The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

inscribed on the whiteness of the page recorded in blindness

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My god.

Is anyone else aware of what is outside the window at this moment? A fat moon, flirting with the earth, coming closer than on any other night and the yard out there is gleaming. The trees were twinkling as I stood under them looking skyward, in my purple robe and chocolate brown pyjamas, and I felt like this kind of sight, mixed with the winking starlight, is what inspires diamonds. This is the kind of surprise I love, suddenly becoming aware of something natural and phenomenal, taking myself to witness it no matter what I’m wearing, no matter what I’m doing. The air was cold but I was a part of a happening so it did not matter. I stood on the deck, without socks but with slip-on shoes, and I breathed in the night and watched as it billowed back out of me. I was thinking how much I appreciated being able to see it, that I was not in my bed dreaming of things which will likely never happen when this was the state of things, right now. I am certain that there are those who might be skulking along the frozen streets at this moment who have not looked up, who are either too drunk or too devious to know that a spotlight has been shining down on them. These are the blind, I say.

This is the kind of night which makes me feel…strange. I am ephemeral, as is anyone around me. The constants of this world have nothing to do with the humans and that frightens me, given that we are the ones at the moment who seem so intent on destroying what remains. It’s like we are the rudest guests at the party, unable to grasp that we should be honoured to have been invited at all, but we’re drunk on our own delusions of importance and we keep disrupting the merriment with our mayhem.

I’ve been feeling ‘off’ for days now. The home around me feels different than it did last week. It does not give me the comfort I’ve come to depend upon, and for some reason it seems like I am in a different country altogether, a different era. No, I’m not hallucinating but there is certainly a feeling of depersonalization going on. Surely, I’m not the only one who can relate to this strange feeling. The way the light shines through the window makes everything in here feel foreign, somehow, like all the laughing, loving, warm history has been erased and I am left with a blank slate. I am missing the beginning of it all, the days when there was a sense of clarity and a firmer ground beneath me. Right now, I am feeling a weird kind of emptiness, like I do not really exist and that everything going on in my frame of consciousness is a dream. I feel it important to mention that I have not been drinking. I only wish that were the cause of this.

I am thinking it’s the theme of endings which has me in this frame of mind. M’s mother’s death, my sister’s miscarriage, the horrible foreboding that has come before each of those finales…all of it has disrupted the careful little world I’ve made for myself. I am worried about death more than I usually am and am finding myself bothered about what comes next. I have always favoured a tricky position on the things which come after. I want to believe there is more, but I am concerned about the lack of proof. I subscribe to the idea of reincarnation despite my Catholic roots, but if there is reincarnation it stands to reason that there is also a heaven, a God. How can there be one without the other?

I do not think New Age enthusiasts are crazy, but I understand why they may be viewed as such. That said, I have met many and not one of them has done a thing to make me sad or angry. I find it is the so-called logical people and the ones who use religion as a tool who cause the most trouble. They’re always trying to convert someone to their way of thinking, and they’re not above force or degradation. If someone is peacefully trying to learn about something which may affect us all, perhaps forever, then I am in support of that. I am not ’New Age’. I am not religious. I am only sometimes logical. It is the logic which brings me down most of the time.

I wish we could find a way to bottle Christmas spirit from our youth, so that we may guzzle it each December and get drunk on it. I am not feeling it right now, and it bothers me. I’ve a child who is delighted about the upcoming holiday and I can only manage a weak smile whenever she brings it up, feeling jealous of her for untarnished confidence and excitement. Everything is real, to her. She wrote a letter to Frosty the Snowman yesterday, and she keeps it under her pillow certain that he will somehow read it. Oddly, she is not so much a Santa groupie and I find this pleasing. What she cares about is so beautiful to me: myself and her daddy, cookies, Frosty, the cats and Cinderella. Her take on ’death’ is that it happens to everyone, that we go to ’Kevin’, that it’s nothing to worry about. It’s hard not to admire her wisdom.

I need to shake it off. Need to find a Cinderella doll for her and a bathrobe for M. He’s hard to buy for, and whenever I give him a gift he does not appear to love I feel like I don’t measure up, that I am not connected to him. I put the pressure on myself, I know it, and this is what kills the happiness. The fact that we give at all should be enough, but it seldom ever is.

If we stuck to the plan, by just making it a day about religion and light, the pressure would be eased and the spirit might return, but we are sensible creatures, aren’t we? We have moved beyond the magic because it’s surely the ’most logical thing to do’, and somehow we have created a monster in the process. More miserable than ever, more money to spend and more expectations to meet. Oh yes, we are the wise men after all.

That moon out there is lecturing loudly. I suspect that most are too blind to hear it.