Thursday, October 23, 2008

Day two hundred and ninety five ... The balance of value.

It's a wonder we haven't all gone completely insane.

Then again, perhaps I'm being presumptive.

The tenuous, shredded wheat cracker of a universe I inhabit can be so overwhelming at times that I forget what peace feels like. Sometimes I wonder if I have ever felt it at all. I know, however, that I have, more often than not, and I know I will be able to enjoy it in spurts hopefully for the rest of my life, whatever length that may be.

There is a process:

The solace gets broken.

The plans come undone.

The damage is assessed.

The compassion is absorbed.

The energy fills our souls.

The rebuilding begins.

The solace again returns.

The eyes compress, the mouth widens and tightens, the teeth feel pressure from the inside of the lips, and the smile reappears.

This is how life goes, for me anyway.

I try to always be aware that the moments of enjoyment, as well as unpleasantness, are real, because there is no place one can go where a mental or physical state will stand still. It may remain static for a length of time but this will eventually be broken; it will change. And it may either fall apart from neglect or abuse, or it will be rebuilt and renovated from attention. Sometimes we have a say in the matter; sometimes the strings are pulled from above, below, or on either side of us and we have no control at all.

All we can do is observe and learn.

And this is how I constantly amass a fortune of instruments.

I'm not talking about guitars or drums or keyboards ... I'm talking about tools to build my world with.

I never take anything at face value anymore. Because when we agree that this is the way something is--be it the price of real estate or a state of depression--then we forfeit the possibility of negotiation.

I just bought a house.

Yes, it's true. I just bought a beautiful house in the village of Florence in the town of Northampton. I move in in about a month. I bought it because right before my aunt died she and I had been discussing the pros and cons of home ownership. I had told her that I didn't think I wasn't ready to take that big of a leap. I liked that wasn't expected to shovel the snow or fix the pluming; I had given up the idea that I was mature enough to handle the responsibility of owning a home.

And then she told me she could help "make things happen" for me. Because if I was going to buy a house, this is the time to do it. Because in five years or so there will be a lot of people who have acquired things at a reasonable price that will be damn glad they did so because the economy will be (hopefully) much stronger and the balance of value will have returned.

And then she got sick, and in four months, almost to the day, she passed into the next world--twenty years or so before she would have preferred.

And since she told me that she believed I was ready to enter the next phase in my life--the responsible and productive adult--along with myself gaining the confidence that I will, indeed, make it through to a point of calm and peace, I started to look around for a nice place to call my own.

And I found one.

And not only did I find one, but I almost initially bought the wrong one. I almost put down the money on one that was way too expensive, renovated by somebody who was just doing it to sell it. The seller had added up her receipts and put a price tag on the place. It had not been done with love and care, it was simply made to sell.

She didn't meet my initial offer and so I said no thank you and moved on. And the acceptance that by saying "no thank you" did not mean I couldn't have what I wanted, but rather that I hadn't found what was right, made finding the home I shall soon live in all the more special and proper.

The balance of value was uneven. I took my weights off my end and put them in my pocket. I held onto them until I felt that they would contribute the right amount to bring the counterweight to a level field. Not once did I feel like they didn't contain enough mass or value; I just knew that I hadn't found the proper scenario in which to judge the ratio.

And this is how I try to live my life.

If I have something bad happen--an argument with a friend or the loss of a tangible item--I have to calmly and intently slow down and assess the situation. This not only helps ensure my finding a better solution than just swatting aimlessly in the air, but it provides protection from future problems. Because smacking the bumble bee away from me is just going to make it mad. If I move with the bee and back away slowly, I will call less attention to myself and be able to work with my situation and not against it.

Where am I going with this, you might ask? Well, I don't know--happens all the time. But there are a lot of events ocurring in my world right now, both good, bad, and quite unfortunate. I've been involved in all of these conditions (as we all have, if we are human) and I've managed to sneak back through the rough spots and end up where it's safe; this is how I do it. I sometimes need to remind myself how I have managed to stay sober for close to a year. I sometimes need to slap myself on the cheeks and forehead to ensure that I stay awake and stay aware of my situation.

Because we all have a set of weights in our pockets. If we progress as life encourages us to then we will accrue more and varied pieces of value. We can either let these slow us down and distract us from our journey, or we can complain that we do not have as many as we would like and let our jealousy turn us bitter and black. 

Or we can take note, as we fish through our pockets, of each piece we have earned or been given. We can remember each one by the pains we took to acquire them, or the feeling of fulfillment that crept upon us as we made a new discovery, thus adding to our cache. We can wait patiently until we have found the right goal to strive towards, and then pull out what we think will bring our scale to a point of balance.

Or we can confuse the weights in our pockets with the burden on our backs and let progress slow us down.

There is a process:

The solace gets broken.

The plans come undone.

The damage is assessed.

The compassion is absorbed.

The energy fills our souls.

The rebuilding begins.

The solace again returns.

The eyes compress, the mouth widens and tightens, the teeth feel pressure from the inside of the lips, and the smile reappears.

This is how life goes, for me anyway.




I just had to get that out.

Thanks for bearing with me.



F.A.J.



PS: I'll share more on my home soon. It's going to be a special holiday season ... yes siree.








3 comments:

John Holland said...

Congrats! That's great news.

Anonymous said...

Congratulations my man. I'm very happy for you. I hope you've found your personal shangri-la...
I wish you all the best.

Anonymous said...

Home is where the heart is...perhaps you found more than you realize...