Friday, April 11, 2008

Dancing While Dizzy


I'm thinking about balance this on this glorious spring morning.
I've felt dangerously out-of-balance lately and have been spending way too much time in town, running from one end of it to another in frantic search for things for the wedding.
I don't think we're going to have to go to town today. Of course, one never knows. We could be missing some essential ingredient for one of the cake layers or piece of wedding-cake-making equipment and have to make a dash into town to get whatever it is we need.
But hopefully we'll be right here in Lloyd, perfuming the air with the sweet smells of lemon and sugar and butter and apricots and toasted almonds.
I haven't been to yoga in a week and I can feel it in my joints. I've continued to walk through this wedding-prep-madness, but the yoga has slipped through the cracks, which is one of the reasons I'm thinking about balance, which is what yoga is all about- a balance of breath and body that I certainly need to work on religiously.
I haven't been in my office in weeks- I call it an office, but really it's just a beautiful room (the original detached kitchen of this house) where I am in heaven, sitting and writing with the dogs at my feet while the squirrels and birds play outside the windows. I did spend several days weeding the yard of the office, which I love, but it's not the same as being in it, getting lost in other worlds made of words.
My whole world has definitely gone a-tilt, and necessarily so as the wedding has demanded my time and spring has demanded my attention at least a little bit, in the yard.
My routine has been altered, interrupted, diverted and that's good. Routine can become rut if allowed to. But routine can be good, too, especially if it is set up so that a balance is struck, which is what I think we all strive for, although my balance is certainly not yours.
I accompanied my mother this week on a visit to a balance clinic. For the past several months she's suffered from extreme dizziness which has certainly interrupted and diverted her life. It turns out that one of her inner ears is not functioning as well as the other, sending mixed signals to the brain which causes the dizziness and the accompanying nausea. They gave her a set of exercises to do and reassured her that the brain would indeed get adjusted and the nausea will eventually leave, which is incredibly reassuring.
It's hard not to think of her situation as a metaphor for what I'm feeling right now.
I'm getting mixed signals from the spring (get out and GARDEN!), from the fact of my daughter's imminent wedding (get busy and wrap those almonds!), from my mind which wants me to write, from my body which says please- do some yoga, and from my heart which says that all of this is important and please, just try to shuffle it all around and find some sort of balance in it, mix the worry and anxiety with the love and the fun of it all.
I'm sure that eventually, after the wedding and after things have settled down, I'll lose this feeling of constantly being off-balance, of constantly teetering on some perilous cliff.
It's just a matter of time. Life can't be balanced perfectly at all times, and the brain doesn't always have time to adjust.
Sometimes one falls on one's ass.
And if you're lucky, the fall doesn't mortally injure you, you take note of why you fell, you get up and remember to balance yourself when you reach over to pick something up.
Or reach out to do something new.
To spread your arms and embrace spring, change, new unions, more love, less sleep, less yoga.
You try to find your balance within each set of circumstances, remembering all the while that eventually the dizziness will pass, the slight, subtle signals to the brain will even out, and out of the dizziness, new thoughts will emerge, new life will come to be, and a new definition of balance can be made.

4 comments:

  1. Oh Mama, you certainly bring it all down to what's important. Sometimes when everything is crazy nuts that is good because that's the way it's s'posed to be right now, and things are good when they are as they should be.
    I love you and I love Lissie and I love cakes. Kisses kisses and little tiny wishes....

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  2. Mom- Thank you for being willing to go off balance for me and bubby (Jason). We love you and we hope you do not hate us after all this is said and done. I know you told me that is not possible but I have this horrible fear that you will resent me forever! I love you more than you know.

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  3. Thank-you, beautiful, lovely daughters.
    And I love YOU far more than you know.

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  4. That

    is an excellent post.

    as is most every one, this being the first I have read in a while (sorry, as in for myself). You are an excellent expressionist (is that a word? I think it must be) and I can understand why your "office" must feel so serene and comfy.

    Balance

    so obvious when it's gone
    so worth it for a while
    so ready when it's back :)

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