I used to.  Not now.

And don’t want to again.

So here’s some notes propped on the wall of this computer screen for future reference:

• I won’t come back to this house, except as a visitor
• I won’t be a gardening in the verge again
• I will . . . what?
• Yes, what, indeed?

That’ll do, that unanswered question.

Why this, why now?

Poetry  read aloud by friends gave me a cold (and beautiful) shower last night, and this one got me thinking about the future:

I know not who I am

I know not who I am
I am neither a believer going to the mosque
Nor given to non-believing ways
Neither clean, nor unclean
Neither Moses nor pharoah
I know not who I am

I am neither among sinners, nor among saints
Neither happy nor unhappy
I belong neither to water nor to earth
I am neither fire, nor air
I know not who I am

Neither do I know the secret of religion
Nor I am born of Adam and Eve
I have given myself no name
I belong neither to those who squat and pray
Neither to those who gone astray
I know not who I am

I was in the beginning
I would be there in the end
I know not anyone but the One
Who would be wiser than Bulleh Shah
Whose Master is there to tend ?

I know not who I am

Bulleh Shah, 15th century

[thank you, Salman]

I came to write that note  above after thinking, too, “I know not who I am”.

And – today, at least – ha! – this is how I see where I’ve been and where I’m going.

For years I’ve trusted my gut instinct.

“Feels real, must be true”, was how I was driven.

That may have worked for me early on but not for years since and certainly not now. It comes down to this: less of me, more of you, all of you.

Somehow I’ve stumbled into a patch of calm and it’s brought me to replace the gut instinct with this:

“Feels real, but not applicable now or any more”.

To get to this moment of clarity, I see that things started to makes more sense the moment I decided to go away, June 30, to let go of what I was bound up with and where I was and what I do.  Immediately then all the tension left.  A very heavy load’s gone.

And friends say, “You look so well .  . . . you’re calm.“

In the life I’d built my social life and my work melded as one.  There, there was no room for anyone or anything else.

No more.

Is it a bad thing if your work is what you’re passionate about and it’s all of your social life, too?

Yes. Too much passion blurs borders for anyone, and for me mars how I talk to and be with myself, my children, my friends and a partner.  Too much is about self, too little about others.  Or, as Hamlet put it,

“Give me that man

That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him

In my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart”.

And so it goes,

M