#9
Road to recovery.
Today I woke up to two things:
1. A sensation in my heart which I have always associated with heartbreak It is an actual physical feeling. I feels like what a weird heart attack must feel like. I have always thought that it means I am sad about something or something dreadful is about to happen, but then, maybe because I have been so ill, a thought struck me: why have I thought it was a negative feeling? Why don't I just accept the feeling and ride with it? Enjoy it even. And at that moment it felt like all the awfulness I had been though over the last few days, that was worth it. Because at some point, it seemed like I had delved deep enough that nothing mattered any more. But I think that THIS is the reason why I woke up, had this feeling, which I would occasionally have and embraced it and it was because of this dream....
2. I dreamt I was in Hawaii (which I had never been to) with my friends. We were on a bus to visit a lava field, when suddenly the air is filled with ash. A volcano had erupted and we were driving in the midst of the eruption. (I had also watched this Netflix doc about these nine scientists, one part of it took place in Hawaii - it was a so-so doc.) As we rounded the corner, we came a cliff that bordered the ocean and the ocean itself was dark and low, but more astoundingly, the skies were bright red, there were these pitch black bar clouds and from them came these huge black water spouts - they were spinning at a ferocious rate and within their spinning were lighting bolts and branches which were flashing and going off all of the time.
It was so real that I said to one of my friends, that is amazing. I can't believe 2019 has just began and I have already visited Hawaii. I can do anything. I really have an amazing life.
So, those were to things that happened when I got up today.
Earlier though, the fever finally broke. After what seemed like waiting for an eternity. I woke up earlier, at around 3.30 am, drenched in sweat and feeling like I wanted to sweat more. I am recovered, but I am by no means well again. Now comes the question... will I push it and return to school, or will I give it one more day to fully recover?
QUESTIONS.
Yesterday I tried reading a Steiner book called Man, the Symphony of the Creative Word. It probably wasn't the best idea to read him when I was feeling so shite because there are somethings in it which piss me off big time. LIKE, he confuses moths and butterflies. So I wonder, if it is the translation - it was a lecture. He keeps on saying that butterflies spin cocoons. They do not. Moth caterpillars do that. Butterflies have chrysalises. It really pisses me off that kind of thing. You can't have it both ways. I agree that maybe the cocoon is spun from the sun's rays, but at least get the genus of lepidoptera right, eh?
I really need to sort him out in my head, for myself. There are loads of things I agree with - like the Agricultural lectures - but this particular lecture cycle, I CANNOT get my head around.
I am now going to bed and when I wake up I am going to start cleaning up, etc... all the things I need to do because I need to do them and haven't. Today I was able to make breakfast for the boys. There won't be many years - or even months - left to do this. So I should enjoy them for as long as I can.
No poem today ... not now at least. I may feel recovered, but I am mostly blob.
================
There is something criminally unpoetic with the way we treat our female blood rituals. Whether it is the onset of mensuration or our period itself, or the menopause. Over the past few years I have really wrestled with the feelings and emotions which have been part of the transformation. Today, for instance, after I dozed once again in bed after some reading I woke up and saw the skies and clouds. Even though I was lying still and just looking at the clouds, my entire inner life was tumbling about like a lapwing in spring. Partly the flu picture is being complicated by the hormonal picture, I know that.
But as I was looking at the clouds, so many feelings and thoughts raced past - and it felt like there were things being transformed inside me, like things were being burnt, or discarded, or accepted, or even finally understood. And the first thing I understood was something about sadness and pain. It is difficult to put into words, but it was also bound up in being a mother - the sacrifices I had made for my sons - there is no two ways about it. As a parent you must be prepared to put everything on the backburner for your children in one way or another. Whether it is your ambition, your wish to live through them, your sleep (sleep is actually the least of it), your entire life. And yet, it is something indefinable that satisfaction children bring along.
I am also aware that this is the final year of being in my seventh seven year cycle. I know that many many transformations are going to take place this year - and that this is probably only the start of the end of the process.
The one thing that came through very strongly was to tenderly care for and safeguard my body. When I was younger there was this recklessness. (So preamble, which is I have decided that of all the things which Steiner says, what is very clear is that we go on to live after death. Our spirits go on to exist in a quantum realm after we die. Probably in what is now called dark matter. Our life here, in this physical world, is the vessel, its like a spaceship for our spirits and souls to exist here.) It was the recklessness of going on the high seas and having a great adventure. Taking crazy risks and throwing everything I could at the both of us. And the both of us were up for it. And we had this amazing time. Using this amazing time, I gathered this massive store of experiences. Boat rides on the Seine, cycling in Amsterdam, drinking in Dublin, eating chicken rice in Singapore. Kissing at the top of mountains, swimming in warm seas... and I enjoyed every single moment with complete and total abandon. I pushed and pushed. I pushed my body to have babies. To move homes. To seek adventure. To endure heartbreak. To abandon friends. To find new ones. to make terrible mistakes. To cry so many tears. My body has been the vessel through which I have lived and I am so grateful.
But now I need to have a different relationship to it. And what that is is the conversation we are going to have now over the next year I think. And in there are going to be the sentiments: tender, caring, kind, nurturing, forgiving and loving. And appreciation and gratitude. Because I am grateful. I am so grateful that it has been so strong ... but somewhere inside there is also going to be truth - I have always tried my best to live authentically. There is also going to be an outward transformation.
I am rereading Man as Symphony.... I thought I would. And instead of being persnickety and judgmental I decided to just read it and correct the words which would help it make more sense. So, for instance, Steiner keeps saying that the eagle/bird - two things which are interchangeable to him - has colourful feathers, I just substitute bird. And what he is trying to say is that human thought are feathers to a bird, which is like the mind. The mind (bird) produced these different and colourful plummages - just as the mind produces thoughts. And this was interesting. Since feathers were used here as pens in the early days. But also, most interesting, what Steiner is attempting to do is to show us how were are intimately connected to the entire world around us - in many, many ways, he is attempting to give a Western voice to an indigenous wisdom. It is actually a very kind and generous system - not to mention life giving system - of being.
When I studied the Greco-Latin myths and Steiner's take on them, I kept on wondering what the heck is he talking about? Now I understand. We are still living through the chaos which was engendered in the wake of the Ancient Roman civilisation. What they did, their values, their Will, still inhabits us in spades and is now threatening life on Earth. The very Earth, imagine.
Right I am going to try to go for a gentle walk. After I dye my hair. Little steps. Little steps.
Today I woke up to two things:
1. A sensation in my heart which I have always associated with heartbreak It is an actual physical feeling. I feels like what a weird heart attack must feel like. I have always thought that it means I am sad about something or something dreadful is about to happen, but then, maybe because I have been so ill, a thought struck me: why have I thought it was a negative feeling? Why don't I just accept the feeling and ride with it? Enjoy it even. And at that moment it felt like all the awfulness I had been though over the last few days, that was worth it. Because at some point, it seemed like I had delved deep enough that nothing mattered any more. But I think that THIS is the reason why I woke up, had this feeling, which I would occasionally have and embraced it and it was because of this dream....
2. I dreamt I was in Hawaii (which I had never been to) with my friends. We were on a bus to visit a lava field, when suddenly the air is filled with ash. A volcano had erupted and we were driving in the midst of the eruption. (I had also watched this Netflix doc about these nine scientists, one part of it took place in Hawaii - it was a so-so doc.) As we rounded the corner, we came a cliff that bordered the ocean and the ocean itself was dark and low, but more astoundingly, the skies were bright red, there were these pitch black bar clouds and from them came these huge black water spouts - they were spinning at a ferocious rate and within their spinning were lighting bolts and branches which were flashing and going off all of the time.
It was so real that I said to one of my friends, that is amazing. I can't believe 2019 has just began and I have already visited Hawaii. I can do anything. I really have an amazing life.
So, those were to things that happened when I got up today.
Earlier though, the fever finally broke. After what seemed like waiting for an eternity. I woke up earlier, at around 3.30 am, drenched in sweat and feeling like I wanted to sweat more. I am recovered, but I am by no means well again. Now comes the question... will I push it and return to school, or will I give it one more day to fully recover?
QUESTIONS.
Yesterday I tried reading a Steiner book called Man, the Symphony of the Creative Word. It probably wasn't the best idea to read him when I was feeling so shite because there are somethings in it which piss me off big time. LIKE, he confuses moths and butterflies. So I wonder, if it is the translation - it was a lecture. He keeps on saying that butterflies spin cocoons. They do not. Moth caterpillars do that. Butterflies have chrysalises. It really pisses me off that kind of thing. You can't have it both ways. I agree that maybe the cocoon is spun from the sun's rays, but at least get the genus of lepidoptera right, eh?
I really need to sort him out in my head, for myself. There are loads of things I agree with - like the Agricultural lectures - but this particular lecture cycle, I CANNOT get my head around.
I am now going to bed and when I wake up I am going to start cleaning up, etc... all the things I need to do because I need to do them and haven't. Today I was able to make breakfast for the boys. There won't be many years - or even months - left to do this. So I should enjoy them for as long as I can.
No poem today ... not now at least. I may feel recovered, but I am mostly blob.
================
There is something criminally unpoetic with the way we treat our female blood rituals. Whether it is the onset of mensuration or our period itself, or the menopause. Over the past few years I have really wrestled with the feelings and emotions which have been part of the transformation. Today, for instance, after I dozed once again in bed after some reading I woke up and saw the skies and clouds. Even though I was lying still and just looking at the clouds, my entire inner life was tumbling about like a lapwing in spring. Partly the flu picture is being complicated by the hormonal picture, I know that.
But as I was looking at the clouds, so many feelings and thoughts raced past - and it felt like there were things being transformed inside me, like things were being burnt, or discarded, or accepted, or even finally understood. And the first thing I understood was something about sadness and pain. It is difficult to put into words, but it was also bound up in being a mother - the sacrifices I had made for my sons - there is no two ways about it. As a parent you must be prepared to put everything on the backburner for your children in one way or another. Whether it is your ambition, your wish to live through them, your sleep (sleep is actually the least of it), your entire life. And yet, it is something indefinable that satisfaction children bring along.
I am also aware that this is the final year of being in my seventh seven year cycle. I know that many many transformations are going to take place this year - and that this is probably only the start of the end of the process.
The one thing that came through very strongly was to tenderly care for and safeguard my body. When I was younger there was this recklessness. (So preamble, which is I have decided that of all the things which Steiner says, what is very clear is that we go on to live after death. Our spirits go on to exist in a quantum realm after we die. Probably in what is now called dark matter. Our life here, in this physical world, is the vessel, its like a spaceship for our spirits and souls to exist here.) It was the recklessness of going on the high seas and having a great adventure. Taking crazy risks and throwing everything I could at the both of us. And the both of us were up for it. And we had this amazing time. Using this amazing time, I gathered this massive store of experiences. Boat rides on the Seine, cycling in Amsterdam, drinking in Dublin, eating chicken rice in Singapore. Kissing at the top of mountains, swimming in warm seas... and I enjoyed every single moment with complete and total abandon. I pushed and pushed. I pushed my body to have babies. To move homes. To seek adventure. To endure heartbreak. To abandon friends. To find new ones. to make terrible mistakes. To cry so many tears. My body has been the vessel through which I have lived and I am so grateful.
But now I need to have a different relationship to it. And what that is is the conversation we are going to have now over the next year I think. And in there are going to be the sentiments: tender, caring, kind, nurturing, forgiving and loving. And appreciation and gratitude. Because I am grateful. I am so grateful that it has been so strong ... but somewhere inside there is also going to be truth - I have always tried my best to live authentically. There is also going to be an outward transformation.
I am rereading Man as Symphony.... I thought I would. And instead of being persnickety and judgmental I decided to just read it and correct the words which would help it make more sense. So, for instance, Steiner keeps saying that the eagle/bird - two things which are interchangeable to him - has colourful feathers, I just substitute bird. And what he is trying to say is that human thought are feathers to a bird, which is like the mind. The mind (bird) produced these different and colourful plummages - just as the mind produces thoughts. And this was interesting. Since feathers were used here as pens in the early days. But also, most interesting, what Steiner is attempting to do is to show us how were are intimately connected to the entire world around us - in many, many ways, he is attempting to give a Western voice to an indigenous wisdom. It is actually a very kind and generous system - not to mention life giving system - of being.
When I studied the Greco-Latin myths and Steiner's take on them, I kept on wondering what the heck is he talking about? Now I understand. We are still living through the chaos which was engendered in the wake of the Ancient Roman civilisation. What they did, their values, their Will, still inhabits us in spades and is now threatening life on Earth. The very Earth, imagine.
Right I am going to try to go for a gentle walk. After I dye my hair. Little steps. Little steps.
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