I wake up with my new Russian Blue cat pushed against my legs. Day after day of dense ponderous rain has been falling. All of us welcomed it. The numerous fires breaking out every summer have begun early. They began in April and seered right through to May. Just a week ago we were choked by the brown-gray sky and warned against the evil of outside.

The rain appeared like a blessing that comes from a genii. It was instant. It was within the parameters of what the seeker of a miracle had asked for. But, as always with hope and fate and dread there was that twist, the sting of literally getting what was wished for.

My new thrift store shoes priced in the world of heavy-edged commerce at over $100 were red and sparkling on my feet soaked to the gunnels by the pooling rainwater. As I determinedly made my way to “accomplish” the purchase of items on my list, I was stopped twice by other women who were also wearing Italian-brand shoes.  We stood facing one another showing off our shoes and delighting in our “tribe” of niche consumers.

As my hair became rivulets to channel the heavy rain, I thought about how much my life had been about a rhythm of collapse in the face of opposition and then arising to heroically push forward.

as above, so below
as within, so without

The failed hip, the fear of death lurking outside my door, constant pain. The angels of hope kept showing up to grab me under each armpit and stand me on my feet.

Just before the smoke appeared to threaten our lungs, Tod, my companion cat became anxious and twitchy. He could feel it coming. He was restless and unsettled. Jumping from one viewing place to another, he had all senses alert.

And once the rain came, both he and I relaxed into a deep, long sleep.

“When will my life begin for real,” my ego asks me. “When will I achieve my goals and stand strong and triumphant?”

And then I remind myself that after 78 years of life, I should know by now, it is not a single track run for a prize life.

The struggle is always in the physicality of existence. I torture myself with phrases like “When will you be what you want to be?” I lash myself with the whips of familial and societal expectations.

Nobody tells a five-year-old that simply rising to a challenge; simply loving and caring for the body; simply having a consistently compassionate reaction to others is achieving something. Nobody hangs a gold medal on the chest of an individual who resists the mass hallucination spun out spell-casting of reality.

It is like pushing through bars of a prison, this life.

And as I wake up with Tod, the cat laying on my left leg with his legs wrapped around my calf, I hear him purr.

And as I wake up still alive and held by my body with no pain, I know that pushing myself into satisfying some installed craving by my ancestors, my society has once again been avoided. I am focused on living peacefully. That is a life beyond the insanity of hallucinated chaos.

I watch my thoughts and my actions and I see how skilled I am becoming at dismissing the siren’s call asking me to run my life based on fear and phobia.

Yesterday, I thought, “You have been so closed down, you have forgotten to look at a flower.”

Today, I intend to spend time appreciating the miracle of a flower continuing to burst forth in beauty in the midst of cold, killer smoke and heavy beating rain. How heroic is the lilac, the daisy, the iris. We are like that. We are blossoming. We must congratulate ourselves.