Are you fired up?
I’m coming to the end of a four day Tin fest that has exhausted me. Yesterday I went to get him on my bike and took a spill so hard that now my bruised and battered right knee is the identical twin of my bruised and battered left knee where I fell at Tulane the other day. Why am I the one with skinned knees I want to know?
I’ve also been working through feeling funky – not good funky, just sort of what’s it all about Alfie funky. There are several tugs – one is that I can’t find my exercise groove, another is that I can’t seem to lose weight (I believe these go together), one other is work and the many directions and directionless paths that are forming, and I could go on, but let’s just say all of these things have collided recently to make me feel funky and it’s possibly why I’m falling down (frequently).
But the whole notion of falling down is picking yourself up and dusting yourself off right? This morning as I was looking at the sunlight blazing on the bayou, a friend/neighbor walked by and waved and called me outside. He said to me, “Are you fired up?” and I said, “I am now” even though last night I had fallen off my Lent wagon because we had a beautiful dinner composed of asparagus soufflé, filet mignon, and salad picked from the garden AND a delicious two bottles of red wine not to mention a yellow cake with chocolate icing from Cake Bakery all in celebration – the last of – Tin’s turning 3 years old. Evan and Nina came since they missed his actual party and brought him beaucoup instruments – a nose flute, a kazoo, a recorder, and a beautiful gorgeous book about Jazz.
Tin had gotten out of bed and came into the living room and found a spot of sun on the floor and laid in it like a cat and said, “I’m tired” and I said, “You need to get fired up.” He stared at me through one sleepy eye and said, “No.”
Then he asked me to pick him up and so I took him outside on the front porch and held him in my lap and we both basked in the sunshine and rocked and held onto each other. My mother’s whispery breath was in my ear telling me how much she loved me, and I was telling him the same. There’s an extra life that we all are not living as we get caught up in the particulars of our life.
The sun is there to warm our bodies and make us smile. Arms are made for hugging. And everything else has a way of figuring itself out if we just let it be. I walked him to the car and showed him all the caterpillars on the milkweed – soon to be butterflies.
I came up to my desk ready to finally face a day that was not about having to go get this, do that, prepare for, take care of, rush, wait, or answer. I just decided today that I will be. I lit the candle for my mom and thought of her as a small bird sang a spring melody in the tree outside my window.
I feel that I’m in the midst of my own metamorphosis and sometimes I’m not sure if I am going to emerge a butterfly with broad colorful wings or what, but the transformation is sort of amazing to inhabit regardless of the outcome. I do feel fired up.
Even my horoscope today conspired to get me fired up.
March 06, 2012
Taurus (4/20-5/20)
Making the right choices in life can be hard to do, so you have every right to feel proud — even joyful — about the decisions you’ve been making lately. You have examined some difficult situations and chosen the right path. You are a strong person — stronger even than you know. Have confidence that although you haven’t completely put recent hard times behind you, you soon will.