RUNNING ON EMPTY - 15 September 2011
15th September, 2011
Do most situations get worse before they get better? And if so, how does one measure better in relation to worse?
Why is it that in trying to simplify one's life it seems to get more complicated?
Why do I tend to view life in terms of opposites and extremes?
Why do I ask so many questions?
All the time?
And for God's sake, what's with the answers?
I'd like to gong for a while. You, know those Tibetan gongs with the little wooden gonger stick thingies. We have 2 in our bedroom here in NY and 1 in our bedroom in the Cape house which we hope will be reunited with us- the gong that is - when - if? - the house closes on 21st October. The gongs here are pitched, tonally, one above the other (I'm sure this is not how Tibetan monks would describe it), so shall we say that if you gong the gongs from the one on the left to the one on the right you get a sort of ding-dong, which I equate with "Good-night", while, if you gonged in the opposite direction you get, yes, dong-ding or as I choose to interpret it "Wake-Up."
Right about now I'd go for a string of ding-dongs until my mind vibrated with emptiness at which point would I be able to remember how to get into bed? Because actually, you can't run on empty, can you?
Our tanks are dangerously low. They're in the red zone and I'd be afraid to find out how many miles we have left before we grind to a halt. Please don't let it be on the way to JFK on Sunday.
Simplifying our lives these past three years - since the crash of 2008 - has been interesting and exciting at best and frightening and exhausting at worst. It has involved laying off treasured staff, emptying the apartment we now live in - and emptying took 2 months, 3 junk removal trucks, 2 Housing Works vans, more garbage bags than is ecologically responsible, a few 100 cardboard boxes, 2 storage units and not 1 f--king partridge in a pear tree. During this period we also got to experience supreme moments of hatred for each other interspersed with moments of clinging to each other like drowning rats. And then, just when the fun stuff of renovating was about to begin, I dropped a carving knife on my foot and severed the tendon to my big toe, which might actually be worse than running out of gas on the way to JFK.
But hey, we're simplifying our lives. So, moving right along, we are - as those of you who've been so kindly keeping us company on this journey know - currently waiting for the current Buyers of our Cape house to buy the bloody thing already, having already had not one, but 2 previous buyers change their minds. I won't go into what the emptying-of-that-house saga entailed because you all might go ding-dong.
So what the hell is reality? And why do I think there's any such thing? What I really don't understand is how it all got so complicated in the first place, although I have a nasty feeling it had to do with need and greed. I mean, really, who needs 2 homes? Is there such a thing? Or is home a singular place as in "you're so nice to come home to"? Ah, the heart. As in home is where the heart is. Is that where "hearth and home" came from, or did the guy have a lisp?
Obviously it's time for a ding-dong.
Good night!