Just Like An Ordinary Day

I have lost my pendulum, or it’s conveniently misplaced, so instead I decided to use a pendent I wear sometimes (when I can remember to put on jewelry). It’s a ceramic disk that hangs from a black cord. The disk is green and blue in a Celtic design and I can almost remember where I got it. Ireland? Maybe. Anyway, I asked it if it would stand in for my pendulum, which I rarely use anyway but prefer to use over my Tarot cards, which I never really got into despite having the beautiful Robin Wood deck.

The pendant said yes.

My questions tumbled out in a heap, and the pendent hung quivering, black cord taut. I calmed down and breathed and asked my questions slowly, one at a time.

I’ve been so tired. Tired and not caring and not sleeping. Not doing. Keeping the blinds closed, especially on sunny days where the slap stings — wasted sunlight? how dare I? — and I close my eyes and sink into the next hour and the next. Some days I eat, and some I don’t. Google calendar tells me when and where I must go, when it is absolutely necessary that I do.

I’m starting to avoid things, like Tai Chi. And people.

Someone who didn’t know me would point diagnostic fingers at me and hurl prescription meds in my direction, but I know myself. This isn’t that.

Last week I freaked out a little about the future and dependency and the next day 100,000 people just perished, just like that. The smoke of 100,000 hearts wisped up into the air while the dust of buildings and crushed bodies and  hopes of today, or tomorrow, or even the sun were blotted out in an eyeblink. And people texted money and wrote and got on airplanes and did something to keep from feeling the WTF and the OMG. And that day I knew that my day-before freakout was a premonition, a getting-ready, and I thought fine, well, you’re done now, you can get back to normal.

No.

I told my pendent-pendulum to get me the hell out of here. I’m done, finis, finito, kaput. Please.

Not that a pendulum that isn’t even a pendulum has any power like that.

Today I went to the beach. Sorry, not a sandy warm, sunny beach. My beach, one of them, is a tumble of lush volcanic flow, suspended in time where it once met the edge of the water. Rock, meet water. Water, meet rock. Hi. The sun was waning but still evident. I squinted at the sea birds rafting on the water’s surface, and closed my eyes and held my face to the light. Breathing. All the while, cells in my body are multiplying, changing, readying themselves for The Next Thing.

The next thing.