November 14, 2011

"Trusting The Nymph"

There is guilt in writing. Guilt in spending time doing something I love over something that might help me to pay my mounting bills. A trilling bird out the window, and I concentrate on the lilt and flit of her song. She doesn’t have to worry; all is provided. I want that knowing. And though I know it exists, having stepped out into nothing and been caught before, it’s so hard to decipher where the line between pushing and waiting is drawn in the air. I keep trying without much result. I must. 

A spare moment. I steal it away from my demanding self, from my lover and his children, from my facebook friends. Unfettered, I stray from what I should be doing and venture toward what I love despite the consequences. A text vibrates. A phone call ignored. Emails tick into my in box, and I know I am a bad person. It makes me want to cry a little, so I do. 

It is a Monday evening, and the television is off. The children are with their mother, my lover has a meeting, and I wonder why I am not bored as they would be. If they were here, one would be at my side, reading each line over my shoulder as she is wont to do. The other would be whirling around, cheshire-grinning when he gets away with skimming his clothes across the kitchen floor. And my lover would be singing at the stove, I’m sure, bumping and grinding while fixing me eggs and toast. So you see, I’ve been a little busy with my instant family.

Forgive me. It has been too long since I last wrote, and each day I have an idea I bury for later is an idea wasted: inspiration frittered away like too much jam. Earlier I was feeling sorry for myself. I woke to a flat tire and a huge zit on my face. The rest of the day didn’t get better, so I resolved to come to my lover’s home, empty of everyone but me to get some work done. But my page wouldn’t load on the internet, and it happens that I am tired of “friends” who don’t actually exist in my unvirtual reality, so I gave up. 

This is my lesson for today: know when to give up. The world has not crashed in all around me yet. Cordoning myself off from the rest of the world, I meditate on the many ways this applies: the student who likes to argue, the grown man who won’t admit he’s wrong, the colleague who needs to get every time he gives, the self-absorbed child, the selfish me. 

There is a peaceful warrior inside me I must tap into, who knows when surrender is best. She weighs what I’m losing with what I’m gaining, lets me walk away vulnerable and still loved, though my world becomes less and less peopled every day. 

But quality over quantity, right? Tomorrow, the cackling nymph will streak past in his birthday suit proclaiming “Full moon! Half moon!” as he plays with his little white gluts. His sister will giggle and squirm, twirling behind in a polka dot dress and yellow boots. Then the nymph lord will trounce along, shirtless in all his glory, gather me up in his arms and kiss me softly just below my eye. And I’ll belong again to something that means the world to me. Something that exists still even though I can’t see it right now. I trust it. I must.