Well hello there, land of bloggers. I come to you with a mind overflowing with wonderings. Within the past two weeks I have found myself to be befuddled with emotions, and thoughts. My brother graduated last weekend and will be leaving us in a couple months. I will be sad losing him to college, we are very close and I will miss his humor and company greatly. There is friend drama, as always, that leaves me confused and drained as I try to figure out where exactly I stand in all of it....And work....always work.
I was blessed with an amazing imagination and love of dreaming, but sometimes I wish I could just stop thinking. I've shared my frustrations and confusion with some of my closest friends.
Feeling vulnerable, and sharing what's really on my mind is not something I'm used to. I have this rather dangerous tendency to pretend that everything is fine on my end. Shutting emotions and troubles away in a box deep in the back of my mind. But I can only talk to my friends so much before I feel like I am vomiting the same conversations on them over and over and over! (Sorry for that mental picture....although, if you are picturing physical letters of the alphabet raining down on my friends, then by all means laugh...)
*thank you everyone who has visited me at the salon in the past two weeks, btw. You guys are awesome!
With all this rolling around in my head, becoming tangled and more confusing as it gets analyzed over and over, I have found myself mentally writing psalms, drinking way more coffee than is probably healthy(which probably isn't slowing my brain down at all) and spending vast amounts of time sitting on a very special couch that is living on my porch. This couch is a glider that has been around circa 1930? maybe earlier. As far as I know it has spent most of it's life rocking back and forth on the porch of the Upper Clubhouse, an ancient building in the middle of Harriman state park in upstate New York, until two years ago when the owners of one of the appartments in the upper clubhouse decided they wanted it thrown away. WHAT! But you can't have camp without the glider!
We came back to camp one evening to discover the huge wrap around porch empty of this nostalgic piece. My brother, who works as part of the maintenance team, informed us of it's relocation to the dumpster. I was upset. I loved this glider! I was ready and willing and trying to convince my family to drive down there and load it up in our van and drive home with it in the dead of night! We totally would've been able to get it home and be back before 4am....if we left 'now'.... My father wasn't really thrilled with my spontaneous plans for adventure, and told me to let it go...but with my ardent arguing I had planted ideas in the mind of my mother. So....we went to bed, I slept in the kitchen...or was it the common room....and woke up to find that my father's mind had been changed... So, my mother and I prepared for a quick escape. We loaded up the skeleton of the glider, much to the pleasure of some of the older camp members who had also grown up with the couch and hated to see it thrown away, and took off to home. We met my grandparents half way and they took it back to our house. The two of us were back at camp before late afternoon, both of us beaming with excitement for what would be waiting to greet us at home.
Yes. I stole the camp glider.
...It makes me wonder what now sits on the porch of this enormous old house that sits atop the hill that overlooks more or less the entire grounds of Camp K-20, a family camp that has been around for about 100 years.
My family and I have had the privilege of hiding out there for a couple weeks each summer for 6 or 7 consecutive years. Last year we couldn't go because of my school schedule, and we hope to at least chill for a weekend there this summer if we can.
But when you're up there, it's like you're hidden from the rest of the world. It's wonderful. It's quiet and peaceful and such an escape. (Escapeeeee'....that's funny, it's spelled just like 'escape'!) And it's a place where you do a lot of crazy stuff, reckless stuff, fun stuff, and a lot of thinking...No one seems to really care where you go, as long as you wander into the kitchen when you're hungry. Tabs aren't really kept, and there's a vast amount of freedom. (Probably because there's not too much trouble you can get into up there...) But on rainy days, the whole camp shuts itself away and becomes silent. People nap, sneak away to the 'real world' aka - walmart, or, if you're one of the lucky few who owns a tv up there, you watch movies. Me? I liked to make a cup of hot coffee, grab one of my dad's big comfy sweatshirts, and gently sway back and forth on the glider.
Something about being alone, inhaling the wet air, watching the rain fall while being sheltered by the porch roof, it was peaceful, calming. I felt like I was sitting there, alone but not alone, with my chest ripped open and my heart exposed. Everything in my confused mind made sense as I looked out over a hill covered in wild blueberry bushes and ancient forestry.
And right now, I wish I could escape' to that. I guess, it's what I call "Being still, and knowing."
But I guess I'll just content myself with another cuppa coffee, maybe some poetry, and a gentle sway on the glider as I be still and know some more...
