Waiting Where the Light Goes

Posted on July 5, 2016

If in my last post I was fielding gentle riots inside my thoughts, this one finds me with absolute ants in my pants. Not presently, that is … the turbulence in my mind has soothed itself to a sort of truce between tranquility and unrest. But this last day or two, oh my stars. There’s a wonderful word that originated in the Italian neighborhoods in New York City and blossomed outward into my part of the state in the 1980s, which my mom picked up on and used on my brother and I with frequency. “You’re giving me agita,” she’d say when we were being particularly troublemaking or otherwise childlike. Agita comes from the Italian word acido, meaning heartburn, but New Yorkers used it to mean anxiety, agitation, or stress. And that’s what I had been feeling: a whole heapin’ helping of agita. Suffice it to say, the center could not hold for long. I either had to deal with it, or be driven crazy.

Something I’ve practiced for many years, though not as consistently as I’d like, is meditation. Having had little luck with mantras, my most blissful experience with it is lying in darkness, white noise or ambient music filling my mind, just focusing on my breathing. Inhale for 7 counts, exhale for 5 … always an unbalanced rhythm to keep my mind from wandering too far. So I spent some time meditating in the early morning hours before getting up to work on this picture, and I noticed when I was trying to make my mind settle, that everything causing me agitation kept coming back to my perceived lack of time. And this is a tricky one, because time is finite; we can’t get more of it no matter how hard we try. But we can manage how we spend it, and that’s what my thoughts were gently trying to express as they urged, eased, and compelled me into quietude.

Please click for full size.

“take the darkest hour, break it open
water to repair what we have broken
there’s something that you won’t show
waiting where the light goes
maybe anywhere the wind blows,
it’s all worth waiting for …”

Toward the end of meditation, I started to feel what I can only describe as a sensuous buzz, sort of ricocheting outward from my chest in all directions at once. And even though the lights were out and a sleep mask covered my eyes, I began to feel a kind of radiance and warmth, like sitting outside by the coals of a bonfire: close enough that you can still feel the heat, and be hypnotized by the crimson and gold as it gives off its lingering glow. I felt broken open, like the charred log anchoring the blaze, its skin blistered and carbonized, cleaving open its insides at last. I didn’t feel renewed, more like succumbed– and it’s a feeling I actually cherish more. Because I think I’m finally coming to peace with the understanding that I can’t see, experience, or please everything and everyone all the time. The gamer inside me who chases the Completionist goal, who wants to turn in every quest and pick up every stone unturned, will needfully take an overdue rest. I won’t ever truly stop trying to Do All The Things; it goes against my nature. But I have to be more kind to myself when time isn’t on my side. The things that matter most, they’re like embers: they linger patiently, persistently, just waiting to be stirred once more. And those most important things, they’re all worth waiting for. ♡