Ok. So here goes me, keeping my perspective. I walked in to the middle school tonight where I was scheduled to do intake and the teacher of the fifth grade, whose room I use, must've had her students paste stickies on the wall with examples of metaphors. She was a great potato of a woman jumped of a post-it on the wall right at me and made me giggle. She was a great potato of a woman. Lumpy? Full of starch? Little eyes all over her body? What?
Here I am, same place I always am third Monday of the month. It's been a slow day--slow on new student intake for the GED program, lots of no-shows and actually even a couple of open time slots, which is nice, and also not normal. I am used to kicking it in to overdrive when I am on the clock for my job: going so fast that it's like a dance, muscle memory, peak experience. Rolled in to one. But today, well today has been lagging. Laborious even, with the clock on a slow honey roll.
Which is kinda the perfect description of my life since I finally completed my move off the farm. Slow and gentle, rolling ever so easily, taking it carefully with me. And I've been so aware of being in the middle of my process. It's as if there was this outter life that I was steady keeping up, and at once also this inner one that only I, and like a couple close friends or so, were truly aware. And basically what's been happening is I've been watching the inner life slowly moving up and out, and the outter one, who I thought I was or at least used to be, is sort of dismantling and fading back in to the surface, sort of composting and disappearing, like the water leftover when a wave crashes, how it seeps with a gurgle and a bubble in to the land. And this weekend I had nothing but quiet time to see the process, to really with open-eyes walk along and be so aware of it all unfolding.
About mid-day today I got some news that I was expecting, that in my soul I sorta new already, but it still made time, and my breath stand still. Like the silence after a bomb when you can see everything blown to pieces but are aware of your own inner silence, and at once of each and every piece. There was a moment of great stillness, which in turn made me even more hyper-aware of each moment that came after it, right up til right now. Which is good, cuz the old me would've ducked and run.
Since none of my students were showing, I decided to sit in on GED class for Jason's lesson on elements and the periodic table. Dig this. Everything, everything in life comes back to being calm. Or what I mean is that the deal with atoms, see all they want out of life is to be content which in atomic terms means neutral. In its natural state an atom is perfect in equal positive and negative charge. But bang an atom with the same amount of protons up against a different atom with a different amount of protons and therefor different amount of electrons--and they're gonna start matching up, all those on and off charges, banging around against and reacting to one another, seeking neutral but likely causing chaos until they can separate back out again and be calm, be one again and natural in who they are. Because in the atoms most natural state, and compelled by the finest fundamentals of life, it is a perfectly equal number of protons and electrons, or positive and negative charge. And all of life is compelled by the fact that they always seek to return to that neutral stasis.
Edward Carpenter said All that you have within you, all that your heart desires, all that your nature so specially fits for you--that or the counterpart of it waits embedded in the great Whole, for you. It surely will come to you. Yet equally surely not one moment before its appointed time will it come. All your crying and fever and reaching out of hands will make no difference. Therefor do not begin that game at all.
It is thunder, and lightening out right now. At our most base substance is perfection, and the elemental code for chaos. It will all go and go, compelled by those most basic and fundamental charges. Amazing. Beautiful. The life of a potato: Saturday I put under the ground these spuds with eyes poking out. Eventually they will grow crazy mats of roots and great breathing leaves with fine white blossoms of flowers glowing atop the brown ground. And all that too, all that wild disruption of growth and life too will eventually fade back into and under the soil. Chaos. Peace. The hyper states in between.
And the process: getting to see it all....
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