In which YT listens to voices

You know how sometimes you get these periods where you just have to STOP! and question everything?

I get those periods once in a while.

This is what the past couple of weeks have been about for me. I know some people have been concerned that I was going through some BIG CRISIS and you can rest assured that it is nothing of that sort. Nothing major prompted this little mini-meltdown of mine, I just suddenly felt overwhelmed by all the stuff rushing around in my brain and realized I was ignoring a small but insistent voice that said I needed to pare down, simplify, stop in my tracks and examine everything. Take each thing that was making me feel overburdened and ask myself, ‘Do I need this? Do I want this? Is it nourishing me? Should it be eliminated? Am I on the track I want to be on? Have I navigated away from centre? Where is my centre?’… and so on. And on.

So that’s what I’ve been doing, and it’s been good. I reiterate it’s not about the big stuff, it’s about the small things – albeit the things that when grouped together may make up the big stuff. Some of it has consisted of doing nothing – an activity that is vastly underrated and should be compulsory [whatever happened to having Sunday as a day of rest, f’ristance?] Doing nothing should be listed among mankind’s greatest virtues, if you ask me [unless it turns into sloth, at which point it becomes one of the deadly sins and we wouldn’t want that.]

Much of it has also been about fumbling around in a dark space – not knowing where I’m going, not seeing the road ahead, just trusting my instincts and putting all my attention on that little voice inside that knows the way only as far as the next step but which is guided by Something Bigger that knows Everything. Sometimes this not seeing can lead to the greatest revelations, of that I am convinced. Shakespeare knew. It’s like his King Lear, who couldn’t see what was really important until he lost everything and went blind. Or Sophocles, with his King Oedipus who realized the blind folly of his eyesight and subsequently poked his eyes out [we wouldn’t want to go there, though, oh no.] In fact, I’m still kind of wandering around in the dark even now – for instance, although I do plan to post this little exposé here I can’t tell you if I’ll feel like posting daily, like before, or once every couple of days, or weekly, or if I’ll trash this completely [very unlikely, though, sez the voice]. Or if there will be weather reports at the end, or if there will be changes to the style of my writing [it’s always interesting that what gets posted is usually only a small fragment of what one’s life is all about] or whatever. Time will tell.

Having said all that, it may just be that this whole period of intense questioning, simplification etc. may be chalked up to something as simple as the mercury retrograde. Consider: when mercury is in retrograde, things to do with communication break down. As some of you may recall from this post, I had a totally freaky day in which my computer [my main communications tool] went on the blink and my car [also a major communications tool] died. That was almost four weeks ago and I can tell you that I still do not have my computer back. [Grrr and grrrr and grrrrr and don’t get me started because the zen-like serenity I’m coming to from listening to voices etc. will vanish out the window.] Then I suddenly experience this intense need to detach from my blog [communication] and not only my blog but a lot of other things, too – essentially just to crawl into my little hobbit-hole with a bowl of ice cream and a blanket and not talk to anybody [except maybe EPI because talking to him is like talking to myself, only a lot better] and to sit there with my knees up on the sofa all day watching telly.

And as if that wasn’t enough, weird things start happening like our house intercom [communication] suddenly going on the blink [I can buzz people in, but I can’t talk to them].

So maybe this is all extremely profound and related to stuff like me coming to grips with going back to Canada this summer after years of being away and working on integrating the dual parts of my personality [Icelandic vs. Canadian] and facing all the ugly demons I left behind… or it’s completely banal like YT stuck in mercury retrograde and listening to voices.

Whatever. The weather’s been beautiful but cold. Gorgeous and awfully chilly, with brilliant white sunshine and no wind meaning that last week the levels of small-particle pollution rose above danger levels on at least four separate occasions. The old and infirm were advised to stay away from major traffic arteries and one day last week YT actually opted for driving when I would ordinarily have walked, only because of the pollution. Which is kinda fucked up because I have studded tires on my car and those are the main culprits in causing the small-particle dust that is poisoning us all. Today was the last day in a while in which it’s supposed to be this way [cold and still and sunny] – forecast for warmer temps and rain tomorrow. And it’s great to see you all again. Peck. Peck.