The New House

Maybe you know or maybe you don't, but recently I was involved in an auto collision that crushed out the infraspinatus muscle of my left shoulder.
Maybe you know this, or not, but that muscle is necessary for just about everything you do with your arm. As happens with car accidents, everyone acknowledges first how much worse it could have been, and how lucky you are to have survived, both of which are very very very true.  And then you are grateful and just coping for about a week and it's easy cause of the painkillers the doc prescribed, and then eventually that time passes.  It was an intense collision and the fallout will continue for sometime, and we make peace with that, but for now we are left with this.

And sooner or later you have to acknowledge what has happened to be a Bad Thing, even when you wish to stay positive.

And then you are able to stand up and knowingly recognize that you are walking through a darkness, and in this darkness is a dragon, and either you are chasing it or it is chasing you, but the certainty is that you are lost, and it isn't the dragon's fault.

How often are we able to look our most trying moments in the face?  And find out who we really are and what we are made of?  And what is left after our most favorite thing about ourselves is- at least for a time- suddenly not there?
And perhaps this is laughable, but it came as a shock to me, that that my shoulder which has been so strong and worked for me so well, for so long without complaint, and all the lovely subtle stories it told, could be snuffed out in a half a moment's time.

And maybe you are chasing the dragon and maybe it is chasing you, but the certainty is that you are lost, but also, in the dark caverns of this space you keep tripping over diamonds.  That also is certain.

A couple weeks after I had a dream about a tiny sea shanty- it was built out of driftwood hammered together haphazardly, like a child had made it.  It was built on long, crooked stilts that rose dubiously high out of a turbulent grey sea.  I sat inside of this shanty and saw that every nook and cranny of it was filled with something precious- a bunch of dried flowers, a coin, a tiny statue...and as it swayed dangerously in the waves, I knew it was going to fall, and probably soon.  I could hardly stand the thought of leaving it, because so intense was my love for this shack on stilts.  Because you see,

it was Mine.

But in the violent swaying of the waves, I knew that to save myself or any of these precious things, I could not stay here, or all of it would be lost.  So there was only one thing to do.
Rebuild and start again.