I've been back from Texas for two weeks and it somehow feels like I am just beginning to get my bearings again. I do feel like this has been a particularly hard "landing" although I can't really say why. Perhaps it was just that I felt stressed and a bit frazzled when I left, and returned to some kind of sense of too muchness. Perhaps I've over-filled my dance-card, with multiple parties and social events every week. Perhaps it is just that everything seems to be suddenly moving forward quickly on the house, and there are all kinds of changes and decisions. After a long period of waiting, it feels like I've tripped over some kind of ledge, and although I don't actually feel particularly stressed, there is a bit of a lull in any creative energy.
Last week Frances wrote about being "swallowed up" by normal life upon reentry from a trip, and I very definitely felt swallowed, swallowed by a great big whale. I keep hoping to integrate the various aspects of my life but I also realize that my efforts will continue to prove inadequate as long as I continue to let myself be swallowed, I need to be firmer in defining the boundaries of my own space and of saying, to myself, "this is enough". Saying no to others is proving to be easier than saying no to my own greedy impulses, my natural tendency toward too-muchness. But even then perhaps the issue is not so much about defining my boundaries but about accepting them, about thinking of my experience, and what I chose to do or not do, not as a a tug of war, me against the demands of the world, but of a piece. Perhaps instead I should be thinking what do I want the fabric of my life to look like? What will make that fabric whole? And then accepting that my fabric is my own.
Well, all of this is a bit too vague, but then I am feeling a little on the vague side as well.
At least the house is shaping up. A mock-up of the kitchen cabinetry was put in place this week, with some temporary framing and some foam board. This is helping as we refine choices for cabinetry and layout. Already, walking around in the space, as opposed to looking at it on paper, a few seemingly minor, but I suspect important, modifications have already taken place.
Although the cabinetry mock-up is temporary, the space increasingly feels like it is becoming something. Friday I could stand in the corner looking out the window, imagining where my expresso machine would be, imagining making a cup of espresso, as I watched workers digging the footings for the new deck. By the time I actually make that espresso the deck will be in place, but the boundaries of the space have been defined. Increasingly, I can see what it will become.
I suppose that is actually what is happening here as well, in my life. I have not been swallowed, I am just building the foundations, the substructure, and eventually the fabric will take its own shape. We start on a path, with a goal of course, but the path itself can often be confusing and not well marked. We start with intentions but don't really know where we are going until after we have arrived. I can't be what I want to be until I have built my own framework, and there are bound to be modifications along the way, but just as each house has its own character, shaped by its physical space and the lives that share it, so do we humans have our own fabric, shaped by our experiences and the people who touch our lives. We can't control the world we live in, but we can control what we hold close.
