Dusk

It’s been an odd couple of weeks. Such a relentless ride of highs and lows.

It’s tough when your main form of personal expression, of release, is so public because it means that inevitably, when things happen in your life you can’t talk about you end up feeling stifled.

I have a lot going on just now. Some of it is intensely positive, exciting, inspiring, yes. But some of it not so, quite the opposite in fact. And I’m not really in a position to be able to talk about either one, not yet anyway.

It’s hard catapulting between these two worlds. Simultaneously flying and being pushed to the ground with the weight of so much stress. I feel quite dizzy with it. It is taking all my energy to keep upright and as such I feel a little dis-attached just now. Suspended between two extremes, barely moving in either direction. Limbo. Waiting for something to change but I don’t really know what. It’s a strange feeling.

After an intensely creative and productive month my work has all but dried up. I’m struggling to concentrate, struggling to ENGAGE. My words don’t flow, my fingers and my eyes don’t cooperative, my brain feels leaden and heavy. That vein of creative, pulsing energy is shut up tight to me. I know that this is normal, that natural lulls are part of the process but I find it so frustrating. It is against my nature to be still, to be made to stop. I fight it with all my might. It seems like all I can do just now is get through the day and juggle its demands and that has never been enough for me. I thrive on more, more, MORE. Making do is not very me.

Last night I went for a walk with my camera. Wanting to get out, to spend time in nature and take pictures is usually a good first sign that I’m moving back into a period of productivity and creative expression again so I was glad of that. I’m not a religious person, as you know, but my local cemetery is one of my favourite places to be. There is something about the centuries of meaning and the quiet peace of so many dead people that I love.

I watched the sun set and the light fade.

And I felt hope and I felt peace. I felt right.

Somewhere deep in my bones and my blood, I feel like the wheel is turning. Slowly picking up speed again.The feeling of being so STUCK will not last because nothing is more certain than the fact that everything changes. Everything IS changing. And I need to be ready

Maybe I need to embrace the dusk, in all its beauty and darkness. Because it’s a point of stillness before a new day and it holds with it all the promise of a new dawn.

Maybe atrophy and retreat and disengagement are ok just now because I know soon I will be thrown back into that current again. The one that makes me feel alive. And I will need all my energy and all my reserves because it looks like it’s going to be one hell of a ride.

This post was written for week 21 of Tara’s Gallery.

The theme this week was ‘Nature’.

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