Winter thoughts can be deep and a little sad. You know you are still alive if you can still feel longing and desire. Then you know spring will return. In the meantime, it can feel like your life is over. Especially if you feel opportunities have come and gone, and you have buried yourself in regret and shame. Or if you feel like you are at the end of something and have not yet seen the beginning of the next path for your life. Your purpose. It's a time for letting go and waiting, of letting yourself go inside the Dream of your life. Feel all your feelings and let your thoughts spill out of your head until you are empty. And relish the whole brooding stillness even as the yearning in your heart begins to give you pain. It's good to feel the numbness be replaced by yearning and desire.

Oh the Hermit and the Fool
Walk through the moonlit night
And the hermit doesn't see the fool is there
He finds a lovely spot
A mossy little clearing
Sets his lantern down on the dewy ground
And walks the circle on the edge of the light

Head bowed just a little
Eyes lids down halfway
A very gentle bounce in the knees
And a very slight tap with his staff on the earth
As he trances to the edges of the universe

And all the while the fool skips and sways
In circles around the hermit
Each small tap of the hermit's staff
Stokes the fire of the fool's desire
And each little nod of the hermit's head
Dips into the deepest pool
In the heart of the fool

The moth in his brain dances with the flicker of the light
The firefly in his eye searches out the treasures of the night
In the forest of the hermit

Now in his trancing dream
The Hermit sees the Fool
He gathers him to his heart
Like an old forgotten friend who never leaves
Like a new remembered joy that always stays
On the edges of the circle
And in all the motions of the dance

I'm struggling against the feelings of Life-Passing-Me-By blues. I'm not giving in, but I 'm not gaining much ground, either. Can't click "end game" and start over again for this life. But sometimes I wish I could at least back up and do a few things differently. I know that's not the answer, but can't help thinking how good that would be. There's a lot of things I would wipe from my mind and my psyche if I could, too. Things that can make me feel heavy and trapped.

I shouldn't be dwelling in this.  Shouldn't be listening to the negative judgements of myself in my head. Hm. I'll go on as always, and maybe get better at this life. By the time I die, maybe I will have learned enough to benefit me in the next. Wo. That is still melancholy. Part of me says, I'm not that melancholy person sitting glassy-eyed in her doldrums. Part of me says, yes, that's where I am right now. I'll get up in a minute. Just give me a minute. I'll come around. I always do.

 Yay! I now have a computer. Which should mean that I will blog more often. We'll see.

At the moment, I don't have a lot to say because I'm in the process of moving and general discombobulation resulting from reviewing all my and my daughter's possessions and letting go of more things than I even knew I had left to let go of. I really want a simplified life. I want to be clean and cleared out. I don't cling to things in excess, really, but I'm always amazed at how many pieces of the past follow me around in the form of papers, clothes, old school projects, etc. Some things I don't really consider releasing, mostly books and pictures. If I imagine myself suddenly deprived of any of my attachments, even books, I feel a little strange but also really free and okay. However, making a decision to throw or give something away is a different process entirely.

Hmm. I could just take a bunch of these boxes of stuff and destroy them and have them only in my memory. Wouldn't that feel good. To just walk away from it.  Ah-h-h. Someday . . .

 Anyway, I've a respite for a few days with relatives in Tennessee. Lovely people. Really. They gifted me with this computer.

Shopping     by Sherry Fraley (zoetree)

Shiny streets in a wet metro night
Another shopping town
Movies houses and malls
Construction banners and coffee shops
Restaurants by the score
All you can eat
And much much more
Blah blah blah

Even as we scurry about the suburban surface
Our souls have frozen into waiting
For a time when this will all make sense
When corners will be neat and secure
And bundles will be laid out brightly and sweetly
Beneath an Evergreen

One true thought
One feeling uncensored
Would free us
All we've been taught of reigning in
We've learned too well

We're waiting for enlightenment, ascension, Armageddon
The return of someone we never really knew
Waiting for science to save us
Waiting for religion to accept us
Waiting for politicians to wise up
Waiting for a piece of paper to validate us
Waiting for that first big break to empower us
Waiting to be excellent
Someday

In dreams we wander old haunts not knowing we are dead
Gazing longingly into bright and brassy blurs
Searching for a flicker from one pure beam of light which holds all we seek
Not knowing it has moved on with the expansion of Eternity
Where permissions are neither sought nor granted, bought, nor sold
Where nothing waits or remains unchanged

Where one true thought
One feeling uncensored
Would wake us, free us, set us in motion
To find home at last on the Path that never ends