Changing paces

There’s a black and white cat wandering in the hay field. Through mismatched piles of hairy fodder, he sounds some strange primeval call: “This is new, this is all new. I can walk here now, right toward you! Silly humans, take notice of me, I am at such ease!” I love the hay, the Sun who torments any who dare to linger in the physicality of the task, the grace in repetition, the fertile light-filled smell, the memory which takes over and teaches these particular hands just the right movement. In my thoughts I’m riding horses again. A happy trotting, moving briskly on some not-too-urgent message. Where am I heading? Not sprinting away like other times, not narrowly escaping danger. Now a long season of refusals comes to a close; many paths foundered, many directions aborted. Have I chosen wisely?

Now a little sister is born to my usual set of feelings and I come to face it: anger, a sensation I have carefully side-stepped for so long. Never deigning to actually manage such feelings, ever finding the watery way around such states. Now too many pebbles break the peace, and I cannot continue as I always have. Even in the garden it is the time for the beetles to gnaw away. Great hordes piles on the sweetest of flowers, and we must react to the invaders without vengeance, spite or viciousness. Addressing honestly what beleaguers us. How I wish sometimes to paint myself openly as I experience myself inwardly: frail, whithered, and often hopeless. Is it really Love then that forges such feelings into a language unrecognizable to those around me? Letting them not take hold on my ever-present theory that I am essentially broken. I am unconscious still of what others provide for me, of what I mean to them, but ever closer to a truer understanding of friendship.

Again, I’m inclined to assume that all things take figuring out, that peace and deep thought can solve anything. I am ever guided, though, and helped though I tend to feel so alone. Just listening to the cues now can be my greatest strength. Where am I heading then, on my mission? May the Lord grant me a clear path, for I feel ready as ever to ride.