Word of the Week - 37

Seaside village from Kirsty Elson Designs.

Michelle Holmes Embroidery.

Word(s) of the Week:  PLAYING FOR TIME

There is a sensibility with which I identify in the work of Kirsty Elson and Michelle Holmes.  Their wooden seaside encampments and understated embroidered vignettes express visually some of what I hope to capture in the ongoing story on my blog of Gloria. The Reading Man and life in Billington's Cove.  In the saga of 60-some episodes (so far), I arrived at a pivotal moment and its details have not yet become clear.

Because the characters and their place found me, not the other way around, I've learned to be trusting and patient.  They will spill the beans when they are ready.  They resist, which I've come to respect, any of my attempts to give them false moments, contrived musings, inauthentic action.  They and their setting do not belong to ordinary reality as to time and space.  I consider them not only imaginary friends but more.  They seem able to gauge the tides of my heart and inform me accordingly.  I have come to know myself better through them.  With their help I am clearer about what I believe, how the world, the universe even, works.

What happens after the dance, I mean THE DANCE, I have no idea.  It is not the ultimate moment in their story, yet it is much more than just a moment.  My great wish is that I not muddy any part of it by rushing them.

Once upon a time I meditated daily.  In the way of things, I somehow grew apart from that beneficial practice.  In the last few weeks, joining Oprah and Deepak Chopra, I've found what may be the way back to the states of mind that result from meditation.  My first thought was unattractively judgmental.  After the first session, I was grateful for the ease of the exercise.  It may be the lazy woman's path and I'm fine with that.  My rather elderly joints and muscles need comfort in order to focus.  I am either dreaming more or am more aware of my dreams.  I've had moments of being more connected to aspects of myself that I forgot existed.  I am able to slip into a state of detachment from daily stuff and let images appear, either during the meditation or other parts of the day.

In one of these "states," I saw a younger Reading Man standing in a field, talking in a soft animal voice to a horse for whom he obviously had great affection.  Their heads together, they seemed halves of the same whole.  Any stilling of the chattering, fretting mind allows the veil to thin.  I love going there.

I hope it won't be too much longer before my undeclared lovebirds and I resume our adventure.  I think of them as absent friends or a phantom limb, not as inventions of my imagination.  Until we meet again.  xo