Friday

I was going to title this post "Friday Friday," but decided double naming days of the week was getting a bit old. It started because that Mommas and Papas song, Monday Monday, kept going through my head.

The weather here has been very very good. Beautiful even. It's as though Vancouver is giving me a lovely send-off. I must say, I really appreciate it. I can feel my energy improving, and my mood. I can hardly wait to go back to living in a place, where, although I was never any PollyAnna, how I felt or functioned was never weather-related. It was probably more age-related.

A strong image of myself came to me this week, a sense that when I moved here 25 years ago, it was as though a bow started to be slowly drawn back, and I was the arrow. I didn't feel it at all, all this becoming aimed at something. In fact I felt quite aimless much of the time. I could feel something sliding by however, and assumed it was merely time. It was the string of the bow, softly scraping me.

About a year ago, I started a bunch of activity that was new. Now I see it was the arrow-me, fully drawn back. Lots of tension. Unable to sense any movement. Having to create some. Get ready for something. Something that felt like it could be big. Huge restlessness.

Meanwhile, even as tension was buildingbuildingbuilding inside, outside, life proceeded calmly, containedly. I lost weight, got rid of a big albatross of a car, most uncharacteristically took a vacation. This past year has been all about me the arrow feeling pulled all the way back against the bow, then being held still by a Samurai, pointed toward a target. It's been about me knowing I was about to be launched at a target, trying to see what the target was. Is. It's me.

Now, from here, I can see that I have been the bow all along, as well as the arrow. It was not pleasant, or comfortable, it didn't feel good, it was painful at times, but it was also hopeful, occasionally exciting, and ultimately, necessary. Now, from here, I can see I'm the Samurai too. I don't have to let go until I feel one with the arrow-me, the bow-me, the target-me.

This is a calm time. The city is lovely. The weather is at the top of its game. I feel still on the inside, not especially busy on the outside. I'm getting caught up to myself. Things are coming together even as they are being pulled apart. I'm packing, organizing, deconstructing the life I allowed to build too big with stuff because I never thought I'd ever move again.

I'm letting go of the dream red velvet couch I enjoyed for 12 years, to a woman who has always dreamed of owning and enjoying a red velvet couch. She also bought my dream round oak pedestal dining table with lion claw feet, and I know that she and her partner will fill their home with many happy dinner parties. She bought my set of off-white dishes that will never scratch or chip because they're made of some amazingly hard substance. I was in it for the long haul, and loved these treasures for how they seemed to confer permanence and stability and quality. Now they will confer all that to her.

People are coming over to pick up the things they bought at the auction. I'm filling up the Chinese plaid plastic bags with the stuff I'm taking. I get tired so I take a nap. There's nowhere else I have to go, nothing else I have to do. I can pack in a manner truly luxurious, emptying out of existence anything that no longer serves my particular life, and keeping anything I want or really require. I can deal with the feelings that come up unexpectedly, as they arise. I can consider them fully, instead of setting them aside or pushing them away because of having too much outside life to deal with. I get it. I really get it now, how this is the best way to live a conscious life. Have lots of time and space around each thought, each feeling. Have lots of space, period.

Soon the arrow will fly.