Of coherent thought at least, of being able to string together sentences, or even more so, whole paragraphs.....
I am still in nesting mode I suppose, and scattered. There are days when I have plans and ideas and those plans are constantly interrupted by other necessities. Then, when all is quiet I pick up the pieces and try to finish the myriad half-done projects. It is minor. It is a privilege actually, but that does not mean there are not days when I do not wonder if I will ever be able to think again, much less write. At least I am able to connect my computer to the internet, and the solution was all my doing. After a couple of phone calls, I realized that all Apple support was doing was trying to follow a chart, a rote if-this, then-that routine that was skirting around my issues and never getting to the heart of it. Sounds like a metaphor for my life at the moment. In which case there is hope after all.
This past weekend was the first weekend in which there were no workmen here. You might think I would have gotten a lot done and I would argue that this was not the case, that I spent a lot of time just reveling in the silence, and that would be true. It was also a working weekend for me, as the first weekend of the month is my altar guild weekend, and I had a funeral on Saturday and then church services on Sunday. I don't really like Saturday funerals because they interfere with my Saturday Farmer's Market habit, but in the end, doing what you want to do is not where meaning comes from in life. Meaning comes from helping others. And need rarely cooperates with want; helping someone when you are least inclined to do it because you are tired, or frustrated, or had been planning to do something else taps into the essence of our humanity. When we interrupt our own ego-driven pursuits and help others we open ourselves up to joy.
Besides, altar guild suits me. I like the idea of making sure that things work, that everything is pretty, and that what you need is there and ready, and not having to be the public face of anything.
I finished organizing the kitchen, putting away the last few things that were stacked up, waiting to find a home. Oh there are a few glitches here and there, a couple of extra shelves have been ordered, and space is different from my previous kitchens so the organization needs a bit of fine-tuning. But basically it is done, and just in time as well. The painters came in and finished up today, installing the hardware for the windows and the screens, my wonderful side-opening screens, there when I need them and out of sight when I don't.
I spent the biggest part of the weekend organizing books. I'm still only about half done, but it is of course getting easier simply because the pile of unsorted books grows smaller and smaller so finding things is faster. I actually have far more bookshelf space than I need, which seems like a minor miracle, and I may have to space the books out more on the shelves. For a few moments I thought of all the books I gave away and donated before moving to Tennessee 7 years ago, but no, there are actually very few books that have been replaced, and a library needs room to grow....
And finally I spent time knitting and reading Ninth Street Women, which I adore. These women amaze me and I love the way the author interweaves the story with themes from their lives and their art, not necessarily always chronologically but in a way that makes sense in the flow of the art and the relationships, which, to mind at least, is how our experience of life tends to evolve, chronological yes, because we can't avoid time, but also simultaneously separate from that chronology, because what matters to us, and what shapes us, has its own way of interfering with timelines. The knitting is going slowly simply because I knit with linen more slowly than I can knit with wool, but I now see enough color that I eagerly look forward to the next change. My knitting is much like the book in a way then, worth any added effort in the revelation of what appears next.
