Silent Night & Gifted

I climbed into bed at eleven, feeling good to snuggle down so early after a week of insomnia. Then I remembered Tuesday morning. Blog.

It’s the day after Christmas. I had the week to myself. My husband Art gifted a flight to Charlotte by a colleague. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. I was behind with edits on the book, and feeling frustrated. Feeling like four feather pillows burst, throwing different colored feathers in the air, my task to gather them into like piles. Once he left, I dived into the book, but I had the hardest time following my own wisdom (the wisdom I write about in that exact book) to focus on process, not product. To let it take as long as it takes to do it right. To be present without expectations. And here it is the day after Christmas and I’m still not done. But I have two piles of feathers pretty much sorted. I know when I’m moving and how I’m gonna do it. And I have unexpected, perfect tech help for what I need to do beyond the book. This last was cause for giving myself an attagirl when I figured how to find a permalink so peeps can see my blog images on social media. I added a high five because the link’s in computer code and my brain was firing off of 3 hrs. sleep. Yeeeaaaa Me, I thought.

The week had moments of Hallelujah, too. Said admitting nothing gets me up with a heart bursting from my chest like the Hallelujah Chorus. Which I heard one evening and indeed jumped into the middle of the room, hands held to the sky, body swaying side to side, me singing at the top of my lungs. Noticing how rusty my voice sounds and how alive my heart felt when moments before it was so quiet.

All day Friday I thought about the yummy salmon BLT I recently discovered at a little place down the road. No regrets I found it on the cusp of leaving, only feeling an intent to enjoy it while I can. But I forced myself back to the manuscript and computer. Fighting the pull of the rare non-humid day with temps below 80*, too. I desperately wanted to be outside. I washed sheets and a blanket, hung them on drying racks in the sun, lingered before turning back to work. When they were dry, I buried my nose in the fresh smell on the sheets, which made sitting at the computer even harder. Just get to page 50, I told myself, then go. Which I did, but I was 30 min. past lunch and the cook wasn’t gonna do it. ‘Get a dinner sandwich and a side of bacon,’ the gal said. ‘It’ll be on a bun instead of bread, and it’s only 75c more.’ I had my salmon BLT and she got a $5 tip ’cause she never let me feel ignored, and it was Christmas.

Saturday, Christmas eve, when I picked up our holiday dinner at the natural foods market, I noticed they left out the kale salad. Long after I got home I discovered they left out the dressing, too. I LOVE homemade dressing. But Christmas morning, after a full 5 hrs. sleep (longest sleep in a night all week), a conversation with the most sparkly little boy in the whole world and my son looking the best I’ve seen him in ages. . .I could only thank the Angels for sparing me the carbs.

I had no tree. There were no gifts exchanged at our home. But I felt gifted the entire week.

A gift in the parking lot at Trader Joes. The title track to Leonard Cohen’s last album. This line hitting me to the marrow – ‘You want it darker, we kill the flame.’  I still feel God bumps when I think, no, we hold the flame. I’m not sure what my response entirely means, yet, but sitting in my car, listening to his deep, deep voice singing in that cadence he has, I knew it held some special meaning for me.

And this by my friend Rachel Ballentine in Albuquerque who writes wonderful poetry and colorful observations of the world around her. I love it because it’s brilliant and beautiful, and is a message of hope and appreciation and awareness:
“because of my eye I’ve been scared, so i tried eating my breakfast with my eyes closed, just to experiment. try it. the birds were a lot louder, the thyme in the omelet was tastier, I didn’t like the toast as much when I couldn’t see it, the coffee was tasty, and i ate much much slower. and not as much. I’d better start making art instead of fb and pouting. I mean, what if???? we have so so so much to be grateful for.”

And this, a poem by a poet of great spirit who loves this planet as much as I do. These words exactly what I will tell you are truer than True:

The Magic of the Season

If you are to learn something of this day,
learn about magic:
how it is real,
 and the explanation for everything
that matters most.

I’ve seen it,
and felt it,
and lived it in dreams too grand
to live out in a single life.

And I am all the better for it.

You too are like the star whose entire
reason for being is to
point the way
to the human heart.

~ Jamie K. Reaser (from Winter: Reflections by Snowlight)

The photo above is of a star being born somewhere light years away. A baby star, like us.

I love anything that has to do with space-time continuum, have a dream to go into space before I die. I loved the movie Interstellar for everything in it, especially for how it showed simultaneous realities in other dimensions. Because I’ve experienced them, and wondered if they’re real. I don’t wonder anymore. And so, Christmas day there was so much Love in my heart, and I’m still editing the manuscript.

Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.

Tell me. . .what do you know is truer than true?
I’ll tell you a secret. . .the entire week was like Silent Night, holy.

Poem, ‘The Magic of the Season’ © 2013-2016/Jamie K. Reaser