I've been trying to sort through a lot of conflicting emotions about all kinds of things today. I sent this email to someone:
There are a lot of things at play for me right now, more than I have written about.
I'm fighting a river of depression that spreads out in an alluvial plain, kind of eddying around inertia and defeat. I'd say my head is above water, but it is threatening flood all the time. (I just watched a documentary about New Orleans, can you tell?) The other night, while struggling to quell the dementors, I came to think of myself as particle board, glued-together shards of something that once had integrity, made into something disposable, negligible, and nearly worthless.
This is probably more information than you want, and more dramatic, but this is my day-to-day, night-hours-upon-night-hours state.
Meanwhile, finding that my regular gig might not be so regular and that money I had counted on to get me through is not going to be there. But at least now I know.
So, on to laundry but before that I stopped and read the Rumi for the day.
THE GUEST HOUSE
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning is a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all.
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks
Now, I might not subscribe to the whole of this, but it does give some perspective and something to chew on during the laundry cycles and beyond.
You mean "alluvial", I think.
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