gills would be good here...

i'm at a little bit of a loss for words lately. i'm not sure if this means i'm not thinking, or if i'm just not paying attention to my own thoughts and feelings. or allowing for the fact that so much thinking actually masks the much deeper feeling that needs space to occur. there is just a tiny bit of that that is true. for 3 or 4 months in there all i did was think, think, think and it was a refreshing change to just turn off paying attention to those thoughts altogether.

however, i'm not exactly sure how to balance the whole turn off all thoughts thing, with being concious of my own self--not numbing to my own life. and it seems that there is some numbing lately. or at least i'm going to interpret last night's dream as such. for those of you that don't know me, and many of you don't i am going to let you in on a little secret about me; i have a strange and abiding fear of water deaths. i wouldn't call it a phobia or anything like that because i totally love swimming and the ocean and even the bathtub, but the whole drowning thing gets some weird airtime for me. to avoid this fear or the thought of it, i tend to stay away from stories or movies with similar themes. to this date, i still havent' seen titanic, however i did see the original Posiedon Adventure with shelly winters when i was sort of a young kid--and i think this is where some of the water wierdness stems from.

so circling back to my point and the whole numbness thing, i had a dream last night that i was on the ship poseidon, or one very similar to it and i kept reliving over and over the actual overturn of the ship, and the water crashing in, and bodies falling to the ceiling of the ballroom, and at some point in that dream i became aware it was a dream and actually one of my worst nightmares. then i became aware i wasn't exactly scared, i was really more or less just noticing the details of what was happening, how if i payed very careful attention i could will the details to change, like i didn't crash to the ceiling, instead i grabbed one of the bolted down tables and from there swung myself out of the ballroom. the next time around i made it out onto the deck, funny how the deck was right side-up and i jumped onto some sort of watercraft nearby.

turns out we weren't all that far from shore and i did some stone hopping onto land...hmmmm--so what's that all about--this whole underwater death and drowning, reliving the moments, and finally becoming lucid enough to recognize my own power in the situation.
( some sort of wake-up call from the numbness?) a somewhat reflective position from the lessons life is bringing me right now. i get sort of freaked out and drowning, and i relive that a few thousand times, then i lift my head only to realize the shore is within swimming distance.

hallelujah for the shore!!!! you know what i mean??? sometimes it feels like if i'm not absolutely drowning, then my treading muscles are pushed to their absolute limit and i will go under at any moment. i do crave the moments when my feet touch the muddy underwater ground and my head is still above the surface.

My christmas season has had some nice "head-above-water" moments; spirit and connection have been the rule rather than the exception. i am awed by the goodness in people, i am touched by their vulnerability, i am blown away by their gifts, i am challenged to do, be and give more of these things of myself. i am so grateful that life shows up to beckon me exactly down that path--even when the water gets deep, that's when becoming an underwater breathing superhero gains in relevance:)

so get your fins on gang, the water (while a little bit choppy at times) is exactly what the doctor ordered to get his patients out of the kiddy pool!


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Now playing: Duncan Sheik - Barely Breathing (acoustic)
via FoxyTunes