Journeys

I read a friend's article about journeys today--new journeys--toward one's creativity. For some reason, reading about journeys about to be or journeys never had causes the sockets in my eyes to get soggy.

I sit here at the computer on a rainy New Year's Eve in the no light of my kitchen. My daughter's dog patiently rests at my side one moment and then rustles to the window to check out the chickadees and tufted titmouses at the feeders the next. I find myself wondering if dogs think about journeys.

Dogs' journeys consist of waking up and licking their owner's face in the bright light of a morning, searching out the dish for food twice a day, sipping clean water from the bowl, taking extra naps for good measure (especially naps basking in the sunbeams coursing through the window), playing well with others and their toys in between, and keeping watch for exciting happenings like birds at the feeder or the squatter squirrels who try to act like birds and steal their seeds.

Maybe each day of a dog's life is a miniature journey where they carry on and into whatever that day brings. Dog medicine in Native American beliefs represents loyalty. Dogs are loyal to their owners and to the day--the day they open their shiny eyes to and the day they curl into a warm slumber with at night. Dogs take the journey as it comes. Their creativity comes in the living of the day.

Some of us never take the journey at all--creative or otherwise. I think that's what my friend was saying.

Some of us open our eyes on the new day's sun only to let a foggy filter keep us from seeing our true selves--that little girl who always wanted to take tap dance lessons and wear red-fringed costumes with sparkles--the lad whose one wish was to hike across the country but whose only hike is to and from his desk at the office.

We know those dreams. We dropped them behind us in little pieces of bread crumbs like Hansel and Gretel hoping we would always be able to find our way back. But when we're ready, the crumbs are gone and the dreams diminished, barely recognizable, so we keep doing what we do instead of being who we truly are.

And the sad thing, between all these mixed metaphors of dogs and Hansel and Gretel and lost dreams, is some of us never find our way out of the murkiness and mediocrity of our own lives.

Why? We're too afraid what we'll find in the glory of who we are sparkles more than any glittered costume we ever could have worn as a small child. We're afraid if we let ourselves shine it might cause someone else to go blind.

Our answer to all those fears comes in the living of the day. If we awaken to the sun and truly see it, bless it, revel in it, then we begin to know. If we eat our three or however many meals in thanksgiving for the peas, beans and squash prepared before us, we begin to know. If we hustle to the window to welcome the day’s excitement, we begin to know. If we take those we love and cradle them in our arms, and laugh and play and dance twenty-four hours in joy, we begin to know. If we, upon our slumber, realize we have given to that day everything we are and have and might be and will be, we begin to know.

And if we are able to do all these things, rest assured we've rubbed the mediocrity from our eyes and have begun.

Holding On/Holding Still

Sometimes in life we feel stuck. We drudge through the murky mud of confusion--confusion definitely too muddy and murky to get unstuck.

I've spent much of the past ten years stuck--stuck in fear of moving into all I can be, stuck in refusing to look at life and relationships with a magnifying glass of truth, stuck in failing to lift one dirtied foot from the mire and step in action as a method of moving on.

Sometimes mud on our boots can appear safer than a clean pair of Keds on a mission.

Don't get me wrong about being stuck though. It's not like my life has been on pause the entire time. I have done stuff--finished my masters, now teach English to Freshmen in college, have written a novel.

But this stuckness is a pattern--a pattern of holding on to what is--whether or not the clean after the mud might offer growth, light, love. The mud--it's just too thick.

So I hold on.

I wrote about holding on in my journal the other day. This is how that went:

November 27, 2006

In this moment, my eyes feel like heaters blow inside the sockets drying them out, causing pain. I hear the faint roar of car engines on the highway, of people headed back to their jobs post Thanksgiving. I hear Sunny (my white fluffy dog) moaning and snoring. I hear the faint call of birds through the morning's dark.

I feel my hand on the page of this journal, holding it down, holding it in place, and I think about how I'm always either trying to hold my life still so I don't have to change, or change and get my life to a point where I want it to hold still while I revel in finding what speaks to my soul's essence.

I remember as a little girl when my mom tried to comb my hair or pin up a hem on a dress she was making for me, or measure an outfit against me while in the process of sewing. I'd squirm. She'd say, "Hold still a minute so I can do my work."

But I always had the propensity, the coquettish nature to move around and flirt with my image. Whether attempting to stand still for my mom or while gazing at my image in a mirror or my reflection in one as I passed by, I couldn't hold still. Even in professional photographs of family, I was the one turned in the opposite direction, my head tilted just so unlike anyone else in the picture.

I've been trying to hold still forever, to contain my body's fever and passion and desire. I figured if I held down the page of the journal securely enough or tried to hold myself still for my mother or for a picture or for my life, maybe I wouldn't catch up to what I wanted to be.

So what do I do with all this trying to be still when my spirit wants to splash barefoot in clear streams? I need to let go. Let myself go, my life go. I need to give myself permission to mess up the photograph, to be prissy in front of mirrors, to find that girl in me who couldn't be contained, but somehow, over the years, learned to crave the safety containment offered.

She's in there somewhere. She's not sure what she wants exactly or how it will look exactly, but it will offer a chance for opening to all she is rather than telling herself over and over "just hold still a few more years."