Alchemic Verse

The past nearly month and a half have somehow been terribly full and also achingly slow. When the days start to blend together, it’s important to stop a moment and reflect on each of the moments pror. Since coming here 45 nights ago, many days have been structured similarly:

• Wake up earlier than I want to
• Quick meditation and gratitude
• Drink 8oz of water
• Dress in something that doesn’t alarm my frayed senses
• Feed beloved dog
• Start the pot of coffee while she horks down her vaguely meaty nuggets
• Accompany her outside where I breathe deeply and stretch
• Sit at the work computer and battle for a path forward

This ritual set has numerous purposes that in the repetition conglomerate their meanings into a consistent foundation on which to build a day. The hours that follow are tumultuous meetings, seemingly futile activities, and expending significant energy on stress management as required by this point in my career, which on paper scribes a path of success, and in practice reveals itself increasingly under-fulfilling. In the interest of recognizing what I can and can’t control, this has strengthened my resolve never to shy away from bigger, harder decisions that while framed in a level of practicality align more with integrity than with fear of change.

Other rituals have included driving and singing, listening carefully to what songs surface on the shuffle of my 2500 song deep library, taking notice of when the knee-jerk reaction is to skip, and waiting to ask myself why. Often those tracks are emblematic of experiences more easily avoided than analyzed for their emotional cost. The practice becomes its own therapy, blanketed by the early night sky, cradled by ripply old roads rimmed with amber streetlamps mixed in with modern LEDs.

In their illumination, compassionate questions surface that ask what I’m feeling. Is it the title, the lyrics, the melody, a memory? Which of the former me’s is sitting in the passenger seat eager to mash the next track button on the console – child me, school age me, college and 20s me, the me I’ve known for 6 years of my 30s? What does she want to avoid? Where does it hurt?

Or is the song just total ass and needs to be removed from the Liked Songs therefore?

At any rate, my passenger is given compassion and patience, and fewer tracks are skipped than ever. When the urge to sing and/or dance surfaces instead, I haven’t been holding back, traffic audience or not, windows down or up, witnessed or unwitnessed.

Favorite if rarer outings have included visiting friends at their home for deck hangs, a blend of meaningful and silly conversation, and thumping music that resonates soundly with the bone bars of the torso. A different nearby spot has twice provided the satisfaction of delicious meals, eating outside near the water with good company, the second time requiring a bourbon hot toddy to ward off the bite of the bay breeze.

Backyard vignettes include a soundtrack of dogs as each neighbor (6 that surround this property) all have dogs of their own, enthusiastic to witness and or participate in the outdoor rituals of my dog’s potty breaks in their own unique personal ways. The dog at the back of the property runs along the fence with her, playful and enamored as they share sniffs and kisses through the chain links like lovers across borders. In contrast, one of the three dogs at the corner property instead vociferously informs Juniper of her near-trespass, pawing the ground like a charging bull while shouting what I can only assume are dog slurs from her side of the fence.

The towering branches I still fight the urge to scale like nature’s finest playground have littered and blanketed the entirety of the yard in a variety of crisp leaves – varieties of Oak and Dogwood – with the towering Holly still robed green and red berried for the season. A neighbor up the narrow winding way has a massive myrtle tree I admire every time I drive past, having not yet let its leaves fall to remain as cragged arms grasping for the sky.

Other vignettes include meeting up with a childhood friend at a Denny’s across the bridge that spires from deep windy waters, where the nostalgia reigns supreme and the menu threatens immediate health concerns.

Additional repetitive but worthy moments include indulging in the treat of a drive-thru or convenience store (with curious numerology of late), making time for self-care like a mani/pedi or a massage, buying warmly seasonally scented candles and new winter weight clothes to warm my smaller body, each short sail outing paired with its own soundtrack of unskipped songs.

The shortened days and hastening holidays combined with a desire for a practical pivot beckon me to the familiar, to put away the limiting belief that nothing will change, and instead to seize the opportunity to embody what I seek to grow in my life. The rituals will shift again when December brings a return home, and whether third charm or third strike, a bridge to the next chapter.