River of Stones: Day 4
Reaching into the freezer to get ice, the cubes stick to the damp spots on my fingers, minute points of pain. Brief. Momentary. Minimal. Fist, flex and the ice drops off, leaving the sucker point. Inside my fingers tighten, stiffen. I expect them to blanche. It is only after the ice falls away that my hand feels paralyzed. Only after I think about the pain that I cannot move.
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Writing small stones, being brief in my mindfulness is a far harder exercise than expected. I realize I am keenly aware of my surroundings. It is beyond noticing things. It is empathy. I FEEL things. My staff thinks I have bionic hearing, capable of knowing when there is discord or strife. I sense friction. I can read a face or body language like a carnival fortune teller. I collect information like a satellite array vacuuming static from deep space and then interpreting it. Yet, I get stuck. Paralyzed but what I sense, feel…KNOW. I doubt what I know out of a wishfulness. I don’t want it to be as I know it to be. Maybe I am wrong. Let me be wrong.
It matters very little if a man is discontented in the name of pessimism or progress,
if his discontent in fact paralyzes his power of appreciating what he’s got. ~ GK Chesterton.
I can be chugging along, quite content and then “hear” an off-note, a B flat out of place, something askew. The discordance can be subtle, imperceptible to most others. I seem a soothsayer or chicken little-ish. I sound like a worry-wort. I seem anxious. Dread. It IS like having bionic hearing, long before anyone else can hear the train coming…I know its headed our way. Long before anyone else can see the road signs, I am telling you to get over into the right hand lane. It is not clairvoyance. It is more complicated than that. It is not magic. One day, I would love to stumble upon someone with better hearing and better vision than myself, who can say….watch out Lisa. Duck your head. You’re gonna want to got off at this exit. Cover your ears. Don’t touch that it’s hot. I get tired of being the front man or the one responsible for making sure the expedition doesn’t get lost or fall off the mountainside. Somedays, I want to be deaf, dumb and blind. Blissful in my lack of awareness. And it is in that wish, I get paralyzed. If I am stuck, I can’t see. I can’t help. But who helps me?