Damned if you dont

This has been a crazy week. My parents have decided its payback time. All that crying,screaming and general 'make your life hell' attitude of my childhood is now being revenged. They're as sensitive as a princess' backside(her most exciting night with the pea). And check this out...they can feel the pea, even when it is not there!!! I think they just worked past royalty.

Anything I say or do or not do is a matter magnified to the nth degree. And believe me, comapred to their ability to send me on guilt trips, God's angels come second. They have special superpowers that annihilate all your natural defences and subject you to lingering torture by self flagellation.

Well that kind of made me feel relieved...and guilty...See they're doing it to me right now!!!

Onset of Clinical Depression

Lifes terrible. If anyone says otherwise,dont believe them.

I just returned from a long walk against a cold winter wind and am starting to regain feeling in my nose. While I thaw with a cup of hot chocolate,I drift into the inevitable musings of a solitary state.

I wonder in the silence of my apartment...until the silence becomes heavy with my thoughts. What is happiness,I wonder with complete lack of originality. The human race is yet to solve this riddle and I am comforted by my own humanity in seeking answers.
To me happiness is sitting curled with a favourite book,while the world passes me by. Extremely escapist,but truly delightful. A world shrouded with London fogs while Holmes and Watson are setting off to investigate grave and sinister crimes,where poirot is excercizing his little gray cells,where Austen's heroines are busy matchmaking,dickens pickwick bumbles around and don quixote is a knight in shining armor. Most importantly,it is the world where Gussie gives away prices and Bertie sports the stiff upper lip.

When I exit this world and go into work,I am assaulted by the pressure to achieve more,earn more,buy more and do more. It seems happiness is the trophy of those who strive in the unrelenting world and are forever assuring themselves that they are founded on financial security. Not to belittle these efforts,but I muse-have I decided to sit out the dance of life?
As my cup of chocolate is drunk and peace is restored to my soul,I end with misquoting Jerome K Jerome's -I love hard work-I could sit and watch people work hard all day!

Time to get back to my book...

Butterfly Monk

How does one become a butterfly? she asked.

"You have to want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar".

Too often, we are content to be caterpillars all our lifes. Changing is so difficult and time consuming. So much better to hang out on the couch,eating chips and watching TV. Now I am not against this picture-Its a great way to relax after a stressful day. But it becomes difficult when this is all one wants to do with one's life.

And I am not talking about just career aspirations and ambitions. I am talking about how each and everyone of us is blessed with the potential to contribute meanigfully.

My main frustration is how easy I find it to slip back into my comfort zone. But this time,I really want to fly and so am determined to break through.

I've thought up a couple of schemes-my writing,the community work I'd like to take on,quality time with my parents etc. I plan to have one priority a month to initiate some action around.

So begins my baby steps towards butterflydom.

All Alterations Avoided

Passionate,Intense...and quite disturbing

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
-Shakespeare

Musings over a glass of wine

One of my efforts at poetry...Worse to follow:-)

Candles burning bright,
And across their quivering light,
Half shadow and half human
You entice me on to the night.

Ever walking this thin line,
Between daylight and moonshine,
Is it you flickering in the wind...
or is the wine?

Seems to me
Things are never what they seem to be
Are you who you think you are
Or what I see?

What do you live for?

Hmmm. I was sitting on my verandah which caught the sun. I was sitting the peace,watching the green leaves of the trees wave in the hot afternoon breeze. The only sound was the whir of the fan blades. As I come up for air from the book I was reading,my mind registered that this moment is what life is all about-for me. To be in a state of peace,doing what you like best,where all the world is contained in that second of deep and abiding peace,of serene grace. During these moments,I dont have to think of my faults and foibles,or of my endless need for material things.

At these moments,I feel one with the world,wordlessly caught up in the rythm of the universe itself. That is when I forget the "I". So insignificant. Sometimes its painful to see how we refuse to acknowledge the truth- most of what we do is insignificant.

My grandmother died recently-I was close to her and she was a nice lady. But as life picks up and goes on,I was reminded of this-though I really dont know who said it:

It amazes me how human beings live as if they will never die and die as if they never lived.

So I decided to live and here another surprise awaited me. It was not all about the dress I really needed,or the perfume I must have or the house to equal my cousins/friends. Its something unique to each person. For me,I decided to care for the other people in my life. Really care not the selfish love that is more concerned with ones own wants and comforts.

Another thought helped me. Mary Angelou says-People will forget what you do and what you say. But they will never forget how you made them feel.

So I am on a crusade to be more conscious of others,to make each of one of the folks I know realize that they are accepted and cared for. And that is one of the legacies I hope to leave behind.

A poem that can change your life

I have a print out of this poem on my desk at work...it inspires me everytime my spirits start to flag.

Iwill not die an unlived life.

I will not live in fear

of falling or catching fire.

I choose to inhabit my days,

to allow my living to open me,

to make me less afraid,

more accessible,

to loosen my heart

until it becomes a wing,

a torch, a promise.

I choose to risk my significance;

to live so that which came to me as seed

goes to the next as blossom

and that which came to me as blossom,

goes on as fruit.
fully alive - dawna markova