only so much time

I am trying, as usual as my Libra self, to find balance. I have been working more lately, finally. Not that I wanted to be, but I need to feed the family and such, and the big holidays of the summer have drawn to a close, so I am buckling down and doing the work that needs to be done.

What this translates into is that all the time I am now selling for an income has eaten into the time in which I had been doing other things, like writing. I know there is a way for me to do it all, I simply have yet to come upon the magical spell that works to allow the maximum amount of waking, cleaning, laundry, fresh food preparation, dog walking, animal tending, yoga, income producing, creative writing, homeschooling, kid playing, reading, music listening, dancing, activism, socializing, healthful eating, sleeping, dreaming and (hopefully again some day) lovemaking in a day. I believe the magic which will allow me to accomplish all those things exists. I am working on it.

In the meantime, my thoughts today are on the nature of balance. This morning a dear friend honored me by sharing a story, a tragic recollection of a moment in her early childhood, the pivotal moment, an instance of cruelty demonstrated by someone who ought to have been protecting her that has impacted her ability to feel safe for most of her life. I was so grateful she could and would share this with me. So many of us, so many more of us than there rightfully should be, have stories like these hidden away deep in the recesses of our minds and our hearts, hurtful memories that get locked in our cells. I believe that by telling these stories, exposing them to the scrutiny and care of others, taking them out into the light so they can no longer hold their shadowy secrets hostage in our souls that we begin the process of healing.

As I rode home from soccer practice this afternoon, the air was crisp and fresh with that rare moment in fall before all is dreary and moldy and gray. The sun shone through the golden leaves and lit up our way like a hallelujah chorus of light. I was stunned by the regular, constant beauty of the world around me as I am daily. I just think everything is so fucking gorgeous: my children, the sacred earth, our profound gift of the experience of this lifetime, all the exquisite tastes and smells and sights and sounds and sensations that it staggers my soul to know that all of our delight exists amidst such gross destruction and cruelty. Almost every person I know has suffered gravely at the hands of others, most of us as children, most of us at the hands of those who should have cared for us the most, those who should have sacrificed their very lives to protect us, rather than be the ones who put us in harm's way.

So I seek to understand the balance in that? Is there any? Is the beauty and glory of life so immense that the profane and profoundly ugly must exist with it side by side in order for there to be balance? I suppose that's possible, though I am unwilling to totally accept it. Nature herself dishes out enough tragedy in the bear maulings and hurricanes and earthquakes and the thousand other ways she can devour and maim life on the planet for us humans to necessarily have to be in on the action, don't you think? Or perhaps life on earth is so utterly, admirably beautiful that the death wrought upon it by the natural rhythms and cycles is of the same beauty, and it takes the grossly inappropriate abuse, murder, pollution and warmongering we humans singularly perpetrate to offer an authentically polar opposite to all the world's grandiose good. We, perhaps, manifest that dark that gives the light.

Can that be true? I imagine life on earth was pretty fucking stellar a million years before humans made their debut. But did any other life form on the planet perceive it as such? Are we the ears that finally heard the tree falling in the woods and thought to qualify and quantify that experience?

"Wow! That was so loud, it terrified me!"
"I thought it was great. It was such a powerful, thunderous noise it made me feel more alive!"
Humans, we not only perceive, we interpret.

Duality. Do I believe in it? I am drawn to it, the Libran, justice-seeking scales of my psyche ever attempting to weigh things out, make them even, fair. Humans in general love our dualities, all that good and evil and dark and light and yin and yang and yadahyadahyadah. We're fixated. We're obsessed.

So what does it look like in a world, in a world view without balance? Must we have all that evil to weigh against the good? Must a million children go hungry so a million more can thrive on nutrient rich, organic food? Can there not be limitless joy without limitless sorrow? I'm not fucking buying it.

As much as I love balance and order I can feel the Eris lurking inside me, that wild, beloved chaos theory that gives rise to the exquisite fractal rebelling. Symmetry has its place. Order and logic are fine concepts that have taken us far. There is a time and a need for balance, but we have gone overboard, swung our own pendulum too far thereby destroying the balance in which we supposedly believe by believing in it too vehemently. If that has something to do with how the cycle of war and abuse got started on this planet, I am clearing this up right now. There is no way I can accept that all the tragic suffering must coexist alongside the peace and elation. I cast out the pain of the millions of children lied to and beaten and starved and fucked, I banish it from this realm. It has no place amongst poppies and puppies and mountain views and mango trees and moonrises. I see the lives on earth living out a scattered fractal pattern of so very much pleasure mitigated not by a single instance of raw abuse of power. I embrace it, I embolden it and empower that vision to take hold of all that experience, all that interpret.