I am considering that I might need to embrace rather than scorn the sleep that won’t come to me. Perhaps I’m supposed to lie awake to hear something which I can’t hear in my sleep. Maybe I’m like a new mother, having just given birth or about to give birth to something new and spectacular in my life….with sleep being temporarily a distant memory.
The storms in Atlanta have been dogged and meaningful of late. I adore weather, all kinds. I miss the smell of snow in the air and the first flakes which always, ALWAYS to me held mystery and delight. They beckoned free days from school as a kid, a lightness of spirit as an adult and certainly awesome ski runs and high flying powder on the slopes. I don’t miss the shoveling in Boston or the interminable winters I’ve weathered in Maine, though I’ve chased a snowstorm or two in my day, to be a part of the mystery, the grandeur of how heavy, white precipitation can in the right setting create a fantasy world fragrant with possibility and certainly fun! And I’m all for that.
So, sleep deprived again, this time from the worried pacing of my dogs and alarmed ‘meows’ from the felines in my house over the rattling of thunder and bright beacons of flashing light through the tall Wuthering Heights-like windows of my home. My animals become frightened with storming. I become quiet and soak it in like elixir. I love the rumbling that shakes and rattles each of my cells. I like the stirring that I feel, the movement, as though the storm is bringing in new energy, new thought, new consideration. I like movement. I like change…positive change.
With this, I am here in my safe bed just outside of Atlanta, thinking of the many places I’ve visited throughout the world. I recall adding pence to the heater unit in London to keep warm in January. I remember the very small flat I stayed in overnight in Paris where I took a photo of myself in the mirror to show I was there, or the photo of my shadow on the beach in Lanai, a quiet, small Hawaiian island and former pineapple plantation, (before Rupert Murdock overtook it). I’ve danced for hours on end with Dutch people in Normandy, eaten goat head with executives in Monterrey, Mexico and tried mightily to swallow fatty duck in Hong Kong offered to me by my gracious host. I’ve camped in the Wyoming Mountains, swam topless in the Italian surf, slept on floors, buses and small planes which I wasn’t sure were going to make it to the ground. I’ve done most of this as a solo adventurer.
And though I prefer at this point in my life to share a cab, train seat or car with a fellow traveller, I’m glad to have seen the world through my eyes. And though there is more to see, the view inside my head, or heart, is more full than any trip ’round the world might allow.
And so, with all the people and customs, differences and opinions, I still hold my head at a tilt, much as my dog Ernie does when he hears a strange noise, ‘what’s with all the intolerance’ I wonder. Why can’t we all just get along? Why can’t two opinions sit on the same plate, or my friend believe one thing and me another? Can’t I experience one thing and he another and it be okay? I didn’t see green and he didn’t see red. So? So what?
‘So tell me,’ I long to ask, ‘What was it like for you?’ And rather than debate why my vision is right or her sensing impaired, how enthralled I might be with,
‘What BB dear did you sense, feel, see, hear, fathom when you crossed the river, when you tasted the soup, when that stranger admonished you, the kind woman put her arm around you, that man told you he loved you….tell me, I want to know YOUR experience.’
There is more to share….my heart is full, my mind sodden with the falling rain and the sleep that won’t come.
BB Webb