.
I wonder what Steve would say about the irony; he had a unique life perception. I wonder if his daughter has a copy of the poem her dad wrote for her, which is sitting in my room. My dad, who is usually reserved, once wrote me a special poem, tucked away secretly behind a framed picture he had given me...I found it years later, a secret testament of his love for HIS daughter.
It's hard to get back to discussing "my ness" now that I've gone off into these trails of seriousness, but that is where I'm hopefully headed on my life's path. balance. creating. light. love. peace. compassion. ness.
This silly blog has helped some already, believe it or not. It's a place for me to create again, to muster a little bit of creativity that I might not otherwise take the time for, to synthesize the universe's lessons to me and put it out there for few people who are my blogging world, adding that spice of vulnerability that is medicine for my soul.
+balance+beauty+ (crane at creek, hunting for fish)
