I shot this yesterday on the ferry coming home, (I just liked the reflections) and I think it jumped out at me this morning for several reasons.
1. My ex used to say "Throw me in the trash" and blink his big brown eyes at me as a sort of endearing, defusing apology when he had screwed up.
2. As a child, in second grade, when I would retreat from all the playground activity, there was a comfortable and solid trash receptacle beside the playground that I would sit on. And I remember the kids taunting me (to the tune of the theme song of Cheyenne, a cowboy TV show popular at the time) "Diane, Diane, sittin on the garbage can."
Sad, isn't it, that we can still hear those tunes in our heads 50-something years later?
and 3. I've always regarded the telephone as an instrument of torture -- perhaps because I'm a visual person and need visual feedback, and at least partly, I'm sure, because I'm deaf in one ear. So all of a sudden I'm thrust into a milieu where all the decisions need to be made in phone meetings. And I'm really really struggling. I don't know who to throw in the trash first: me or my #$%&* phone.
It will resolve, I'm sure. But in the meantime a lot of childhood shame issues seem to be surfacing. The gap between who I try to be and who I appear to be seems huge, and it's pretty uncomfortable.
Which I'm told is good. Uncomfortable is good. Stay with it. Learn from it. Feel the pain and let it help you grow. As Leonard Cohen says, "There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."
Rumi makes it even clearer:
Don't turn your head.
Keep looking at the bandaged place.
That's where the light enters you.
But still, mostly I've just been feeling frustrated with myself and exposed. And anxious.
So it was really a blessing to receive an email offering from my friend Cheryl (ccwriter14@verizon.net), who wrote this wonderful poem. It helps, and offers a little more insight into that crack, that bandaged place, that wound, that gap::
In the Gap
by Cheryl Cease
Every moment
these days
is a poem
a whisper of words
~ or perhaps a Shout.
No matter.
their Source is
the same.
Whenever
I pause
to just be,
God
senses
an opening
and fills
my soul space,
breathing
syllables
into
Life.
4 comments:
Lovely poem. Thank you for sharing it.
What a lovely poem -- and I think I just figured out how Cheryl found me sometime ago! through your loveliness!
How wonderful!
Hugs -- my eldest daughter came into my bedroom last night for a cuddle and told me about her psych class that day -- My ideal self and my actual self are not aligned, she told me. I'm always trying to live up to the ideals of others. I think it's time I just said, *&^% it and be who I want to be.
I figured that was great advice from a 24 year old.
I know what you mean about telephones and telephone meetings. If it's the same folks all the time, could you have their pictures in front of you?
Sorry you're struggling but I know you'll find the juice in this and transform it into wine ... or jam ... or something sweet and nourishing.
If you hadn’t told me it was a trash can, I might have thought it an urban vase. It’s a great image paired with a lovely poem.
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