Wisdom to know the difference.
Thursday, July 12th, 2007
This is one of those weeks where I’ve started to post about eight times, about burbling demi-thoughts ranging from the technological to the political to the societal. Unlike others who can effortlessly sit down and summon the blog muses (a distinctly less powerful and magical set of inspirers than, you know, book or movie muses), I have to kind of wait for sufficient haze of quiet inside and outside of my brain to settle in and dampen, sharpen, soften.
So here we are. Big surprise that it’s ’round midnight and I’ve made sure Sammy is tucked in and sleeping comfortably and I’ve talked long-distance (as we used to say, as if that were a big deal) with my longtime friend on the eve of her first chemo session about many things that seemed to ultimately add up to the power of serenity. I hung up confident that she had done her inevitable homework, reaffirmed the love of family and friends, developed ways to be at spiritual peace with the challenges ahead and now just basically needs to get up tomorrow after a good night’s sleep and do the day.
I think we face the daily prospect of ‘doing the day’, with infinite variations, mostly overlaid with anxiety and fear and the clutter of the insignificant, and it’s much easier when you can get to a self-realized quiet place and tap into the power that comes from that kind of serenity. (Not to be confused, of course, with Serenity, but a big ol’ fictional spaceship brings its own power, solace, and peace-of-mind.)
That’s as crunchy granola as I’ll get. It’s been raining a bit more this month here, and this afternoon the moisture made it smell somehow sweet like an office park built atop an old orange grove in Sunnyvale, California. I looked out at our front yard, a tiny bit less shabby after Sammy’s herculean weed-pulling and my grass cutting. The house is clean, one of the side benefits of having company. The new car sits outside, bravely defying any roving criminal element. The maps are almost done.
This would be something like my serenity of home.
