find my spirit

I have been getting glimpses of it lately – it’s been teasing me. I guess I’m not ready for it yet…maybe it’s hiding on purpose. I think it’s protecting itself – I think I would just mash it to pieces right now, like that book with the smooshed fairies. But I know it’s been close by lately. I think it’s getting impatient like I am to join back together – sick of this disharmonious life. Even my body is sick now, and needs to be healed and brought back to balance. All the pieces need to come back together. Soon.

Another place that made me feel alive and connected with that feeling I am looking for, was riding in the backseat of our car down HWY 95 to Florida. I lay on my back looking up through the backseat window as rain came down and watching the rolling thunder clouds in the early evening sky passing by while I listened to soft gentle guitar music on the radio. I could feel the tires on the road and hear the rain on the roof. The clouds were absolutley amazing, rounded with blossoms of white, pale yellow and blue light that erupted radial through deep grey popcorn edges.
I looked at the sky and was thrilled all at the same time at the excitement of driving through a thunderstorm and the acceptance that I was in the back seat and had no chioce but to trust the driver….ride the storm….and even enjoy it.
Maybe if I write all the times I have felt that peaceful helplessness and that sence of the Earth doing what it always does with or with out my witness…all around me….maybe… I’ll get it back….
Just a thought.

Well it was not a place of solitude and beauty. The parking lot was crowded and I did take the whole crew with… so it wasn’t relaxing. I did enjoy the sun and boats. I picked up quite a few cute shells. I think next time I will try to go it alone and see if I can concentrate more on the experience. I need some time to decompress and this was a good start on at least leaving the apartment to enjoy the weekend.
At least once this upcoming week I will try to venture to the beach without the crew and watch the sunset.

When I was younger I believed that one day I would find a place of great beauty and I would appreciate it and hold on to it. So when I say find beauty in myself again I am not talking about physical appearance or even inner goodness. I believed long ago that I would find a personal power in a special PLACE. I thought that aging would not cripple my soul only bolster strength and confirm my beliefs. My beliefs were so loose and undefined when I was young and sadly aging has defined them in the negative. They were ruined by bitterness and worry. I have always envisioned myself ending up somewhere magical and beautiful. Problem is I realize that I had found those places and it was too late; I didn’t fight to keep them. Now My spirit is dead and I feel like I am looking up at a broken ladder to the sky and I can’t even reach the bottom rung.
I now lament moments that have past and I have not appreciated while they were in my hand to keep.
I sell myself into the daily workforce and never enjoy a sunset across the ocean chased away by a star filled night, a pink evening mist floating across the green spring carpet of a mountain valley, the hot red desert mesas lit by the setting sun with a black lighting streaked sky rolling in behind them. I have seen these things but I was too self absorbed to enjoy them now they are gone and only a picture flash memory that I may forget.
All I see anymore is my dark apartment walls, the inside of my work place and local businesses. I walk up and down the isles of the Wal-Mart buying sleep aids and pot pies.
Too bad I’ve killed my sleep dreams now I can’t even escape in my mind.
• I want to walk beneath cherry blossom trees in Japan.
• I want to drink tea outside on a terrace restaurant that overlooks a boat filled harbor in India or Thailand.
• I want to sit on a cabin porch and watch the snow fall in the woods.
This time I will be grateful and cherish a moment for what it is.
I hate it that I live minutes from a beach I am too tired to sit on.
I hate it that I live to sleep a weekend away or clean my apartment up only to watch it tumble back into chaos as the week goes by.
I am tired. I am old and I am sick. There has to be a way to enjoy life’s beauty again. I need my spirit back. Not some else’s either. The one I had at 20. I am not going to retire in comfort unless I make a new spirit. It will have to be as fresh and unspoiled as the hope I had then and HOW can I do that?