I was just so involved in the ritual passage from 2012 to 2013, that I was totally unaware of any discomfort, difficulty, disingenuous pranks - if you get my drift - that after what seemed like a very long, focused and concerted effort, I was in a strange place with no recollection of 'passing' anything or 'body'.
Nope. I was aware of a sense of non-reality but in no way threatened by it. (Truth be told, I've always seen the world in composition - since I was a kid. Still do. Still am. Stuff is around me - all interesting - and, in some odd way, blending - going together, as it were. So this sense of 'non-reality' had the quality of adventure rather than threat. In case you were wondering. Even if you weren't, 'non-reality' is OK by me. Guess that's the point - if there MUST be one)
Now there was this 'poster' - for lack of a better word - sort of planted, attached to a two by four, in the brightest of green grass right in front of me. I noticed it not because of its message or design or colors even. Had I taken one more step, I would most definitely have tripped over the damned thing. Having thus stopped, I thought I might as well read it. Aha! No fool I. Gremlins were most assuredly about. (Never quite got that usage of - "about". Rather like the incessant employment of "they" as in "They say. . .", or "What will 'they' think?". Who/what is the entity 'they' and why are we such slaves to its input? Well, "about", when one really means, ". . .seem to be all around us" has the same grating effect on me. So please accept my apologies. Like any other common sheep, I was just blindly herding along, inflicting an awkward usage of a word that should be banned from erudite parlance unless one is re-creating or buffing up one of the tales Grimm.)
Clearly, although not aware, I must have endured some form of difficulty during my passage into the new year. Had I not, you would not be suffering through this tripe as I fumble around verbally, in an attempt to describe a simple transition. It's a new year. I'm apparently going to be functioning my way through it in some fashion and that should be that. But that Irish adage does not bode well. Why, I ask you, did it present itself to my consciousness at the very threshold of 2013?
I can only turn to my ever-constant mentor, Dr. Carl G. Jung, Swiss psychiatrist/rejector of his own mentor, Freud, and the man who gave us the definitions of introvert and extrovert such that we could categorize and, to some extent, better understand ourselves. In this instance, I must rely on Dr. Jung's emphasis on dream interpretation. For him - and by association, us - dreams play an important role in our psychic integrity and makeup. Indeed, he would probably rely on what he calls the "day's conscious leftovers" to confront this vision of an Irish-clad placard.
Carl Jung - at his intellectual sharpest - would see this image as representing the after effects of 'things Irish' with which my mind/life has apparently been affected. Of course, although 'Jung at heart', I'm not in his 'intellectual clarity' league. So of course, I would scratch my head (never disturbing any cranial tissue involved with awareness or logic) and wonder aloud, "What's up with the Irish adage?" On deeper reflection, I realize - and probably had repressed - I've been rather deeply involved/affected with things/people Irish of late. And, sadly, said issues have not been pleasant.
This, of course, explains my confrontation with this particularly acerbic Irish 'tude instead of rolling down the green hills into the new year humming a little merry jig or recalling the comforting strains of "Turaluralura" as my husband's grandmother would sing/whisper it to a crying child. No. I came face to face with that devilish Irish trait of superiority laced with wishes of ill fortune befalling the unfortunate among us who were not lucky/smart enough to actually be Irish.
Well, I'm certainly glad that's solved. Now I can just get on with 2013, ever aware that most likely there will be tests - of fortitude, fortune, fealty and, Lord save us all, perhaps finality if I have to keep up this alliteration fixation. And I was so hoping for an easy, breezy kind of 'enough already with the troubles' kind of year. In truth, we all know there can be no real growth without controversy and conflict. And, you are reading one girl for whom growth has its own rose marble altar, studded with little cushy velvet kneelers and scented tapers for the rare moments of true need in this arena.
You also may have noticed, or not, that learning/accruing bales of useless but fascinating bits of information is yet another of my passions. So then. Beginning the new year, after a trying but immediately forgotten passage - kind of like labor and delivery with La Maze - only to be faced with a foreshadowing of time spent in the arduous but oh-so-rewarding enterprise of knowledge acquisition is, uh, well, OK by me. Like Alice, I'll make it an adventure. There. Here's to 2013 and e-d-u-c-a-t-i-o-n! Here's to Mr. Carroll's description of it:
"Reeling and writhing, of course, and then the different branches of Arithmetic - Ambition, Distraction, Uglification and Derision." It shall be just as confusing to me as it was to Alice.
But I shan't turn my ankle. Nay, you shall know me by my primping - not my limping. We made it to a new year, can see clearly now and we say, "Bring it on, Leon!" Or, "Cut off my Legs and call me Shorty!" However you want to roll, I hope to see you rolling next to me.
Later, Lorane. . . .
