Marching exhaustedly forward

I was listening to snatches of A Prarie Home Companion today and Garrison Keilor said "(March is) the month that God designed to show people who don't drink what a hangover is like." I could not agree more! It feels to me like Dante's description of Limbo (correct me if I'm wrong) wherein the souls are chasing a banner that flaps in the wind, but they will never catch it and never stop trying. It is my least favorite month.
He also told a story about some Minnesota golfers who got so excited about the mild temperature that they went out to play golf in shorts and were caught by a Spring blizzard. After this trauma they had to flee to Costa Rica; they just couldn't handle changing temperatures any more. But as they sipped cool drinks in the pleasant and unchanging heat, they dreamt of home, knowing that no one in that paradise would ever know them as the folks in Lake Wobegon did. No one in Costa Rica could tell them the name of the short-haired alto who sat in front of them in choir and smelled like lilacs. This too is exactly what I have been feeling. As lovely as it is to have a bird-of-paradise plant outside my window, there is a loneliness in knowing that not a single soul in for hundreds of miles knows what parts I played in the high school musicals, or how I made paper dolls inside my desk during class all through middle school.
That being said, my major goal right now is to live life as it unfolds and not always have to know the terrain 10 steps ahead of where I am. But it was so comforting to have that voice that so precisely captures for me the feeling og being home tell me that what lies in my own heart is drawn from the well of some collective human heart.

The Ides of March

In less than a week the following misfortunes have befallen our house: one roomate discovered she had brought lice home from her trip to Costa Rica, a pipe beneath the cement kitchen floor broke and flooded the kitchen and living room (there is now a jack-hammered hole in the kitchen and the carpet is pulled up in half the living room), a mysterious act of God fried the internet/cable/phone connection, and the dryer stopped blowing hot air. We are now on the repairmen's parade route.

Brothers and Sisters

A colleague of mine invited me to a sweat lodge, which is a ceremony in the Native American tradition. She and her husband host these ceremonies at the times of the solstices and equinoxes as a way of bringing more consciousness to the change of seasons, and the ceremony itself is one of personal renewal.
When I arrived about 5 people were sitting around a blazing fire in a deep pit. We just sat and chatted, introducing ourselves again each time someone new joined the circle. As the time to enter the lodge neared we made prayer ties as a way of focusing our thoughts and capturing our intentions. Ties are made from tiny pinches of tobacco wrapped in squares of cloth whose colors represent the directions according to the Lakota tradition; earth (green), heavens (blue), east, childhood, new life (yellow), south, adolescence, ideals (white), west, adulthood, our personal gift to the world, (black), north, ancestors, wisdom, the realm between worlds (red) and the creator spirit (purple).
At around sundown (not that we could tell through the dense cloud-cover) we shed our warmer layers and entered the lodge, a frame of willow branches covered with layers of blankets. The prayer ties were hung from the willow frame and will remain in the lodge for 4 days and then be ceremonially burnt. The work of the lodge, the transformation, also goes on in us for 4 days.
The lodge is cool and dark and by now there are 13 of us and we do not have the luxury of sitting cross legged. Red hot rocks are brought into the lodge one by one and sprinkled with 4 sacred substances, sweet grass, sage, cedar and I forget the fourth. When there are seven in the pit in the center, the door is closed and we begin.
Prayers and thoughts are offered, songs are sung to the beat of a drum and water is poured over the rocks, making the air thick with steam. It is completely dark. It is a timeless realm inside the lodge, so nobody quite knows how long it is before the door is opened again.
There are four rounds, four times when more rocks are added through the open door. The first round is a welcome round, the second for prayers, the third for healing, and the fourth for gratitude. With each addition of rocks the air gets hotter and thicker and we are dripping with sweat and steam. By the fourth round our singing is more raw and I have to concentrate on every passing second, breathing deeply, to not be overwhelmed by the heat.
In prayers there is much talk of connection (an idea I am ruminating on a lot these days) to ourselves, to our actions, to others, to the earth. In the native American tradition, the stones are spoken of as our grandfather and the water poured over them as our grandmother and we who sit in a circle are brothers and sisters.
At the end of the last round we slowly leave the lodge and the air outside is like a perfect bath! Some folks hose off with cold water, but I feel cooked to perfection and change right into dry clothes. Everyone's faces are very rosy.
To bring ourselves back to earth we share a pot luck meal. Uncharacteristically, I am drawn to the stir-fried seaweed and the curly kale. We sit in communion over the meal and talk like the brothers and sisters that we are.

Wonderful

My mom said on the phone the other day that she had seen a woman whose children I used to babysit. "She's wonderful!" the woman said of me. It got me to thinking (some more!) about appreciation and the chasm between perception and self-perception. Now, I am not tooting my own horn (although what would be wrong with that), but plenty of people say that I am wonderful, yet I feel like nobody has a harder time connecting with other people (probably mainly because I am not anyone else). What do people mean when they say I am wonderful? At what point in knowing me do they feel this way?
Sometimes I feel pretty wonderful! I'm funny and resourceful. I have interesting hobbies and I make a mean tiramisu.
Sometimes I am greedy, jealous and impatient. I am horrible on the phone. I'm not a great correspondant. I expect a lot of people (especially myself). I wallow in self pity.
When I think of someone wonderful, I think of them surrounded by praise and recognition. Yet how many people do we think are wonderful, who go around wondering if they are?

House of Dreams

I rented A Good Year, the movie based on the Peter Mayle novel, this evening. It had the same delightful plot that all his books do and of which one never tires; the man who thought he had lost his soul comes to Provence only to be reunited with it.
I had this gut-wrenching feeling from the moment Russell Crowe's character arrived at the old house he'd inherited. It could have been the large bowl of ice cream I was eating at the time, but it also had something to do with the fact that I felt I was watching my beloved walk by and he had no idea I was standing there. Oh god, Russell Crowe is definitely not the beloved, if that's what you're thinking! He was kind of obnoxious. But the house was the very picture of what my dreams would look like if they materialized before me; an old stone house, well-loved and rough around the edges, longing to be filled with life and laughter. The colors were exquisite. The living space was not confined to the roof and four walls, but spilled out into gardens, swimming pool, vinyard and tennis court. It almost made me want to play tennis.
In Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (the book of the year, in my opinion; a must read), the author tells of a little girl who so wishes for a house of her own that she places her tiny feet on a square of bright blue tile she's found and meditates upon this house of dreams, willing it into being with her inner vision. I have a mind to find me a square of old tile and do the same, or perhaps I'll start on the little $2 Ikea rag rug by my bed and build my house around it.

Lollygagging

This week stretched on forever, but the weather was so beautiful, that I didn't mind being exhausted.
I have developped a lovely routine of coming home from school, fixing a light lunch (having just eaten a substantial, Kindergarten snack at 10:30 or so), and taking it out onto the patio with a book. I have a hearty collection of freckles and a rosy glow from these midday picnics.
This morning the sky was so overcast that I felt like I had accidentally set my alarm for some ungodly hour, but by the time I left school it was bright again and I looked blissfully forward to having nothing planned for the rest of the day. There are those who bore easily, but I am not among them. I can stare and daydream and doze for hours and feel as though it has been a very fruitful afternoon.