day three

Day three in Colorado, first time writing here, mostly because we've kept pretty active. Botanical gardens. LoDo. Cherry Creek. Airport. Ft. Collins. City Park. PF Chang's. Buying a canoe. Pus, it feels rude to sit and write while visiting.

Of course, it's just after 7:15 now and I've been up for over an hour and everyone else is asleep, so I sit here in an Adirondack chair staring at the hint of mountains in the distance, visited by family pets and trying to ignore the noisy squawking of the blue jays. I'd hoped being here would wake my slumbering muse, but she still dozes, oblivious to my need for her. I think back to my last visit here, must before the great train adventure and remember the words that poured from my pen, thoughts and insights that now seem written by someone long gone. What was it about that time? Was I more aware? More open? More awake?

Or perhaps it was because I had 10-12 hours a day on a train with nothing to do but write....

Lately I've felt like I've been stumbling through my days half-asleep and while the insomnia contributes some to that, there's something deeper going on. I'm broken inside, only I can't find the cause, only the symptoms. Sleeplessness, self-loathing, joylessness. An easy annoyance with life. A sense of being left behind, stuck watching others lives change and grow.

I am reminded again of the quote Karin shared during her talk in June - "Comparison is the thief of joy." How true and how difficult to live out.

I look at the horizon and know the beauty of the mountains in the distance, but the morning mist blurs and fades, giving only an impression of what lies there, obscuring their gradeur. But as the sun climbs the clouds behind me, the peaks become clearer, sharper, inspiring, beckoning. We see now through a glass darkly, but clarity will come. Slowly. In its own time. We cannot push it. We can only wait. Æ