the inversion of addition

April 02, 2009 candacemorris 4 Comments

i have been a mathematician of the soul these last weeks. i have been happily subtracting the monotony of a job i didn't ever love and adding solitude and whim. i have subtracted alarm clocks and added circadian rhythms. i've minused one worn out wife and plussed the pleasure of domesticity. through this most favorable equation, i've found an element of tranquility and ease i have never known. i tell my girlfriend over lunch, "i think i am actually happy." i am up for last minute social gatherings, quicker to answer my phone.

so in this greenhouse of goodness, it always throws me when the equation still contains one similar factor.

me.

and of course this is true. whenever i have these little revelations, i feel so stupid for having ever though otherwise. of course i am still me, still prone to irascibility, misanthropic behaviors, and general irritability. a mood that i would have previously attributed to a soul-sucking job and not enough solitude now has no excuse.

so do moods seriously need an excuse? a reason? a why? our culture, our reason, our science, hell...especially me...all of us are consumed with analysis and investigation. if we can figure out why we feel this way or why something happened we assume we will arrive at comfort and be able to put it to rest. do not misunderstand, i think there is a great comfort in the answers, but there are some questions that remain a deep mystery, whose answers lie even deeper, and to our own human otherness we do a great disservice by such subjugation.

though it still may surprise me that with nothing in my life to seriously complain about, i am still prone to complaint and discontent, i hope to come back always to knowing that i am me and through the various moods of life, acceptable or not, i will leave myself the hell alone and just feel.

so what comforts you on days you have no comfort? to where do you return in an attempt to recapture your escaped otherness?


to a lonely mother

for me, for today, it was in writing.
(and lamb kabobs with a glass of 2006 rioja)
(and sour cream apple pie)
(and dinner and a movie by myself)
(and the purchase of two books)
(and in the saint's spooned embrace)
(and in the hot water of my bath to which i now retreat)