And so it begins

I've been worried about this winter since it started getting colder. You don't want to be too dramatic, if you are me--it's so easy so let a slow grayness seep in that it's usually best to not name it. Plus everyone else is in so much more pain than me, usually. I try to find ways to integrate pain into how I see everything so that it doesn't stand out, right? It's in the fabric of my days, which isn't really supported by my culture, but whatever. It works as well as anything.

The loss of whiskey and wine woke me up to even more pain, loneliness, awareness of processes between people; made me more tender in general. I don't seem to be able to hide, either; it's my day job, my house is no refuge, Cary Tennis has cancer and is scared. A shiny boy kills himself, hearts are broken. If I thought that immersing myself in pain, getting right into it, would protect me, well. I was wrong. I think it means something but I don't know what.

I'm going to Shalom Mountain soon and I hope to take some magic back down to get me through this winter; I think big painful things are coming, even though I might be wrong: I'm torn, because I don't want to be wearing the wrong glasses but I don't want to be blind-sided, either. I think I just want to write that I'm scared, and also hopeful, and that if you are hurting, I get it. I also want to put this out there, in light of all of this, including my continued heartbreakingly simple interactions with these little girls who give me the clear and brutal impression that they feel they have never been valued or listened to before:

"What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured." --Kurt Vonnegut