Beltane
Happy Beltane, everyone.
Despite NOT having stayed up all night at the vigil but instead having gone home to bed at midnight like a grown-up with visions of being productive today, this May morning finds me sleepy and sedate. My first tutoring student of the day stood me up, so instead of being energized by the intellectual puzzle of figuring out how to improve someone's writing I have been starting blankly at the book I'm reading right now (a history of the rise of youth culture from the 1870s-1940s--it's part of my dissertation research) and trying a bit unsuccessfully to elude the lure of the internets.
It is, for all my grumbling about wanting to go back to the warmth of last week, a beautiful spring, colors slowly unfurling across the routes I walk everyday to the T, to school, even, in small splashes, into the gray concrete of Central Square. My moods and internal landscape mirror the world outside: some days are cold and lowering, blanketed with small annoyances like cold rain down the back of your neck, small things that shouldn't matter but irritate profoundly. Other days are warm and gentle and filled with the knowledge of slow but steady growth, of things coming alive under the surface and of some small shoots broaching their way into the air and the light.
This continues to feel very much like a time of transition, and I am struggling a bit with focusing on the task at hand. Yesterday in ballet I found myself wandering continually back to grad school land and my dissertation, today I need to work on dissertation stuff but find myself thinking about the kinds of spiritual work that I want to commit myself to in the coming months. I bargain with myself, writing here for a few moments that I refuse to think of as stolen, acknowledging and honoring my need to get back to habits of introspection and communication. Later, after I've done more reading, I'll allow myself some time to sit and meditate, and to play in the dirt and plant the last few plants I bought last week but didn't yet have pots for. The seeds I planted in ritual two weeks ago have just sent up their first tentative shoots, perhaps in a few more weeks they'll be ready to be transplanted into the ground.
My work this spring and summer is all about finding new patterns and rhythms: new habits for my work, for how I think about and deal with money, new commitments to my inner life, maintaining my commitments to my body and how I eat, new rhythms for my relationship. As we make plans for the wedding I think about how that event can be used to set intentions for our life together, how to make the event's rituals speak to the reality and the individuality of who Tish and I are, and who we are together. It is a time of deliberateness, almost hyper-consciousness about paths, decisions, attitudes. It feels wobbly and uncertain. It feels necessary.
Despite NOT having stayed up all night at the vigil but instead having gone home to bed at midnight like a grown-up with visions of being productive today, this May morning finds me sleepy and sedate. My first tutoring student of the day stood me up, so instead of being energized by the intellectual puzzle of figuring out how to improve someone's writing I have been starting blankly at the book I'm reading right now (a history of the rise of youth culture from the 1870s-1940s--it's part of my dissertation research) and trying a bit unsuccessfully to elude the lure of the internets.
It is, for all my grumbling about wanting to go back to the warmth of last week, a beautiful spring, colors slowly unfurling across the routes I walk everyday to the T, to school, even, in small splashes, into the gray concrete of Central Square. My moods and internal landscape mirror the world outside: some days are cold and lowering, blanketed with small annoyances like cold rain down the back of your neck, small things that shouldn't matter but irritate profoundly. Other days are warm and gentle and filled with the knowledge of slow but steady growth, of things coming alive under the surface and of some small shoots broaching their way into the air and the light.
This continues to feel very much like a time of transition, and I am struggling a bit with focusing on the task at hand. Yesterday in ballet I found myself wandering continually back to grad school land and my dissertation, today I need to work on dissertation stuff but find myself thinking about the kinds of spiritual work that I want to commit myself to in the coming months. I bargain with myself, writing here for a few moments that I refuse to think of as stolen, acknowledging and honoring my need to get back to habits of introspection and communication. Later, after I've done more reading, I'll allow myself some time to sit and meditate, and to play in the dirt and plant the last few plants I bought last week but didn't yet have pots for. The seeds I planted in ritual two weeks ago have just sent up their first tentative shoots, perhaps in a few more weeks they'll be ready to be transplanted into the ground.
My work this spring and summer is all about finding new patterns and rhythms: new habits for my work, for how I think about and deal with money, new commitments to my inner life, maintaining my commitments to my body and how I eat, new rhythms for my relationship. As we make plans for the wedding I think about how that event can be used to set intentions for our life together, how to make the event's rituals speak to the reality and the individuality of who Tish and I are, and who we are together. It is a time of deliberateness, almost hyper-consciousness about paths, decisions, attitudes. It feels wobbly and uncertain. It feels necessary.