Better To Die With Your Blade In Your Hand…

It takes enormous courage for me to put one foot in front of the other, as I struggle toward this attempt to create an income stream.  It seems the list of things that must be accomplished grows exponentially each day, pushing the shore farther and farther away.

Tuesday I couldn’t get my camera to upload the pictures I need, to send to the auctioneer, who might consider buying my hand painted bedroom and dining room furniture.  I must get rid of these items, if I am to have the space in my house to go into production, and moving these heavy items by myself is not feasible.

So since the pictures would not load – I had to go to the Apple store, wait in line an hour, for them to show me something that took mere moments for them to fix.  Finally able to upload the pictures I lost an entire day of forward momentum, all because I do not understand my camera.

This morning, prepared to do battle with the upheaval that my house is now in, I opened my mail to find that the food stamps and unemployment that I am counting on to sustain me for at least the next six months, have been denied, because I didn’t get every form correctly processed.

I spent four hours waiting on hold, in three different phone calls to resolve the issue.

At every turn and in every way, I am invited to stumble and fall.

I compare my inner dialogue now, with even a year ago, and I find myself ever more capable of taking action without commentary or expectation.  But the seduction, for commentary and expectation are as potent and real as the breath that causes my chest to rise.

The desire to talk to myself about the potential for epic failure waits just beyond the capture of my peripheral vision.  It pauses, scents my anxiety, looking for a weak point, circling to see if there is blood in the water…and if I will give in, to the desire, to pull the covers up over my head.

At days end, if I have not been successful at continuous movement, then it catalogues my inactivity and whispers to me through the sane sounding voice of reason, while examining the probability of failure, due to how little I accomplished during the day.

Because I am alone with my mind, all day everyday, I am aware of its every nuance, its every subtle turn and its constant need for stimulation and attention.

It seems now, as though there is nothing in the world left to accomplish, save developing a working relationship to the mind I am the bearer of.  I still enjoy large time blocks of utter silence, but I have discovered that is not all that is called for.

The simple knowledge that I, and all others, are the not the chatter we hear in our minds is merely the threshold of wakefulness.  The first rung upon the ladder of escape…or perhaps not even that…perhaps it is only the first notable sense of direction, toward the first rung, on the first ladder, on the trip toward wakefulness.

This newest loss that was delivered with so little care, has awoken in me a type of negation.  A deeper bottom than has ever been felt before.

Oddly it brings to mind a scene from an otherwise completely forgettable film.  Our heroine has joined the Navy Seals and is expected to wash out of the program, as so many men have already done, while standing knee deep in mud and in pouring rain, the Staff Sergeant spits out this rage filled phrase…“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.  A bird will fall frozen dead from a bough, without ever once having felt sorry for itself.”

He is attempting to illuminate how useless feeling sorry for oneself is…how that only the human mind can even conceive of such a thing…how in the animal world the complication of feeling sorry for oneself is never even a potentiality.

I am coming into this kind of toughness.

I find in myself the willingness to simply move forward, no matter how frozen I feel, how alone I feel, or how scary are all the implications of the decisions I am making.

I can’t remember who said it, perhaps Thoreau or Emerson, but it goes something like this…boldness has genius and magic in it…

I don’t know…perhaps it does.  I only know that if I were a solider, I would know and understand the concept, that it is better to die with your blade in your hand and your boots on, than safely tucked in your bed.

More reports from the front soon…

Ronni

Photo courtesy of flickr photo and Rozanne Hakala to see more of this artist work please follow this link http://www.flickr.com/photos/40001315@N00/4045143898/