A recounting in time for summer.

It’s been awhile since I just provided an update. You know, one of those newsy, how things are going kinda posts absent of angsts and melodramas. And since I’m fresh out of angst this morning (which I am giving thanks for) it seems time I simply recount a bit of my life instead of aiming for lofty philosophy.

It’s been about a month since returning from my last traveling, and five weeks or so since the end of the hearings in Eugene. After a fairly intense spring of work and approaching-court-stress, I was released back into East Van to recapitulate myself in the aftermath of a psychically tumultuous time. Quite seriously, I was not clear on how deeply I have been marked, and am only now coming to self-honesty about so many of the things that have been just under the surface for the past 20 months or so, waiting for the case to be “done” in order to come up into the light and air.

And so, there have been some lifestyle changes and introspective moments and even some tears (though not many, I don’t cry readily). I have sought out friends both old and new to give me perspective and comfort, and one person in particular (Michael) has proven to be a catalyst for bringing out much of what has been pickling inside me as well as a welcoming heart to my sorrows. Firetrap says it is as though I have hit a reset button on my life – and this is the most apt description I have heard – the suddenness of flicking a switch, with the recognition that what I knew all along was right there waiting for replay.

Shutting the door on some parts of my life seems to have opened me up to a whole different set of experiences which are simply a sliver of what is available to me should I give myself permission. Suffice to say, it has been an interesting phase, giving birth to new ideas and obessessions, and one which I thankfully have a summer off traveling to mull over.

And on the more grounded plane, I have started a new job as part of a national project team doing web development for the next 18 months or so; I have been to Victoria and the Sunshine Coast in the last few weeks to visit friends and family; I have almost achieved the discipline to do movement practice every morning (qi gong, stretching, yoga, meditation) and work out 3 or 4 times per week; I am reading voraciously; my diet right now is irreproachable – full of summer’s offerings and the occasional fine beer, and; I have been bringing more discpline to my writing in the last few days. And while my existential crisis of sorts in the middle of June derailed some of these things ever so slightly, I have found myself in the last two weeks able to rediscover my routines without much effort.

As noted yesterday, Darren was moved unexpectedly last Thursday and has been unable to contact me since. A friend of ours who went to visit him on the weekend at Multnomah and was turned away was the first alert I had, and he was able to bum a stamp and an envelope from someone to mail a letter to another friend who emailed me yesterday with his instructions. This of course is jarring for both him and myself, our routine of communication broken; though after so many moments like this I am well aware it will restart in a new pattern as soon as he is settled (and the money I mailed yesterday makes it into his prison account). This moment, like so many, just another reminder of how alien this system is from humanity – a refrain chanted to me so often now that it rarely upsets me anymore even as I acknowledge it. And by that I mean, I can’t let it upset me or these things would have me continually in tears (as they did in the beginning of this mess).

And so the important things I suppose are that I am writing in a more disciplined fashion (and that, my friends, is a struggle for me), I am taking care of myself in the midst of the psychic upheaval, and I am honestly beginning to find peace in the hardships of the past 20 months (a definitive shift is taking place). There are other discoveries as well, to do with faith and truth, which I will not expand upon here (trite it seems to blog about these matters) – which I am coming to accept and integrate slowly, questioningly, hesitantly – but accept nonetheless. An interesting time, yes. And I am grateful for all of you who have fed these interactions since my return. One thing I have learned (despite myself) is that I need other people in my life, and to have this need is not a weakness. So thank-you friends, it is only through you I have found my voice again.