Taking What is Given

   I am still filled with that slightly queasy pre-holiday feeling where one moment I'm deeply sad and soft and fragile, and the next I'm pecking energetically away at the keyboard trying to edit my little opus, provisionally titled:  Bowing Camels & Bloody Red Roses; A Witness in the Traveling Life.  When I place my mind on task then the queasiness goes away, I forget that I'm feeling the shortening of days, even of my life, and I simply do the work, staring at words on the page, rearranging ideas, and revisiting the chapters of my life.
   The life of the artist, the creative being, is a wonderful one when he/she works, but in those times when there is a pause, for reflection or just letting ideas settle and percolate, we sometimes find the mind filled with confusing, disturbing notions -- the Monkey Mind returns.  And it says to you when you're making your morning tea, "who are you to dare get a book published?"  or "why would anyone care that you got lost in a lonely childhood?"  I am now learning to acknowledge this overreaching of the mind and say to it, in a way:  "thanks for your opinion ... I see you.... now kindly leave because I have work to do."
   When the old MM says things like:  "You're time is running out, you may die alone, what do you think about that, eh?"  or "You spend too much time alone ... what are you afraid of?"  or "If only you did more good in the world, you'd be happier" ... yes, when those unkind voices come, I don't quite know how to answer them.  Sitting down at my keyboard to whack out some more words on pages doesn't work for this very often, because the deep aloneness inside remains, a sour feeling that sloshes around, as though I'd eaten something I shouldn't have.  So, what to do about this particular conversation?  I guess I could count myself fortunate that I'm not embroiled in a scenario such as I saw in the movie "August : Osage County" where a vastly dysfunctional family spends a lot of their time being deceitful and/or cruel to one another, dumping their own suffering on each other, and I'm not trapped in a dead end relationship with someone who cannot really see or respect me (I have been down that road not once but twice, and I have promised myself:  never again).  No, I have myself fully and completely now.   My choices and dreams and visions are my own and I don't have to justify or explain them.  I am free to take care of those I love when I can, and to take care of myself fully and mindfully.  I am free to give voice to my story which I seem to need to tell the world.  I am surrounded by beauty of all kinds (music, art, cats, the extraordinary city, the beach).  So what's to have angst about?
   We are all going to die, and because I take care of dying people every week I have death on my radar pretty much all the time.  While I think I am more comfortable with the phases of death, and there's no spookiness about it anymore, I am still very resistant to dying.  Am I afraid? Maybe a little.   I don't want to give up this experience of being alive,letting go of all that I cherish, and I know I ultimately have no choice.  And so in this time of the year when everyone hunkers down, looks for a warm fire and a cozy book at the start of night, I feel the sinking inside, and I know the span of my journey is shortening.  And I also feel a tenderness of heart that may be what saves me, saves all of us, during the times of angst.
   I wish I could move toward the Thanksgiving holiday, which I'll spend with part of my lovely family, with a more energetic spirit.  But, this is what I am given now:  feeling the melancholy of wintertime and of everything that will go unfinished.  I have loving wishes for my beautiful young family, my close friends, my cats and my house, and even the beings I meet on Polk Street as I do my afternoon errands, or all those unknown souls I pass as I drive across the Golden Gate Bridge.  We are travelers on the same path, and we all deserve the compassion of our fellow beings.