After the worst of the chickenpox

I am slowly immersing myself back into the world outside the four walls of my apartment after getting the chicken pox and being under house arrest. It started with a necessary visit to my insurance broker followed by a visit to the supermarket. It is a lovely day outside.

Today is the first day of my vacation leave and I am supposed to be writing. I started two poems on the weekend but I have not written anything today as yet. There is still time. I, however, spent my time waiting at the insurance broker reading Natasha Trethewey. If I am going to write well I am going to have to read so the morning was not completely lost. It is so refreshing to read good poetry. Everyday words strung in just the right sequence can be so powerful. A description of the letters t and d in “Letter” makes you think about the alphabet in a whole different light. Letters (and not just words), now have meanings of their own.

I have a list of things I want to accomplish this year. I make one every year. There however, is never a post mortem of the list as the year comes to an end. There is, however, a general feeling almost always of not accomplishing enough of what I set out to do. With this in mind (and even though this general feeling of failure never extends to this particular thing), I have opted not to put “learn to swim” on my list this year.

The hardest lessons in life are the ones that you cannot read in a book, or watch played out in someone else’s life. The hardest lessons are the ones that you have to learn for yourself. This year, on my list, is “love what you have”. It is sometimes hard to see past what everyone else has and this is not so much about material things. It is about the things that you cannot see and touch, but you feel.

So I don’t have a lot of people. There is an explanation for that. I do not let people in easily. I forgive but it is very hard for me to forget so I can dismiss people easily and perhaps I have been dismissing more than I have been letting out the welcome mat. I hold everyone to perhaps an impossible standard and when someone falls short it is such a blow to my emotional state I do not put myself in that position willingly often.

I am learning (albeit) slowly to separate what people do/say intentionally or unintentionally, in the heat of the moment or not, from who they are. Everyone is just another human being trying to find his place in the world. This is not to say there are not people in the world that are just downright evil you can feel hell emanating from their pores, and those people you stay away from no matter what. Thankfully I have not come into contact with any of those.

It is another year, another journey. The continuing journey to 26, with a brief stop, hopefully, at the Calabash International Literary Festival in May as they celebrate 10 years (with other stops in between); the continuing journey to the finished manuscript and publication; the continuing journey in love. There is also the hope of a new journey to a new place in the fall where adventure and many ideas for more writing will await. Hopefully there will be no more doctors involved in the rest of my journey, this year. I am just about fed up waiting rooms, doctors’ offices, pharmacies that take forever to fill your prescription and I think my throat has started to rebel against all those pills I am now finding it hard to swallow. I shall, however, make this a journey full of light.