There is strength, I know, in allowing life to strip me. I am getting more comfortable with the process.
Our world thinks it is game board full of squares. In this dreaming: whoever gets to the farthest square of gain is winning. The one – as in ME 🙂 – who starts on square one everyday – who forgets her gender, her age, her family, her status, every night at bedtime, and reconstructs herself in the shower enough to begin again at square one – is blessed!
The board is changing itself daily too – so square one is never the same square.
Putting on the outfit of identity everyday helps me remember that I can chose something different and new at each moment. Life is a continual Groundhog Day. I am an acerbic jerk one day, and an accomplished lover of all that is the next. I love the jerk because she was trying her best, doing all she knew, and she offers a great yardstick measure of change and possibility.
And now I find I am tired of all my words and posturing. What is true is that I feel disoriented often to find myself in a super consistent dream of life in this single identity. I love the activities that make me forget who I am – such relief. Whoosh, back into a body, surprise. Alice down the rabbit hole.
I once had a neighbor who was getting close to 70 years old, a funny, unguarded story-teller who would stop to chat and spin her tales without a glance at her watch. She told me that she often forgot her age and when she saw the young mothers on the playground, she felt she was a peer and had to stop herself from entering the gate – “I feel the very same as I have my whole life; I’m surprised when I remember I’m a grandma.” She is closer to what I am trying to say. We think we are a fixed thing – but our life shows us the nature of change and the ride is just a smallish experience – a short trip in a conglomeration of journeys, and sometimes the world goes wonky when you sense that deep in your bones. Have a biscuit and a bit of tea and settle yourself, girl. You forget. You remember. You live a life in the flash of a lightning strike – and you sit numb and frozen in place for the strangeness that is never acknowledged while we talk about all the rain.
Life as Improv 