Tis the season I reckon. The season of festivals and friends and folly, because I know it’s been hard to slow down and breathe. On Stella’s arrival into this house, my meditation, stretching, exercise in the morning turned into slogging out of bed at 4am to stand in the wet grass in the backyard and saying, “Go pissy piss” loud enough for her to hear and low enough for my neighbors not to shoot me.
I’m more sleep deprived with my puppy than I ever was with my baby. Whatyagonnado?
After multiple deadlines, a seder, and a friend’s wife’s funeral, I laid in bed this morning for the third time – after taking Stella out at 4, then 5 and then 6 o’clock – and watched the palm tree leaves billowing in the wind and thought about nothing. If I can’t get my meditation in on my schedule, I can snatch meditative moments – times without planning, doing, or longing – to simply be in my skin.
A friend came by yesterday for me to help her with her business plan, only we didn’t get to the business plan because our conversation turned to bigger things than business – the matters of our life. She’s a radiant light and so she picks up a lot of strays who glom onto her for their own sustenance. Let’s call them what they are – leeches. And those suckers don’t take a hint even when she has kicked them to the curb. Three times a random stranger has approached her – the first was when she was only 23 years old and getting on the streetcar – and told her she is golden. Her light is intoxicating.
But she has to go angry ninja on people to keep some of the filaments of that light for herself. It’s just not right.
And I get it.
A friend wrote me a sweet thank you after our seder, he said, “You give too much of yourself Rachel” and so it is. Like my friend I feel there is no scarcity of the light and yet, I lay in bed and darkness descends because I’m depleted of the snap crackle pop that I’ve been sprinkling around.
I find it’s an all or nothing game – for me at least – it’s like being a life lush – I’m either in or I’m out. I think back fondly to the five months that drew to a close at year end in 2013 when I gave up drinking and socializing and did a lot of rest and me time. I was wrapped in my own light and felt my hibernation need never end. And then it did. It ended with a bang – literally – and thus began my revelry once again.
Last night, I went to a friend’s house to listen to his stereo. This is no ordinary stereo – it is a work of art and the entire room was designed around listening to it. I was part of an eight person group who came bearing an exquisite bottle of wine and two songs on vinyl to play. My choices were all about love – the first Sade’s The Kiss of Life for my son because that’s who I think of when I hear her sing “There must have been an angel by my side; Something heavenly led me to you.” My second choice was a different love, almost graveyard love, Elvis Costello’s I Want You, Oh my baby baby I want you so it scares me to death; I can’t say anymore than “I love you”; Everything else is a waste of breath; I want you.
My tongue tasted like it dragged across the Sahara this morning as I lay in bed and contemplated space and the palm frond waving from the sky. I didn’t want to go last night, it seemed like one more thing on my busy dance card, but I’m glad I went. Every person there had a story plus more stories about the two songs they chose whether sung by Velvet Underground or Billie Holiday – and of course each one brought a bottle of exquisite wine and so I’m glad for having gone.
And I’m tired for having gone.
I’ve depleted my light source.
And so, I gift myself today to reclaim my radiance.
