This time of year is just… sigh
When I was in University, lo those many moons ago, I was quite interested in all things religion, and in particular, most things Earth-based. It wasn’t until my later years that I got all excited about Buddhism and Gnosticism. Until then, I was all about Wicca and paganism. My first year at Laurier, I gave a talk around this time of year to the then newly-formed pagan group the SEE (Students for Esoteric Exploration) about Halloween, or Samhain, or whatever you wanted to call it. I gave historical context, ritual practice, and religious significance and all of that. It was a pretty good talk if I do say so myself. One of the things that is agreed upon in earth based religion is that this time of year is somewhat special. It has to do with death and reaping and ancestors. It’s a time where one can be closer to the whole ‘out there’ that isn’t you. I’m not sure if my studies around all this made me more psychologically prone to self delusion or just more receptive to things that our ancestors have known forever. What I do know is that this time of year seems to bring with it an ever more predictable pattern for me.
For one, I find that I’m more unstable somatically. I tend to get more anxiety attacks around this time of year. I also often catch whatever the heck bug is going around. My sleep patterns get weird and I alternately sleep loads and loads or cannot for the life of me get any sleep. I have the most profoundly strange, vivid dreams that I often cannot make any sense of whatsoever. My skin starts to dry out and flake no matter how much water I consume or moisturizer I use. My muscles start to ache for no reason at all. All of this passes as this month passes over into November. I sometimes wonder if there’s some sort of seasonal somatic realignment that needs to take place for me that is most pronounced right around now, and will keep getting worse as I age.
Spiritually, I want to practice more rituals. I want to sit zazen, I want to walk labyrinths. I want to write in my journal in the light of candles lit ever more early in the evening. I want to cocoon, nest, hybernate away from people and draw inward. I want to listen to great music and discover more.
Emotionally, I become crazy unstable. I am moody, and I swing all over the place. Sometimes the leaves falling and the sight of bare branches fills me with sadness, and I feel like I’m completely hopeless, and other times, the sun shining through the colours and early sunsets with crisp air fill me with so much joy that I think I’m going to burst. Either way, it seems that for me, tears are never far off, such are the power and strength of the limits of my usually well-fettered emotions.
Practically, I feel this strange need for change. Just… something different from what I’ve been looking at and feeling for the last few months. I want to get rid of old things and replace them with new ones. I want to purge, clean, and declutter. In spite of this, I often find myself in a totally vegetative state in front of the TV.
It’s a totally bipolar sort of time of year for me. I’m sorta looking forward to having it all over with, even though I know that on the other side is Winter and cold, and I truly have no love for that season. But at least I can sink into the predictable sort of ‘blah’ that it brings.
This past weekend, thankfully, was a very good one. I got out a lot, and I managed to enjoy all of it. The weather was nice, too. I hope that we haven’t seen the last of the good weather just yet, but it wouldn’t surprize me if we have. This weekend, I saw the Penderecki Quartet play a concert. I went to hear David Suzuki give a lecture about just how doomed we all are (while Suzuki remains hopeful, and I think his hope is that by showing people just how buggered the world is he’ll shock them into action, I’m starting to believe more and more that humanity as a whole is too damned self-centered to ever be able to stay the coming tempest), and I got him to sign a copy of his autobiography. I saw Stewart McLean and listened to some good stories and music. And then I capped off the weekend with a long overdue trip to Goderich to see the sunset and take pictures, listen to the water and feel the wind on my face.
I dunno if there’s some sort of a correlation between the whole ‘thinning of the veil’ between life and death that supposedly happens around this time of the year and thinning of the barriers that keep my joy and sadness as separate things. I was still riding high off of all the emotions that the weekend stirred this morning, when one of my facebook friends mentioned the song “Tiny Dancer”. I listened to it this morning on the way to work, smiling my silly little butt off, at the same time sad and teary-eyed that the season is ending, and that I still don’t know what in the hell I’m doing with myself, and yet so, so grateful for my silly little life.