Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Monkey Mind Inventory


I write unsure that my thoughts 'fit' this venue, as readers have been led to expect spiritual, God evolving ideas and stories....but i yearn to share, so be it. And, IT is all God......and IT is my blog, I can do this, right? My hope is to share without alienating any recipients. Please forgive me now, this makes both our lives easier.

I am in the midst of the book, "and I shall have some peace there". I purchased this little gem of a trade paperback, for  the understated  sale price of $7.98  in my favorite Northampton book shop. Drawn once again to yet another book of a woman seeking herself among this road of human emotions and heart wrenching callings. This is a memoir by a woman, Margaret Roach, who was Martha Stewart's right hand person until she left the big M conglomerate, in search of peace outside the NYC life, to live on her small farm, which sits atop a knoll on the other side of the Massachusetts Berkshires in New York - in order, to garden. And left unsaid; to find her sanity once again, if she ever had it all.

Those of you who know me, know I live on an old farm homestead in the midst of 38 acres, in quiet hard to leave solitude. Since moving here almost four years ago, any social life outside these two hundred year old walls has become almost, thanks to die hard patient friends, null and void. In this tiny New England town of Boxford, it is yet another below freezing January morning. Sitting with tea in bed seems perfectly fitting. But i did not begin to write until i put on my brand new L.L. Bean delivered and washed yesterday extra soft cotton on sale long underwear UNDER my pajamas of sweats and  my husbands extra large all cotton long underwear top. Yes, i am chilled cold to the bone.Take to imagine a mature yet light hearted most of the time woman in bed with layers of our favorite fabric in all sorts of patterns and thicknesses, donning a purple knit hat, bespectacled, alone in her king sized bed for her hard working mate is off to work, typing away to make sense of her interior monkey mind thoughts. Oh, and sipping ginger tea.

Well, there is the set up. What this is really about is I have an ominous  birthday this year of 2014. I have never been one to be concerned with age. For the better parts of my 20's on, i never really knew my age, i had to do the math to be sure that I was being honest when anyone asked. I have friends of all ages. But this year, this year I know. It feels significant. And every day since New Years Eve, I have given it some thought. Not out of fear, but out of I believe, disappointment; as well as interest in being aware of this process of aging.

In recent years i have been aware of not belonging to the present or near present social generation, nor do I wish to. Yes, that sounds pompous, sad and a bit discouraging, but it is honest. I can look at People magazine and not know a soul. I do not like most of the music. I prefer hard beige file folders to keeping it all on the computer. I like to feel what I read, touch a tangible something. I will never get a Kindle. I am also very proper, not causal. I use real napkins, polish silver and do not like paper plates. I like manners and 'no problem' is not an appropriate response under any realm. I have flexible yet staunch lines of expected behavior when one is a guest and i expect others to know what they are, which of course, many do not. This is my problem, not theirs. I am aware enough to appreciate our differences, but some may say New England enough and WASP enough to still want them to know.  Fortunately for my own mental health  I am a woman of God, a faith filled soul and my love for everyone overrides my menial and unimportant provincial expectations; yet, they remain.  

I am tired. I am not sure if two weeks in the Caribbean would help, but given the opportunity I would try it.  I spend more and more time in my studio creating art. I am looking for new ways to create money flow in my life. I am seeking to live more out-loud than i have been. Some may say that would be hard to do, but I look at myself, take a soon to be 60 year inventory and see that i am relatively uninteresting. I never really thought so, but in looking out at so many courageous and interesting people, i have lived a very mundane, uninteresting life. My world on this earth plane is very small. This type of realization makes me wonder if I have made a difference at all?

As I look at my younger friends and acquaintances, I see them seeking to do self righteous work under the realm of service in order to better other peoples lives. (How many of us do this in order to avoid looking at our own?) I to, along with many of my sisterhood and some brotherhood, have taken this path, perhaps that is why i see it so clearly. I have loved and am humbled to have lived a small life of service. I hung a shingle of minster, healer, counselor and have met and served a few along the way; but it has remained relatively small and I do not believe earth shattering, as my ego had intentioned. A few partnerships have been life lending, and may even have been life saving, but in truth, it has not been the huge venue I had envisioned. I am just a regular person, not Mother Teresa.   

I have never been one called to travel in order to find spiritual comfort. I have never been one in search of anything over there. I am in pure joy in the supermarket when i run into an old friend and they stop to share time with me. That has been enough.

I enjoy my own company and often wonder how egoistical is that?  I do not enjoy talking on the phone. I use to love to sit  and delve into all the monkey mind stuff. Now it is a bit exhausting.  I love to pray alone.  I want to talk about God all the time. I want to be in joy. I want to be wild, to be free of all my shoulds. I love to paint, to create, to produce anything which will bring more joy to another persons life and also relieve me of my interior bottled up 'whatevers'. 

So, today i lounge in bed, freeing my mind of thoughts, relishing in an ongoing inventory of this life i have led and am in.  As we turn 60, if anything at all, we really should try to be as an honest with ourselves as we can be. I really want to just hang in bed today; read, write. I really want to paint today.  I really want to not answer the phone today. I really want to be humbling honest and simply be who i am in the midst of everyone's opinions and stuff. i have learned that JOY is an inside job. I have learned that i may say this now, and a moment latter I may feel something different. Everything changes.  I have learned that no one can help you but yourself; you must do your own work.  I have learned that God is everything. All I have, from the clothes on my body to food, to friends to love; comes to me through the Creator. I do nothing, God does it all. God pays me, feeds me, houses me. 

Oh, so i did make it around to a spiritual venue after all.............

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