Quieting

I reread Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver and I am still recovering. I know it didn't hit me this hard the last time because until I reached a few pivotal moments I wasn't sure I had read it before. I remember enjoying it but inexplicably unable to keep it and Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich straight. I think this is the first time I've read a book where all the major points of my life have been reimagined and fictionalized. Is the oldest sister experience so universal? The plot was different enough from my life but the emotional experience rang true every time resolving in ways that kept me up until 3a.m. waking my husband with almost silent racking sobs.

This intense experiencing of a book/movie/poetry/play was a regular occurrence until mid-college when body sobbing was no longer cleansing. That's not to say I haven't wracked my body sobbing, but it's been mainly reserved for the death of a loved one and I never feel finished or cleansed. I miss feeling the world around me so completely. I miss the abandon with which I would throw myself into the heartbreaks of the world and my own. I miss that magical sensitive self and wonder if she was a sacrifice to growing-up or if I will see glimpses of her again as I continue to heal from private wounds. Perhaps the latter.

At any rate I think it's time to go into a contemplative ghost period. In casual conversation I've been babbling about things I didn't intend to mention just to fill in the silence my social awkwardness inspires in people. I find when I am saying a whole lot of nothing it's time to listen to silence and let the world pass through me as if I were just an outline. Meanwhile my substance quiets and heals and waits for something meaningful to say.