Lecturette on Change, Vacation-Head, and the Universe

Everyone's having trouble getting back into production. Whatever that maybe for you. I left a blissful environment, free of care, surrounded by beautiful people and lovely hospitality, and all the crap is still right here where I left it. What, you may or may not ask? Dishes, dirt, only a little mouse until it got so cold that Linus deigned to sleep inside and scared him away. And a pile of clothing that measures roughly 7 feet by feet by 3 feet--I say roughly, because there are dozens of smaller items that have sloughed off, effectively mulching the floor between bed and bath.

It occurred to me that this construction is about the size of a grave, except not so deep. A shallow grave. Then I read communicatrix on change, and I saw my body lying in that shallow grave of fabric. With an aggregate of shoe, book, a used cotton swab or two, a United boarding pass, old computer printer and keyboard, and as I squinted deeper into the layers, a confetti of various and sundry dropped pills and nostrums for the average Austin allergy season.

After I laughed myself silly, a vision hopped into my mind of hundreds of thousands of clever women all over the world coming to a simultaneous epipany about change, vacation-head, and the universe. This is the part that makes the leap from physical to intellectual to paradigm shift. And you know how I love paradigm shifts.

What we're experiencing here is the effects of the Winter Solstice, or however you prefer to name the cyclical phenomena of life on this planet. And this particular solstice is fraught with an extra scoop of socio-politico-astrological-astronometrical nutty goodness. The universe is a whole, and we each get to describe the size of that universe for ourselves.

We mystical Capricorn INFPs get downright visionary. We are billowing in dreamscapes. We take an eternal exposure of the world and instantly project our own future on the path ahead. We swim in Jungian protoplasm.

We are awash in analogies. The goat. The seed. The darkest night. The coldest stone. The basement of our dreams. And then we put one foot in front of the other and climb toward the light, singing, or writing, or chatting, or drawing, or otherwise sharing the journey with other travelers.

Which brings me to another point I don't want to forget. Multi-tasking is a made-up word by some smartass youngster with ADD. I know that because I recognize it as serial-tasking at light speed, which is what I do 24/7 unless I consciously focus on finishing one activity. Multi-tasking gives the IMPRESSION of being incredibly good at all those things, but is in fact an excuse for not properly completing projects or losing things through the cracks in the road.

Most of us are responsible for churning out some grist for our daily bread. Don't get me started on work stuff. But in my real life, I know deep down that I do my best work when I de-stress to alpha level and let all that I've experienced and absorbed ferment and coalesce into some creation that magnifies my soul.

So I observe the earth's changes, my skin feels the traverse of the sun day to day and year to year, the lover's pull of the moon at perigee. I cherish the winter (in the US--an Aussie friend says she's sweltering) as much as I do the summer solstice, for it is a time of new beginnings, growing things, and this is the optimum time to examine flows and inclinations and nudge them toward the light.

Not particularly earth-shattering, but according to the I-Ching, perseverance furthers...

Tip of the hat to Communicatrix Colleen Wainwright, one of my new favorite writers. You go, Colleen!