Pressure

I performed an experiment last night. I hung upside down off the side of my bed. This is something that, as a child, I was able to do for hours. Somewhere along the way I suppose I realized that the only thing this activity accomplished was the development of a headache. So, being a usually logical person, I have ceased doing this. Why I thought of doing it last night? I just wanted to remember what the sensation was like.

In the first seconds that your head is upside down, it seems that all the blood in your body has culminated in your eye sockets. It’s harder to breathe, but this may have occurred with the advent of breasts, which would have been absent 15 years ago when I did this on a regular basis. Or it could be that blood is pooled around your sinuses, inducing instant cold-like symptoms. But after those first few seconds, it’s not so bad really. In fact, unless you move, the only real sensation that persists is a subtle heat in your cheeks. Not so bad, but not especially thrilling either. When I sat up though, which I did in one swift motion, like I remember doing as a child, it was as if I had been cured magically from this pressure I had become accustomed to.

Take from this what you like. I think that we are more adaptable than we think, but still it's nice to have some relief from time to time. Anyone have any magical cures for life up their sleeves? Friends? A good drink? Chocolate? Yes, I think so.

Figs

I had a plan this morning. I had a list of things to do, like I do every morning. And like every morning, like my life, I veered from the list. On the list were exercising, making dinner for tonight, and reviewing coping skills for work . . . but when I took the dogs out, my eye caught the fig tree at the side of our house. The figs are bursting with ripeness, some overripe, and need to be picked for danger of going to waste.

So I picked a few while the dogs were outside, and then realized that I would need a container to hold the fruit. After I filled the colander with all the figs I could reach, I ventured to find a ladder and a pot to hold more fruit. (I did this after attempting to climb the tree – fig trees are horrible climbing trees, fyi.) Underneath the tree, looking up through the wide fig leaves, I saw what seemed like hundreds of plum purple and magenta fruit hanging from the high branches. The sunlight shimmered through the leaves, almost blinding. I was determined to get them all.

Climbing up and down the ladder, pulling the branches near to me, and shaking the fruit from the tree, I felt more satisfaction than I had in quite some time. The earthy, sweet scent of the milky, sticky sap and dirt that covered my hands filled my body. It is the smell of late summer. The subtle itching and sweat on the back of my neck was invigorating. Flashbacks of picking muscadines and scuppernongs from the vines on my grandfather’s farm wash over me. The tender flesh of the fruit and the way it pulls from the tree with a gentle tug amazes me. The taste of the faint sweetness and pinkness is delicious. I’ve never liked figs until this day.

For a moment, I thought maybe I should be a farmer – it actually kind of makes sense, I love food, cooking food, why shouldn’t I like growing it? But I’m pretty sure that farming isn’t like this anymore, this small scale, manual labor of picking fruit by hand to feed local people . . . at least not here.

I digress. I digress from what? Oh, right, my list of things to do. My new thought is to talk to my cousin, who is on the city council, about starting a community garden. And as for this morning’s list – perhaps I did get a little exercise, and for dinner maybe a fig cake? And coping, well, I don’t know, it made me feel better. Maybe my list doesn’t matter so much. As a friend recently pointed out, life is too short to waste on things that make you miserable. So what if I’m not where I think I ought to be in life? I have enough figs to make two cakes, a fig and almond brie, and about ten jars of preserves.

By the way, did you know that the fig tree is a relative of the rubber tree? And that it actually contains latex? Explains why it’s so hard to climb, and the itching. More figs will be ripe in a couple of days.

Sticky

I’m a wanderer; I don't hesitate to admit that fact. In fact at this very moment I would love to be on a plane to who-knows-where to do something unbelievable. There are not many things that I wouldn’t want to try at least once or any place I wouldn’t venture to for a day, or more. I’ve had I don’t know how many jobs over the past few years and lived in twice as many cities. Some people call this adventurous, some call it flippant. I’m not sure what I consider it, but the main point is I don’t tend to stick to one particular thing or one particular place for very long.

With that being said, I started a new job this week. And with it, my multiple personality disorder began to flare up again – Overwhelmed has taken over most of the week, but Contented and Uncertainty have also taken strong roles throughout the course of deciphering my new position. And of course, Logic is constantly weighing the advantages and disadvantages of every part of this job and has concluded that it is ultimately a tossup; thus she has relinquished all decision making powers to Instinct who is utterly underdeveloped and therefore inept to operate on her own. Meanwhile, Logic has simultaneously been encouraging Action to focus on the tasks at hand rather than hop over to the Congo to see what’s going on over there.

Focus, that’s what I’m reminding myself to do. But it seems that my go-with-the-flow mentality gets the best of me, and my dreams of the wide world of possible lives makes me want so many things that require so much planning and more dreaming! Focus seems impossible. This is typically the point in which I make a list. What exactly is the priority, really?

The advantage of being pulled in six different directions is that it keeps me in one place for a second until one thought eventually conquers the others. At the moment, Logic, Future Plans, and Perseverance are succeeding to convince Instinct that this, here and now, is where I should be . . . or at least that it’s ok for this instant, which appeals to Contented. So it would seem that I am going to be sticking . . . for the moment – however, Action tends to be the strongest of all, so we’ll see what she decides.