It’s a beautiful, sunny, -19℃ warm day. A perfect day for our daily ski if I wasn’t so tired. It’s hard to give up the endorphin high but common sense was really knocking hard. Even my sewing for the100dayproject is exhausting. I also get a high from building my log cabins each day. I get great satisfaction from seeing how it builds up from 2 little squares into a 9 inch square. It is the same and different high I get from making a round on my skis and seeing my improved time. And so it is if I can write another daily post. A sense of accomplishment/creation and living up to commitments.
I can pull back a little. I can take a lesson from my log cabin sewing. Not all logs are of equal length. I can ski less laps on days when I am tired. I can write shorter blogs on those days. I had participated in Friday Fictioneers in the past where the goal is to write a story of 100 words. It was fun and it helped my writing. It makes you get to the point without a waste of useless words. I might think about it again since I write mostly for the pleasure of words. I love the flow and beauty of them. I’m thinking of Simon and Garfunkel’s Dangling Conversation as I write this. This is what I hope to create with my writing.
It is a big but worthwhile wish to create beauty. I don’t have to create big. I don’t need a masterpiece to be happy. Just a touch, a wisp, a suggestion that my writing has touched or help someone makes me deliciously happy. I’m rethinking what is content and what my goals are.
It is August 3, day 2 post work syndrome. I’m sitting here with my tea and the lyrics of Simon and Garfunkle’s Dangling Conversation are running through my head. And the conversation does describe how I am feeling off and on, dangling on the edge of my consciousness.
The morning is grey. I am feeling the greyness around me. I suppose our profession can be a hazard for the soul if one is not careful. I can and have gotten lost in thinking it is my responsibility in caring and saving, not only our patients but family, friends and coworkers. You know what? I am not all that powerful! I have to tell myself many times I am just human. It is okay to be flawed, to be selfish and weak as long as I’m not in that slot all the time. Sometimes I am my worse enemy.
The sun is trying to rise above the clouds. I feel its ray dispelling the greyness. I am proud of myself. I am not staying in my slot. There’s a hazard in living alone, but it offers you the comfort and safety of just being. You don’t have to try so hard. You can stay down, safe in your cocoon. When you live with someone, you have to try a little harder not to shed your greyness to them. And so I try a little harder to rise above the grey. I watch and learn from my partner on how he is and does.
The morning is progressing and I will have to put away my words for the day. There’s the hard reality that goes into everyday living…things like dishes, laundry, cooking, paying bills. But there is poetry in doing these things, too. I have felt it at times when I put my mind there. It feels like music….the times I’m baking bread, ironing. The rhythm of my movement in kneading the dough and seeing the iron smoothing out the wrinkles eases the crinkles in my mind and body.
I think we put too much emphasis on salaried work. All I hear these days is overtime, overtime. Somewhere along the way I think we have lost our souls. Patients are now clients, and we are healthcare providers. I remember once a doctor bellowing about the only professions he knew having clients are lawyers and prostitutes!
These are my thoughts only, my dangling words….no dangling judgements made.
It’s a still life water color,
Of a now late afternoon,
As the sun shines through the curtained lace
And shadows wash the room.
And we sit and drink our coffee
Couched in our indifference,
Like shells upon the shore
You can hear the ocean roar
In the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs,
The borders of our lives.
And you read your Emily Dickinson,
And I my Robert Frost,
And we note our place with bookmarkers
That measure what we’ve lost.
Like a poem poorly written
We are verses out of rhythm,
Couplets out of rhyme,
In syncopated time
Lost in the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs,
Are the borders of our lives.Yes, we speak of things that matter,
With words that must be said,
“Can analysis be worthwhile?”
“Is the theater really dead?”
And how the room is softly faded
And I only kiss your shadow,
I cannot feel your hand,
You’re a stranger now unto me
Lost in the dangling conversation.
And the superficial sighs,
In the borders of our lives.
onethousandandtwo 