In two days it will be the autumn equinox - on Sept. 22nd. Fall used to be my favorite season for reasons I've batted around forever.... it's cooler.... school began and I have cellular memories of being back in school and out of the house.... wow, check out the leaves!, no wait, I live by the beach, we don't have that many deciduous trees here, oh well... perhaps some karmic lifetime hoo-hah. "I've always hated summers," I've moaned. Wait wait, surely there's an audience... listen to me whine! I can elucidate this wretchedness, you know. And then this past summer came out of the attic, dusted off its need to be real, and I had the best SUMMER since I don't know when. 
I couldn't paint or draw well as a young child. Matter of fact, I don't find myself doodling now, basking in the glory of chest-beating artistic bliss. So I would get paint-by-numbers kits from some pokey Santa Monica art shop and make believe that I could paint. Put this color here and that color there. And it would almost look like a horsie or a mountain. I needed direction and I loved the seamlessness of connecting the dots. In a chaotic childhood, anything that made sense to my mind was a refuge in a storm. Even a $2.99 paint-by-numbers kit.
I am connecting the dots from summer and finding gifts that bless and surprise me. "There" and "here" used to be separate universes. Three guesses which was better, safer, quieter, yearned for. Not here. So this little survival glitch has followed me for quite some time. Of its many voices, "Go NOW!" is one of its most insistent. Battling with that voice has brought numerous opportunities for AFGEs (go ahead, Google it). The Good Girl voice says, "You be good. You show THEM how well you can be ... strong/committed/brave/intentional/{ad nauseum}." That's right! And then I fall into another dissociated depression and wonder what went wrong and where's the Holy Spirit? It just might be considered an instance of "tempting God" when I cut myself off at the heart chakra and solar plexus while I tell a Power Greater than myself to shower me with balance, blessings and not a small amount of chocolate.
I am connecting the dots from summer and finding marvelous things. I am learning that I can have an authentic voice, clear boundaries, yippy pleasure and not be a self-indulgent 3-year-old (sometimes; I'm still a work in progress). This summer, to my quietly trembling surprise, wasn't an either/or. "I had a really good time and so I'm going to go NOW!" Of course I can. Why do you think I drove almost 8,000 miles? So I could say "yes" or "no" to all that I encountered, a pattern I negated in myself in times past. Control issue? Sure. But not only that and it doesn't mean I'm merely an unevolved wimp-ass. I am connecting more dots, giving breath to more voices and finding cohesion where before there were little neat, separated compartments that had no intercoms or walkie-talkies between them. The DSM-IV has cool names for this kind of stuff (e.g. dissociation) and they can play with it. I'll color slightly outside the lines and take God's grace where I can breathe it in.
On another hand, I can tell I'm back in California. I was joshing with a friend about Botox, mildly bemoaning a few imperfections I'd like to make go away. It's a joke, of course. I mean, really. Botox? Please. How..... critically voiced! And my friend responded, "Well, you know the costs have really come down in the past few years." Thud. And those embarrassing spider veins in my legs, well, maybe it's time I saved for that non-insured cosmetic visit to the dermo and lunge again for some physical perfection now that I'm chugging along in midlife wonder.....
There's a car with North Carolina plates parked on my Berkeley street. They too drove a long way. It's dusty. I wrote in the dust on the back window, "Welcome to Callie!" I didn't know we wuz called that until I drove back East. Last night I parked behind this car and wondered if he or she would've washed off my friendly intrusion. Beneath my still-scrawled words were "Thanks!" I added a little more. Eventually I'll get to introduce myself.... or not. The financial markets have been outer-galactically insane lately (perhaps you've noticed). Little bits of earthiness give me a reason to be present in my life with and without reminders of Ram Dass's Be Here Now catapulting through my consciousness.
I am connecting the dots from this summer and today, here is a very good place to be.
