April arrives

Ill at ease today. 

The usual holiday political arguments and updated perspectives on the state of the world were darker than usual. It was easier when I represented the extreme of doom and gloom because there was some comfort in thinking that maybe I'm just out of my mind because the others seem so much more positive. Now it's me saying, we've got to heal ourselves first and others saying it's too far gone to matter. 

I burned sage and cedar in the house today. That sacred purifying smoke sent me back to a sun dance mindset. Sacrifice. Offering the only thing that actually belongs to you - your suffering - up for the greater good. I also burned it because I'd recently shut down one of the toilets in the house and I think the lack of water in it is allowing septic gases to back up into the house.

Took myself out to dinner later and regretted it immediately. A young woman with a piercing monotone talking ceaselessly and negatively seemingly directly into my ear. Barn rules and breaking horses and unfiltered criticism of the various riders (mostly children). By the end, I planned to visit her barn, release the horses into the wild, and burn the structure to the ground. 

I dreamed of cicadas last night. I don't think I've ever actually seen one. Certainly not around here. They were enormous and living in  the recesses behind the seats of my car. Ill at ease. A Voodoo priestess in New Orleans on my Instagram said the darkness is almost here and asked if we've prepared ourselves. 

It was a little harder to breathe today. But tonight, during my walk from the car to the front door, I heard the first peepers. I sat in a chair on my "lawn" and looked up through the pines at the clear sky and the brilliant stars. The first peepers were singing individually, as they do, but in a week there'll be so many more and they'll sound like a trained choir. They reminded me of the cycle of things, coming into being and passing away. The stars were cold, but not unkind, and they silently showed me how little any of this fleeting agony matters. 

Joyful participation in the sorrows of the world, Joseph Campbell said.