I think that growing up my friends and I in NYC were unduly encouraged to look at our problems. Therapy was in vogue and therapy was about analyzing problems and devoting serious study to them. It’s hard to get out of that mindset — to get out of seeing the most important thing in my life at any time as the problem in my life to be mulled over and plumbed and solved.
I think I would like to put the problem on the side and write down my non-problems. With that there seems to be an element of boasting or vainglory — but these days are not the therapists calling that gratitude, as in my gratitude list? I will never write a public gratitude list, I don’t think, when others suffer so.
Instead, let me say that in the past few weeks the November air has been warm with currents or days of cold. We’ve gone to the vineyards to meet friends, and to sit alone with cider and a cheese plate. I discovered the Rose Cider — it’s something out of a fairytale: so crisp and a rose color, and light.
We’ve come home to burn some wood fires before the creek and when the sky has darkened Mars has appeared always, first, and to the right of us. Matthew sent me some Medieval Princess quiz and it seems I am in the ‘house’ of Mars or some-such. This makes sense as Mars is always the planet I see first, whether in the northern hemisphere or the south. Traveling back and forth between hemispheres much of my life has been dizzying, doubling, destabilizing, sometimes a problem (lol). But at the same time it makes me feel a conqueror of blue planet earth, a Medieval Princess who has swung between two poles, a at home in each. After Earth, what comes next? May I feed the rose and not the problem.
