I've been sitting at my desk not blogging this morning, simultaneously striving and yearning for structure and routine, while at the same time struggling with my own need to upset my own structures and the resulting burst of energy followed by the exhausted let down that leaves me unable to do anything much. I suppose I just have to accept that this is a significant part of who I am, and stop struggling against it. Those exhausted fallow periods are also great germination chambers. But what do I write about? And when and how much? How much is shown? How much is hidden? Well, even when it seems the world is laid bare, the process of writing it is a bit of a screen, a letting go and an organizing of something but never the full thing in and of itself.
When I was young I would sometimes write in my journal that everything written there was simultaneously a lie and the truth. I suppose as I grow older, this seems even more apparent to me, that what I think and see and believe and write seems so true to me at the moment and yet, as soon as it is thought or written, my perspective and my understanding begins to shift.
Actually, much of the morning I've been sitting here at my desk, in front of my computer, not blogging, because a visiting cat was curled up in my lap and I hated to disturb her. So my thought were allowed to wander. And this cat, who has been sweet and friendly and curious since she arrived, this cat who has sought out affection, but warily so, stood on my lap to be petted and eventually relaxed just a smidge and lay down and curled up into a mostly contented ball.
It was this very state of wary contentment that shifted my intentions this morning and left my thoughts whirling. This cat on my lap is very sweet, and she was somewhat contented. But she is not in her house, she is not with her people, and although she is safe and warm and fed, we are strangers here. And that she curls up on my lap at all seems almost remarkable.
And I am left thinking about process, thinking that much as I adore a good project, life is more process than project. I am left thinking that if we allow ourselves to believe otherwise we are only fooling ourselves. And, since I am sitting at my desk, thinking about what to write, I find myself thinking about this process called blogging. Is there a happy path between interior and exterior worlds? Is there a middle ground between pretty pictures and shiny surfaces and shifting sands of perception and understanding? Why bother? Is there a safe road between clinging to routine and a defined structure, and allowing ourselves to lean in and seek whatever comfort we can in a world that changes around us despite our best efforts to contain it? What is this need to write, to share, to dissect, to explore the boundaries between sharing and hiding? I truly don't know.
Visiting miss kitty loves to sit in the windows and look out at the world. Occasionally she wanders from window to window. If I am in the room, she will utter a plaintive meow. I wish I could tell her that this is only temporary, that her people will come for her soon. But of course I cannot. I suppose, in some ways, blogging is my way of looking at the world through a window of words, not that I am crying out for the people I have lost, but it is a way of attempting to make sense of what I see and sometimes of what I don't see, and attempting to communicate and share that journey.
And now my own cat, my sweet Moisés is here demanding his share of lap time. And perhaps that is all the ending I need. There are no answers today, just transition and purring and what comfort we allow ourselves to find.
