Its late. I can't sleep. Can't turn off my mind. There's a lot on it right now. I remember I used to have this problem as a kid. I just couldn't sleep sometimes because my mind was going a million miles an hour. My mom used to come into my room and "change the channel" on my mind. Change what I was thinking about by turning an imaginary dial on my temple.
I wish it were so simple these days. I try to read some Salinger (my new literary love) but I can't focus on it. I try to fall asleep to music but its either too loud to sleep over or too quiet to drown out my thoughts. I try to watch mindless late night television, but I get bored of it too quickly, zoning out to think about other things. Where will I be, who will I be, what will I be doing, 10 years from now...5...in the fall...tomorrow??
I feel contentedly comfortable here. I have learned this place, I know it, understand it, love it. And at the same time, it stifles me, holds me in, allows me to remain stagnant. Maybe its the past two months of winter that has gotten under my skin. Maybe its because I am at a point where I have to make some significant decisions about the direction of my life, but I was overwhelmed by this quote by Richard Hovey tonight: I said in my heart, ' I am sick of four walls and a ceiling. I have need of the sky. I have business with the grass.'
I don't think he was necessarily just obsessed with nature - though maybe he was, and I'm simply interposing my own meaning on this now - but I hear in his words this pull for something liberating. Something that makes you stop and think "I was made for this!" Something that leads you to the place where your soul, God and the world combine.
I am thinking of that place tonight. Where I find it. What leads me to it. How I can capture it, or if it's possible to do so, or if being able to would render it impotent of its power and beauty. Is there at least a way to make it more consistent? I don't know. I got a package in the mail today that had written across its cover, one of my favorite George Eliot quotes: It's never too late to be what you might have been
I am reminded of another nameless quote that is just as powerful, if not even more challenging...The quest is to become all that you already ARE
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4 comments:
these words...i have business with the grass...i love it. i love it. never cared for 4 walls much either.
There are days when I am SO THERE. That place where my soul, God and the world combine. Then it slips out of my grasp again. I guess we just have to celebrate the moments when we have it.
Missing you.
"Something that leads you to the place where your soul, God and the world combine"
That is a good thought. It reminds me of this poem you might like:
THE SILK WORM
I stood before a silk worm one day,
And that night my heart said to me,
"I can do things like that, I can spin skies,
I can be woven into love that can bring warmth to people;
I can be soft against a crying face,
I can be wings that life, and I can travel on my thousand feet
throughout the earth,
my sacks filled
with the sacred."
And I replied to my heart,
"Dear, can you really do all those things?"
And it just nodded "Yes"
in silence.
So we began and will never
cease.
~Rumi~
Oops, I meant to comment here - clicked the wrong link in my reader!
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