re-entry

I have to re-begin this by saying that I have just written for the last 40 minutes and lost everything that I wrote.... This is a common frustration, and one that, in the most positive light I can spin, gives real tangible meaning to the impermanence of everything.
So, I will begin again and try not to mourn too much what is now gone.
I am writing this from my bed in Toronto. It is Saturday morning the 25th of Feb. and it is now 5:40am (was 5am when I first began)..... This is a secret. Most people think I am not back until Monday the 27th and I am keeping it that way, having returned on Wed. (5 days early) specifically to re-adjust without the pressures of work and demands squashing me immediately.

Ah, tiredness is beginning to set in again, and I'm not sure if I'm up for this re-composition, but I will try because the reason I had wanted to write this specifically is to track a bit the crazy whirlwind journey of re-entry herself especially when in combination with jet-lag.
I thought I had escaped them.... ah but that was just part of their evil plan to send me through hoola hoops of emotional gymnastics.

I have been reading Carlos Castenada's account of his time with don Juan, learning the ways of mescalito, devil's weed, and little smoke and I can't help but think that this current state I am in is also an entity.

And so I shall give her a name: re-entrada jet-laggeenish.

Not very imaginative, I know, but after all it is pre-dawn and as objective as I am attempting to be, I am very much under her spell.

This early return kept a secret is a new thing for me... creating concrete boundaries of time and space to give room to needs that have nothing to do with never-ending demands of schedule. This need for space is actually incredibly human and every-day, I am discovering. I feel like I have been fooled into believing that it is a luxury one cannot possibly afford or claim..... I'm learning, though.

Much like I am learning that taking the time to really indulge in the pleasure and sensuality of basic home things (like cooking a really good meal and making sure there's wine in the house) is more of a personal necessity than I had ever imagined or bought into. This comes partly from being incredibly inspired by staying in the homes of some very good cooks in the latter part of my journey. And now along with some other delicious bits, this inspiration is still floating quite strongly in my imagination.

Funny that, how I always come home feeling so renewed and committed and brimming with the huge possible... and then there is that awkward adjustment of trying to integrate these free floating ideas with the seemingly solid gravity of my everyday set-in-its-ways life that has been here waiting for me... heavy concrete blocks grumbling and ready to pounce.

Now of course, some of this dark view is just re-entrada jet-laggeenish, and this is precisely why I am writing... to catch her at her tricks. But, that being said, there is some truth to the experience of the formless dream putting on her gravity boots and trying to assume her shape in the "real world". It's a bit heart-breaking,no? As she struggles to fit in and those boots are much too big for her and no one smiles here...

And me, thinking that I had brilliantly evaded re-entrada.... enticed into thinking that I could spin away painlessly and get so many things done in this "extra" time. No, she will take her time and I will need to face the very every dayness of my own humanity.... what I had anticipated, and why I came back early in the first place: needing to rest and do nothing. why is that so hard?

ok. so let's do a bit of tracking here, and then I think I'm back off to bed for a little bit.

I arrive Wed. afternoon. Tired, but not unduly. My wonderful parents have come to escort me home. Quite ready to lay down, once here, my energy level does that weird second-wind spurt when I see Jasna, who has been staying at my house while I'm gone. Suddenly I am full of stories and I putter around unpacking. My one hour nap doesn't really pull me into sleep until it needs to end and then I'm out of the house doing some grocery shopping in order to cook the long awaited simple meal of kale, rice, and fish that I have been dreaming of for weeks now.... no bread, no extravagant sauce, and cooked and consumed in my own home listening to Johnny and Emre's Cd's, dancing in-between stirs. Then off to hear Joanne Brakeen at the Montreal Bistro with my Dad until a fit of yawns sends me back home. She was fantastic, though.

And then a fairly uninterrupted sleep of 9 hours! I wake, feeling rejuvanated and convinced that I have single-handedly beaten re-entrada jet-laggeenish. I spaciously and confidently bite into my day, eating a leisurely breakfast, going for a much needed run, doing a luxurious shop at the st. lawrence market, getting my hair cut, going to mamo chants at the Shambhala centre, picking up some videos, preparing and sharing a lovely meal and bottle of wine with Jasna and going to bed very late......

"See, it's so easy! "I am fooled into thinking. I really AM super-woman. Think of how much I can get done in this extra time! I am fully and painlessly re-integrated into my "new" life and I will never feel a shred of doubt or fear again!

Really, it's kinda cute when I look now at myself in that spin. The delusion really comes out of an incredibly hopeful place.

But of course, I don't sleep so well that second night. Things move much more slowly in day two. I try to nap and all I do is get frustrated. I feel like I can't quite connect with anything or anyone.... common occurence in the land of not-enough-sleep. I try to make it to my friend Lisa's surprise birthday party and somehow I completely miss the boat (this moment feels strangely familiar to the dance roads curse of just- missed connections).

And now I am up again, and who knows how the day will go.... up and down and all over the place I'm sure. Tears and laughter, moments of really feeling my feet on the ground and the lingering sense of the huge possible right alongside moments of that strange despair that feels so real while you're in it.

To be honest, it's strange writing down all the highlights of the last few weeks. All these stories told in good humour are real. But they are just snap-shots. This unfolding emotional roller-coaster has been very much part of the landscape the whole time... not just the landscape of re-entrada. Very dark moments that would unbelievably resurface into hillarity, only to plummet again, leaving me very unsure of who or where I was. I did really long to come home for that reason. Longed to remember something tangible. Longed to rest.

Makes me wonder about the nature of home.
Yes, there is the very physical place full of all the stuff you want to run away from and then which you miss when you're gone.
But, I think I will just keep running until I actually move into that elastic home that travels with me everywhere.
I am really hoping that there is something of knowing how to begin making that move, that I have brought back with me from what, in a lot of ways, was a time of shaken expectations and upheaval. My suspicion is that shaken expectations, frustration, upheaval, groundlessness, were all disguises for growth. That is my hope.

And so I've got my eye on that hope....
I'm not looking at her too directly because she'll get self-conscious.
She's slowly slipping into her gravity boots right now. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I have the most beautiful incling that she's got a good chance of making her place here.

whadaya know... the sun's coming up, and I'm going to try sleeping again.

s