Don’t stop me now

Do you ever feel the desire to just get in your car and start driving with no destination, simply the need to get away?

This past week, I have felt an intermittent urge to either get in my car with my dog and drive until I can drive no more or to go outside and start screaming until I have no breath left. Then, I will just stand beneath the cottonwoods quietly. Maybe, I will cry, but I don’t know.

I feel the need to assure my dad here that there is absolutely nothing wrong with me. I am fine. I am feeling what I feel and pouring my heart out on the written page. Nothing more. Nothing less.

My dad worries that I share too much in my writing, but I find that writing alone without sending my thoughts out into the virtual universe is less meaningful to me. I feel less alone, and I hope I help my readers to know that they are not alone as well.

I see my role in this life as offering an opportunity for others to share their story, to be heard, and to share my own experiences in between.

I am not a rock like Paul Simon. I love rocks. I pick them up everywhere I go if they seem to wish to travel with me for a while. But otherwise, I am lifted in the presence of other people.

I do restore myself by being alone or sharing a space with one or two other beings—cat, human, canine, avian, tree, river (not necessarily in that order).

I love the rocks in the Granite Dells that surround my desert home.

But this morning, I woke up and felt the strongest desire to get in my car and drive to the ocean. I always feel better when my water is surrounded by water. It is in this element that I am most at home.

There is something about a large body of water like the ocean that has always given me the sense that there is an escape should I need one. Only water provides this kind of relief and comfort.

Water is clear and free of clutter (save the gyre of trash in the Pacific). There is only what is and nothing more.

In the absence of the running into the ocean, I walked around my house and tried to clear away the clutter to get to the essence of my home as if it were an ocean.

I lit a candle in my music and yoga room. I sat on a block I bought yesterday after experiencing an asana called “broken toes” that I felt like I could stay in forever. I had wanted a green block, but there were only purple and orange, pink, and red striped. I let my desire for green go and went for orange and red. My sacral and root chakras need work anyway, so I might as well sit on those colors.

I sat on my block, closed my eyes, and chanted Om three times. I chanted in a whisper because there was an 18 year old asleep not far away. She is sleeping still, for all I know. I dare not wake her.

I continued to chant the Om Namah Shivaya and closed the moment with a single Om.

Right now, besides continuing to purge my material possessions and gift them to friends and family, I am finding joy in writing, practicing yoga, chanting Sanskrit prayers, and listening to the Queen song Don’t stop me now. I imagine there is post-doctoral research in the connection between the two, but that is not my current path. I am satisfied in knowing what brings me joy and pursuing those pastimes. This is my foundation, and I can continue from there.

I know the ocean is there, and maybe one of these mornings I will wake up to the sound of crashing waves, walk outside, and run into the water.