May Day Parade and New Beginnings

Over the course of the last few months, I've felt as if a number of conversations and trains of thought have been coming together for me, and pushing me toward some badly needed movement in my life. On the face of it, the last several months have been very difficult. After my initial hope and excitement about the ice palace book, I had gotten stuck, and I was questioning whether I would ever write again. I was feeling overwhelmed with another commitment I had taken on, and there was other stuff on my mind that's really so private that I haven't talked about it in this journal at all. Then we were visited with the plagues of Egypt, and I was coping with the pain of shingles and the hassles of battling lice. Ecod!

But I had some key conversations with very good friends, kijjohnson, minnehaha B, Laurie Winter and harryleblanc. Kij, especially, pushed me to really do some self-examination which was both very painful and badly needed. Then Minicon happened, with the miracle of the ice palace necklace, a gift of grace from my friends, and I discovered that even though it felt as if I had lost my own way, I didn't need to be ham-strung by my own doubts, because there were people out there who had faith in me.

I have pulled back from my commitment that was eating up my time. I have cut my hair, and yeah, it was because of the lice, but partly it was an experiment to see what it felt like to change something about myself that I had thought for years "had" to be that way. And as a result more than fifty people in the past month have told me I look terrific. You have to believe that feels pretty good.

I have made an arrangment to rent a dumpster for a week, and I have some friends who are going to be coming to help me clean out the house. I have started writing the book again.

Spring is a time of new beginnings. At yesterday's May Day Parade, the theme was "Leap into Wonderous Possibility." At one point in the parade, various costumed characters were rolling huge hoops down the street, each surrounded by fantastical, brightly-painted paper mache creatures and symbols. They were threshholds, I realized. One showed a rainbow, with blue ribbons dancing below it to represent rain. "Leap into the life-giving water," the sign above read, and the parade marchers encouraged children in the crowd to jump through the "rain" underneath the rainbow. Others followed: "Leap into Interdependence" read one, surrounded by two paper mache trees, with birds in their branches.

Then along came a brightly-colored sculptured door. On one side the sign read "Let go of fear" and the other read "Let go of anger."

I gently pulled Delia off my lap and stood up. "All right, then, this door is for me." I ran out into the street and faced the doorway, joy bubbling up. The marchers held the doorway still for me. Throwing my arms up into the air, I took a deep breath and shouted something, I don't remember what.

And I Leaped.