Sunday Brain Dump

This morning for the first in what feels like weeks I woke up to sun and blue sky instead of rain or threat of rain. It’s Sunday — no work today except the minor chores around the house. My husband has designs on finally being able to rake the winter debris from the front garden so we can maybe sow seed for summer’s flowers soon. 

I think about picking up one of the half dozen or so books I am slowly working my way through. And I hear that voice inside that says “It’s a nice day. You should go outside.” And maybe I will later but right now I don’t want to. I even feel a bit defiant saying that to myself.

There are just a couple of days left in the blog challenge that has pulled me to write much more frequently. I have some ambivalence about this kind of challenge because of the way the challenge can take over and make posting about it and not so focused on content. If I do another, I want to stay focused on the writing rather than the challenge.

I am sort of simmering a couple of ideas about short workshops I want to offer. The Maine Jung Center is looking for proposals and I like doing workshops so… Maybe something about the meaning of Home? 

I am tickled that the Korean boy-band BTS has a new album inspired by Murray Stein’s book, Map of the Soul. Stein is a prominent Jungian analyst. The album, Persona, has made Stein and Jung popular among Korean teens. And I just read that their album is #1 in the US right now!

Time is on my mind

My daughter texted me today to ask me when she had her measles vaccination. She will be 43 this year so it was a long  time ago. Except that in old age, distant events sometimes feel more recent than last year. A trick of time and memory that lends a vividness to long ago. 

I dream about a little boy and in associating to it in an effort to reveal and understand what my psyche is telling me about my life today, I have a very vivid memory of walking with my son when he was 3. I can feel his hand in mine as we walk along the street and I can almost hear his stream of commentary about things  he sees. Yet that day was forty years ago. 

In another dream I see my grandmother’s kitchen, a room I have not seen in more than sixty years.

How can it be almost 20 years since that Fourth of July weekend when I flew to Detroit to meet the man I am now married to? A vivid image of the fireworks I could see from the window of the plane as I flew back to Maine and feeling they were for me, celebrating what I felt after that wonderful weekend.

Another dream: Pauline sends me a suitcase with gifts for me and another person important to us. Sent from beyond perhaps as she is dead.

People long dead. Places I have not seen in decades. My little boy with a little girl of his own now. My daughter who posts pictures of dinner parties she throws. 

I am almost 73 now. I look in the mirror and see an old woman. My dreams bring me myself as a girl. A young mother. And I am aware of the reality that the time left to me is steadily shrinking. Even as it stretches backward, I feel time speeding by rapidly.

It is spring. The lilacs have nubbins of greenleavesnow. The maples have swelling buds. Tulips and daffodils up in the garden. My town has a project to plant a million daffodils all over town, 100,000 per year. Nine more years to go. I wonder if I will be here to see them all.

Take a look if you will at the post, Dream Time, by my Twitter friend, Martha Crawford. You will be glad you did.