Daily Wisteria Update, Enlarged Upon

I know I overblog. Is that a word? If it's not, it should be.
But the blog is such a joy to me. I do it for me and it seems like a perfect fit for me, this putting down of the words and sending them out. And now, it occurs to me that I'm doing the same with pictures, which I would never have thought I'd do. I am no photographer as I have often said and I never will be. I think as a child I was so nearsighted (the first time my vision was tested was in the third grade and I couldn't find the Big E) that I never learned to rely on what I saw. I have always been more apt and inclined to listen and to process what I hear and then to write about it. And thank goodness, my nearsightedness did not affect my ability to read because without books and the words in them, I don't think I would have made it out of childhood. Not with any semblance of sanity, at least.

But even as a near-blind child, I was always so open to the nature around me. I think this is true for most children and I mourn for the kids today who aren't allowed to spend hours outside doing nothing but lying under a tree or on a dock, dreaming as clouds pass overhead or water passes underneath. I think that we, as humans, need that dreaming time with something so vast and unknowable above us or beneath us.

Anyway, here I am, fifty-four years old and I have this tiny space of the web to put my pictures, both the ones I make with words and the ones I make with a camera, and believe me- I am, at this age, fully aware of the blessing of that, the rightness (for me, at least) of that. It is if I have spent my whole life with this round hole in my spirit and I've been trying to fill it with one square peg after another but now, yes, I've found the correct and exact thing, round and perfect, to fit.

My spirit is so much happier.

And speaking of which- I truly think this supplement I'm taking with its soy and dong quai and black cohosh is responsible for the coming-back-to-myself which I am experiencing.



It's like I've been wandering around the desert for forty years, knowing full well that the door is right there, and that all I needed to do was open it and I would be back in the land of the living where flowers bloom and foods taste and joy can be felt but I just could not find the key.
And now I think I have. And it's so weird. And so strange. And so wonderful.

I feel normal.

I look back on the horror of the last year and I shudder and it literally brings tears to my eyes.
And I am so very eternally grateful and grateful not just for the returning home but for the timing. It is spring. Everything is blooming. It is time to plant and weed and it is time to cherish the bloomings of babies which are coming and I swear to you- I would have faked it until I died if I'd had to, but now I don't think I will have to. I will truly be present with no overwhelming, constant buzz of the fear and the anxiety and the sadness getting in the way of whatever it is I'm experiencing.

I suddenly feel like the butt of the redneck joke whose punchline goes, "Hey y'all! Look at this!"
Because all I want to do is register everything I see around me right now which has been newly revealed and say, "Hey, y'all! Look at this! Because it's beautiful. It is truly beautiful and I can feel it."
Can you?
Oh. I hope so.



Because if you can't, it's not living. It's just getting up and doing what must be done until sleep can come again. No passion, no reason, just force of will to make one foot move in front of the other.

And life is too short for that. And the color purple must be noticed and rejoiced over.

I am noticing and I am taking pictures and I am rejoicing.

Re-joy-sing.

Amen.