After a winter in the mountains spent listening to Outkast, Jason Mraz, Sarah MacLachlan, and rap vibish radio stations I now find myself utterly consumed by easy listening. Extreme easy listening. Easy listening for the listening impaired. Glen Campbell, Barbara Steisand, Steve Lawrence. Gentle On My Mind, Ma Cherie Amour, Evergreen, Hooked On A Feeling, Mack The Knife, Summerwind, Rainy Day Feeling. Everywhere I go - laundromat, stores, diners - its there to greet me, a soothing soundtrack for a new lifestyle of stress so intense my kitties run from my crashcrackling energy until after I have showered and done some massive deep breathing.
I know that part of it is the stress of my days, but its also something deeper than that. I'm repositioning pieces of my past, and the music seems to be one of the tools that Life is using. Easy listening of today is the pop music of my childhood, and as the tunes play, images rise up of when I was five, seven, two, twelve.
I remember driving down country roads in my mama's blue mustang convertable, curled up with our collie, Becky, in the backseat, drinking a YooHoo, looking for fairies in the roadside trees and bushes, in the clouds, in life that was in motion around me. I remember catching the bridal bouqet at a wedding I'd crashed when I was ten. The church was down the street from the projects we lived in with my stepmom. The bride was not amused, but I refused to give it back. I kept it for years.
Hearing Glen Campbell this afternoon made me remember my father, and I felt such love for him - not for the man consumed by drugs and self-therapy gone wrong, but for the man he used to be to me, my hero, strumming his guitar, my daddylove, his bright blue eyes, his smiling handsome face.
If you take away the fear I've been experiencing the past few weeks, what remains is wonder and amazement. That Life has concocted such a wild way for me to make amends for the arrogance, anger, denial, and self-absorption that I've inflicted upon others the past twenty five years. That I now get what for so many years I gave. I am humbled. And grateful for the opportunity to make things right.
Before thirteen I was merely wounded. After thirteen I became a fighter.
The time has come to give up the fight. I must surrender to Life. And so my subconscious harkens back to the time before the fight, to the time when I knew that all was well, that change was simply adventure, and that everything that I needed was to be found on the beach, in the forest, in a book, in the eyes of a loved one. And everyone was a loved one.
It is all Life. There is nothing else. And the place of power lies in the waking up with compassion, yes, surrender, yes, gentleness, yes. There is strength in surrender. There will be no more in fighting. There is nothing to fight for.
There is only taking action and staying in the sweetness, the wholeness, the gratefulness . . .
