Signs of spring are everywhere. I can smell it in the air...well mostly just sneeze. The icebergs that dominated our landscape these past few months disappear more each day. Some poor bulbs try to poke through the thawing landscape, and mud, dark, brown, wet, mud everywhere. It's refreshing to see the sun, blinding as it may be. O and the beauty of light beyond 6pm delights my sensibilities. Most people call spring the season of hope. Even the Christians with their Easter holiday capitalize on the emotions the spring thaw instills in the people. I use to feel renewed myself, but not so much this year.
Am I better, honestly, I should say mostly. But am I well, not a chance. The fog that tried to choke me for the better part of last year has lifted and I see blue skies. I'm sleeping more hours at a time, but not through the night. I'm restless with random insomnia...looks like a trait my little peanut has inherited as well. We both toss and turn and sit bolt upright at random intervals in the dark. Did we hear something? Do we smell something? What thoughts burst through our slumber so regularly? Whatever causes us to lose precious moments of sleep I despise. Some nights we manage a full 6 to 7 hours...but ahh those nights are rare. Mostly we're on a 4 hour holding pattern, better than every hour on the hour, but still not optimal.
With those blue skies I bear witness to the burning orange of the sun. The fiery ball inferno that blinds and engulfs...not life giving warmth, but rage that stirs beneath, seizing when opportunity arrives. My ocean of clarity is not the calm blue sea but a tumultus anger. Some of it I can justify. We've been on a down trend of luck for some time now. Where's that Harry Potter vial of prized potion? Generally I'm not an angry person. I use to be the epitomy of patience and trust and optimism. I use to love people and conversation and opinions. I use to relish in a good debate and sharing of stories. I'm impatient and short and stabby...my adventurous piscean senses have turned dolphin to shark. I don't like my new world vision. I'm cynical and distrusting. My ability to be open to perspectives diminishes daily. I can't tolerate ignorance, stupidity and lies.
Everywhere I look I see sadness, pain, loss, fear. I see a world out of novels. People...humanity...lost. Sounds a bit dramatic, and I feel obligated to apologize, but I won't. Perhaps the veil is my own devise. Maybe I'm inflicting it upon the world at large. Perhaps I should take note of my female compatriots during the industrial revolution. The soot and dirt that tainted their food, clothing and breath is not so much different that our 0s and 1s encoding the technologial revolution of present.
Where are the neighborhood children playing in the streets and turning the entire neighborhood into a game of tag? Where are the farmers providing local fare at the more affordable prices - when it's cheaper to buy a big mac than a salad there is something seriously wrong with our priorities. Think of those famous works of art from a time not so long ago. It was vogue to have girth because that meant you had money to buy food. And those wane and feeble were the peasant class who barely had bread or porridge to calm their grumbling bellies. Now the overweight and obese are the poor and the super-model thin are the wealthy; the poor can only afford the worst foods and the weathly have nutritionists and organic meals prepared for them. Pfft. When the government feels it's their responsibility to remove freedoms of one to placate another someone hasn't read the constitution. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for safety, but making rules for rules sake and ignoring the more important larger issues at hand has become a staple for our government and takes precious time and attention away from the plagues that sicken our nation every day. The people take itty bitty dislikes and turn them into life or death decisions instead of letting the human race evolve as it has for thousands of years.
Something as ridicuouls as Snuffalupugus being made real because imagination is bad - the bandwagon perception of 20+ years ago - now snuffed out too late - told generations that thought and invention was detrimental to society. We created zombies of ignorance. We let the fairies and invisible creatures of wonder back into our children's lives again. But we also gave them TV and internet and Nintendo. The adventures they have are simulated, shared imaginations. Will we have another Einstein or Ben Franklin or Motzart or Fitzgerald or Michelangelo? Who will fill Baryshnikov's shoes or Sinatra's microphone? The arts are relegated to starving artists - the free thinkers and risk takers cast out of society's mainstream for failing to drone. Theaters and novels are outdated ideas: IMax and Kindle take any adventure away from the human experience.
I caught myself watching Disney's classic Snow White the other night and thinking how they should re-dub the voices for a modern sound. Shame on me. I disgust myself.
I'm entranced by Muse. The music revolutionists of my choice: angry enough, intelligent enough, loud enough, and controversial enough to feed my thoughts.
The healthy institutions of yesterday entrap today. Money: real estate, banks, hedge funds, bonds, oil, natural gas, biofuel, everyone wants a piece. Marriage is disposable...and so are children. I've watched so many of my peers suffer through the challenges of infertility: some with success, some without. Then there are those graced with the gift of parenthood who abandon and murder the helpless humans of tomorrow. Forget about the gangs and pediphiles and drugs that destroy senslessly. Natural disasters cause enough death and suffering, yet the human race still behaves in its primeaval ways. Communities fail their people. No the people fail their communities. Two income households are no longer a luxury, but a necessity. Our nuclear family seems quaint and so American, yet we've lost the bond of family and support of our neighbors. Our grandparents are in homes for the dying. Our children are raised by strangers. Our 24 hour day is spent providing service to the machine rather than enjoying this temporary life. Ugh, Who am I?!
I'm not sure who speaks my voice. My head hurts from fighting myself. I've become someone that I don't know and I'm not sure I like. Out of the fog into the fire.
I don't want my child to lose her hope. I want her to learn to love life and the natural world. I want her to play with her imaginary and real life friends...in person. I want her to learn value and respect and loyalty. I want to feel that she is safe. I need to turn off the news and close the papers with their fascination of the morbid and horror. People need to re-learn respect and selflessness. We seem to have forgotten that we can't take it with us and we need each other. We've lost any sense and form of balance. We've lost the reality of time. We put ourselves here, but do we care enough to save ourselves and each other.
My precious gift is turning 1. I've lost a year of my life, and what should have been one of the best years of my life. At every stage I've looked upon her feeling like this was the best stage of all. I understand why a time comes to pass that we want to have another. The rational side of me says that children are resilient and she will never remember what her mother suffered during those early days; she won't remember my sorrow, my physical ills, or my disillusionment; she won't remember my impatience and confusion. But something deeper makes me think that children aren't as we have convinced ourselves to believe. They are fragile. I'm trying to become the mother I've always wanted to be. Some days I have the strength. I'm looking to breeze to sing me my hope.
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