Little Star

Burrrr… I’m freezing cold. Okay, it’s not freezing cold… it’s fifty-something.. that must seem like just plain and simple whining to you Mid-Westerners and Northlanders. I suppose the fact that the wild irises are blooming on the mountain, the shooting stars, milkmaids, hound’s ears, slink pods, Indian warriors and assorted other wildflower fare are blooming madly negates any sympathy I might otherwise accrue for my ‘plaints of chilly marrow. Yet here I am crying chilled to the bone!

If you’ve any sense of compassion you’d at least eek out a sympathetic poor sod, even if you’re tongue in cheek about the whole thing. Over these modest wires I won’t even notice the eye rolls and will feel imminently cared for, even if it’s all a grand illusion, a big ruse. Even if it is a ruse, if I’m none the wiser, what would it matter?

I’m not want to write about work here – it takes up a great deal of my life and I resist it infringing on these parts too. Once and awhile, surely, I digress, transgress, sully this sacred space with that messy stuff. It’s been a difficult year there, calendar year really – not awful, but certainly not easy – painful. Painful? You might query, How’s that… painful? At the root of it, you see, there are really good people struggling together, sometimes against one another, sometimes in the same steaming pot of stuff, and the lot of us concoct a pretty toxic brew together – despite ourselves, our best intentions and all efforts to concoct something other. It’s like we can fancy ourselves as fabulous cinnamon sticks – all sweet and spicy and a little hot – but somehow when we come together we begin to ferment and it doesn’t result in something pretty anymore. Maybe it once did – I’m sure at once it did, despite ourselves even then.

I don’t think our intentions have changed one iota. I think our ability to envision or believe in something (someone?) has. I’d like to believe that I’m just speaking for myself. I know the way this goes if I help to find a voice for like minds. I’m accused of leading a charge, manipulating others, putting thoughts and words in their mouths and heads. And the whole damn thing can (and will) likely backfire if anyone agrees that they’re not speaking their own mind, but rather mine. I don’t really lose anything if that happens – but rather, we all do. We all lose the possibility of something different happening (rather than this terminal sameness.) I don’t think it means as much to others that we break these cycles. To me it would be symbolic of our ability to grow (emphasis on symbolic.) But oddly, that would leave me with a sense of rightness and hope. All this is mission.

I know, I’m speaking cryptic gibberish. What else is there? You don’t really want the details unless I’m willing to form them around constructive examples – leaving them evaluable and/or instructive. That would take more of a tome then I’m sure anyone really wants. Maybe the bottom line comes down to two simple words “big sigh” or a gesture shrug. You know what they say about the violets in the mountains? I feel like a little violet.