Coming back

May 6, 2009

Funny. Today I am stiff with a sore back, tweaked when I nudged my suitcase into my car on the way home from St. Augustine. I can't get up or sit down without noticing how sore I am. The idea of flowing from any activity to any other activity is like a wild fantasy. I hope it settles down pretty soon. It certainly doesn't help anything to feel this sore.

But, on the other hand, it is, like so many other things, a perfect metaphor for this time of reentry. I am horrible at reentry. I balk, scream, resist, squirm, fret, moan, and cry. I mourn the loss of the freedom that WAS. I chafe against the return to what was, knowing, KNOWING that I, at least am different. Well, maybe. Or maybe not.

I think it is easy to be different when everything is different. And it is incredibly difficult to try to retain that certainty when everything else is the way it was - before. Of course, not everything is as it was and so reentry involves patience with everyone, knowing that everyone has had two months of life too. In some cases those two months have been monumental. In some, not so much.

My challenge, right now, is to retain the best of the ride and to let the lessons soak in. I am home and wandered around yesterday in some sort of a daze. I went to some of my old familiar places (the grocery store, the gym, my car)and found myself just touching, barely touching the walls or the steering wheel or the something or other. The touch was, I noticed, about trying to reconnect. I do not feel like reconnecting. But I am done with the riding for now and it is time to be HERE now, not there or anywhere but here.

This picture is Pearl Fryer's garden in Bishopville, South Carolina. He started "cutting up bushes" about 20 years ago. This had been a cornfield. Pearl's vision brought him to this place where he is right now. Famous for his philosophizing. Desired for his perspective. People are pouring to see him. He pontificates and shares and his eyes sparkle when he sees a visitor really listening.

Maybe that's what's going on. I'm trying to put this experience into a place, sculpted, developing, inspirational, secure for myself. I don't know how to do that. Pearl didn't either, when he started this garden. It can take a long time.

I'll be in touch as I go.
Thank you for visiting the beginning of whatever it is that is going to grow from now on.

>Love,
Laurey