Currie's Gratitude 7 October 2014

There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. When he reads a novel, he wants either his sense tormented or his spirits raised. He wants to be transported, instantly, either to mock damnation or a mock innocence.   [Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose]

Really?! DO you find this trait in you?! DO you, too, consider story as almost more necessary than the grace of riding the lightbeams?! DO you want things wrapped up in 42 minutes?! DO loose ends and unfinished storylines nag at you?!

One of the things I have learned through this practise of Gratitude is how storylines are my mental images of What’s UP in anyone’s Life. Often others will write of something in their immediate Right Now and never speak of it again. I want to write them and ask the questions that bat about in me.

But I don’t. At least I don’t DO it without knowing I’m DOing it.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 6 October 2014

To stay with that shakiness—to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge—that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic—this is the spiritual path.   [Pema Chödrön, Stay with Your Broken Heart] 

I’ve always tried to still shakiness, somehow. It is only Now that I am really game to let it BE. To NOT feel like I need to DO something or CHANGE something. The shakiness is like the colour of my hair. It is evolving of its own accord.

Now I am more inclined to stay in. To remain Present. To observe, listen, and then, easily, almost without thinking, Let Go.

I’m thinking about some new ways and ideas are dancing somewhat haphazardly, but dancing all the same inside my little birdbrain. Then I realise that what I call thinking about is really just taking in the perspectives opening to me.

Someone asked me something Thursday which felt strange. Nothing more. I realise Now that what she asked of me she considers essential for herself, and everyone else, too. But I can forgive that. Easily. We all seek comfort BEfore we come to stay with our shakinesses.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 5 October 2014

Even on my weakest days
I get a little bit stronger  

[Sara Evans]

It’s BEing fall-ish here lately. Early mornings have a refreshing chill to them. The days, though still warm by afternoon, are actually “just right” in my book. I am glad that I am able to discern this change and difference. I am gladder still that my summer is, finally, over.

I’m tired of feeling tired. Of the headache that I’ve had since June. Of days of feeling woozy and spinny. I am ready for a little bit of normal.

But first, I need to DO some Letting Go. I didn’t see this until it smacked me in the face.

Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get. Life should be touched, not strangled. You've got to relax, let it happen at times, and at others move forward with it. It's like boats. You keep your motor on so you can steer with the current. And when you hear the sound of the waterfall coming nearer and nearer, tidy up the boat, put on your best tie and hat, and smoke a cigar right up till the moment you go over. That's a triumph.   [Ray Bradbury, Farewell Summer]

Some of it I’d rather hold a little more loosely. But that’s NOT an option.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 4 October 2014

They sang the words in unison, yet somehow created a web of sounds with their voices. It was like hearing a piece of fabric woven with all the colors of a rainbow. I did not know that such beauty could be formed by the human mouth. I had never heard harmony before.  [Anita Diamant, The Red Tent]

It would BE hard for me to say that colour is NOT an essential food group in my Life. I love to see what happens when colours stand alone or run like a pack, eager and open to possibilities.

I am continually amazed and astonished by how colour changes everything. Its edges and drips and long swashes. It is like a heart beating, separate but in time with my own.

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.   [Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds]

We’re funny we humans. We get our minds set on a thing, looking at stuff a certain way, and we’re never eager to change that perspective.

Still, it is quite a thing how making even a tiny shift in our way of seeing and BEing can make everything suddenly and completely new, alive, and quite awake, no matter the light outside.

Try it yourself, okay?!

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 3 October 2014

Wounds heal. Scars fade. Awful memories can be overwritten with better ones if given the chance. The little imperfections of our psyches become overshadowed by the people whose love we cherish because they cherish us despite our faults; physical, emotional, spiritual, or otherwise. This thing we call the human condition with all its bittersweet blind corners and senseless humor evolves from within ourselves and not because of some pre-ordained reverie we desire to cast in the constellations.
All in all it is what makes life worth living.   [August Clearwing, Never Have I Ever]

Seems a lot of people are asking me Now What?! regarding my having completed the radiation and chemo I agreed to try when this rollercoaster pulled out of loading.

I don’t know. I don’t like speculation conversations. I’m just hoping for a little more Time With Energy Enough. To walk with Gracie. To dance and BE silly. To enJOY stuff that I canNOT abide “under the influence” of chemo.

I’m turning into Sally from When Harry Met Sally. I ordered yet another creative meal in the dining room at Mum’s yesterday. I kind of like it. Creating like I breathe. Living with all this without BEing pissed or pissy.

I’m Living just this day. Right Now.

Even “different” is enough. Riding my starbeam of energy.

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 2 October 2014

To love is to accept a soul entirely, not wishing that the person was otherwise, nor hoping for change, nor clinging to some ideal past. To love is to cherish the individual standing before you presently - charms, quirks, and all. To love is to give someone a piece of your heart that you will never, ever reclaim.   [Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, & Grumblings for Every Day of the Year]

I have some things on my mind. Bunching themselves up round my heart. I feel like a rain cloud in a cloudless sky, full of I don’t know what waiting to DO something I have no idea of whatsoever.

I’m in that weird place I go in the first week after chemo, grateful that last week’s was the last of the 4 I agreed to DO. Some of it has happened almost every time. Feeling like a feather pillow that has been smashed to nothing but feathers floating, landing, and no longer “pillowing” anything at all.

I want to say things or mayBE it is that I want the people I cherish [and I never imagined they could BE so many] to know what it is I’ve been holding onto, holding out about, and just NOT saying BEcause God, what a risk that would BE…

I love you, Currie

Currie's Gratitude 1 October 2014

We try so hard to hide everything we're really feeling from those who probably need to know our true feelings the most. People try to bottle up their emotions, as if it's somehow wrong to have natural reactions to life.    [Colleen Hoover, Maybe Someday]

I am sorry to say this, but this has pretty much been my motto in Life. I have always, and I mean A L W A Y S felt ashamed of what I feel. I am better at recognising it Now; I am also less focused on dissecting every single little emotional sliver that invades me.

I know I don’t need to BE ashamed, it is more like a reflex. Automatically I want to apologise if I have a feeling that might cause anyone [except myself] a moment’s discomfort.

Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.   [George E. Woodberry]

Right this minute, today, I am sitting on the head of a pin BEcause of my FEELINGS and how they’ve been hurt, blah blah blah dee blah dah!! But I am the only one who “knows” this BEcause I don’t want anyone TO KNOW.

But I won’t NOT try again. I won’t give up and shrug it off and DO a poor pitiful ME thing.

Never Again…

I love you, Currie