Spring and the Purim Moon
Thursday gratefuls: Diane. Rebecca. Mussar group. Rabbi Jamie. Evergreen Market Cooking School. A usual busy Thursday. Alan and Tara tomorrow. Shabbat. Then, Socrates’ Cafe. Jackie. Purim Spiel. Sunday. Ancient Brothers. Evergreen Chamber Orchestra. Busy guy. Bechira. Choice point. Kehillah. Community. Resurrection. New life.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Choosing how I feel
One brief shining: Got a call two nights ago from Joanne, hello Charlie, do you still want the Shema on your tallit, yes I do, thank you, you’ll look spiffy.
Over the next few days I’ll have lunch with Rebecca, breakfast with Alan, attend Thursday afternoon mussar, have a session on Jewish holidays with Rabbi Jamie, learn knife handling skills at a cooking school, continue work on my torah portion with Tara, participate for the first time in the Socrates’ Cafe, go to a Purim spiel at CBE, discuss pleasure with the Ancient Brothers, and attend a chamber music concert at St. Laurence Episcopal. Gosh. Cramming human interaction into a four day weekend. More than I usually do in a month.
All the while last week’s storm slowly sublimates, Great Sol beams it up, up, up into Water vapor. Half of my driveway looks like the leading edge of a Glacier with striations of Snow laid down at different points of the storm compacting each other, creating a layer cake look. In the back where the white has no disturbance the drifts and shallow areas quietly lose their height, as if they were a slowly deflating balloon.
My revenant from yesterday has moved on or sunk back in. This morning I’m glad to see Great Sol, glad to see my Lodgepole companion, glad to sit here on the third level of Shadow Mountain Home, and write.
Moods swing. Sometimes like that big, big swing in Bangkok*. A huge swing, over 90 feet high, featured in a ceremony with Hindu origins. Certain Thai folk would swing and swing and swing trying to reach a bag of coins placed on a pillar. Occasionally one would reach out for the bag of coins, miss, and fall to their death. Mood swings can have us reaching for a bag of feelings just out of our grasp, feelings that would either make us finally all right, or doomed.
So many suicides, I’m sure, were people on the Giant Swing, hoping for relief, any relief, from suffering, reaching for it. On a less dramatic note we can allow our moods to engulf us for a minute, an hour, a day, a week and while there to wreck havoc on our sense of well-being.
I’ve learned some tricks to deal with them. Tal’s How do I feel? Writing blog posts. Knowing that they’re moods and not permanent conditions. An awareness that they come and go. Perhaps talking of Michelangelo. Prufrock let his mood take over.
*According to ancient Hindu mythology, after Brahma created the world he sent Shiva to look after it. When Shiva descended to the earth, Naga serpents wrapped around the mountains in order to keep the earth in place. After Shiva found the earth solid, the Nagas moved to the seas in celebration and made the earth stable completely. The Swing Ceremony was a re-enactment of this. The pillars of the Giant Swing represented the mountains, while the circular base of the swing represented the earth and the seas. In the ceremony Brahamanas would swing, trying to grab a bag of coins placed on one of the pillars. wiki
