TRANSITING TRANSITIONS

Uprooting takes time, effort, care. Disengaging needs to be gentle. Moving is an exercise in many emotional cues & they come around like the black horse on a gilded & glittering carousel.

At times, I melt into an excitement of fear. My heart rattles & I find my tongue pressing the roof of my mouth so hard I know there are indentations along its edges. When I teach Qiqong, I often tell students “Let your tongue fall away from the roof of your mouth.” Voila! Instant relaxation since tucking tongue behind the front teeth brings body into Fire Position. Unsealing that common hold is a great way to bring the whole thing down a notch.

Things I’m nervous about: traveling with a cat in this wild heat & heading across Texas first, the largest state I’ve ever been in. I found a big-dog carrier today & another smaller one to transfer her into lodging. Then of course I wonder if it’s the rightest fit for the car. It’s not so much buyer’s remorse as buyer’s concern: Will these work?

The Move Sale comes up in a week. Borrowing tables, advertising, asking friends for help with various chores, distributing “stuff.” Wanting others to have the tools & tacks I’ve collected here, carrying as little with me as I can, I look around wondering  how I’ve not drowned in it all. I wonder what it is in me that I can turn & take off without taking it along. I know exactly where each item came from, but holding onto much slips away. Traveling Light has many meanings.

I drive into a troubled world where I must remain untroubled to continue sanity. My concerns must be transubstantiated from the water of “stay” to the wine of “go,” from hang-back to look-ahead. To keep that vision clear I avert my eyes to all asking for one more look of love. Others now can do that. A Course In Miracles says what is unreal does not last. Obviously I am still looking for my reality.

Did I inherit some wanderlust gene? Mom moved often, too, once she moved out of her marriage. She started businesses once a divorce left her just outside of a parochial 50’s society. She made her way with efficiency if not joyous love, but really, how am I to know that? Daddy stayed in one spot & died there young in a severity of anguish. Mom went on to fight for every possession, to sweat & curse, to love & deny her children in turn as none turned into her…and yet I have to large degree. I wonder if she looks down from heaven & clucks her tongue at my antics, or simply smiles.

Do I trust Fate too much? Do I have a choice? I have an understanding that for me the way of the open road is best. (I hit some odd key combination & Word opens a screen on the right of this document defining the word “Reality.” Just where’d that come from? Another sign for my imaginary road? This computer fortune cookie says: “The world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea.” But in the end isn’t all of life a notional idea? It seems so tangible, so genuine, so real, yet life turns inside out in the space of a heartbeat – or lack thereof. I worry that my cat won’t be immune to what affects me but she has thrown her lot into my circus rings. We watch together for the black horse to come around again. In the absence of another reality, she “goeth whither I go.”

I move into frames of reality as though flipping cards in a deck. Life is a game of 52 Pickup. I deal & am dealt another winning hand. There’s little mystery: I do it all for love.