And

Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things. Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do know come into your eyes.
Let desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be the mountains.
Let the path of your fingertips be your maps and the ways you go be the lines on your palms.
Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing, and your outbreath be the shining of ice.
May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses.
Walk carefully, well-loved one.
Walk mindfully, well-loved one.
Walk fearlessly, well-loved one.
Return with us, return to us,
be always coming home.


~Ursula Le Guin



Day seven and I maybe perhaps dont feel foggy today. I think getting riled up about how to treat how to treat Amy's feet and manipulations finally knocked me a bit more to my senses. I feel way more like myself today, still a bit doe-eyed nostalgic girl for my likings, and already missing and worrying about my next off-shift. But a bit more grounded in my body than I've felt all week.

It's warmer today, and the sun is blessedly still out. We are pulling the girls off solos as we speak, and will fill the rest of the day with ceremony and debriefs and check-ins and all the ordinary logistical nightmare that the week's end brings with it. Martha will leave tommorow, and Dustin will shift over someitme thereafter, and I have the chance to make this a new week if I wanted to. To stop dragging my feet and counting the hours and do some real and solid and good work.

I have some serious processing ahead of me with Amy in the near future, the likes of which I'm not sure I know how I feel about. I've known she is a wicked good mimic, and quite perceptive to other peoples' smallest mannerisms and gestures. I also know how attached she get to Chris on our Thanksgiving double and how jelous she got about all the special treatment he was giving to Sara for her cold feet and "poor circulation". And now suddenly Amy is dying of the same affliction. Not that I don't buy that her feet are uncomfortable, but to me it seems like a pretty clear grab for attention, using methods she saw work on us before. My challenge before I start to process with her is to figure out in my head how much is legitamately a concern as far as her actions go, and how much is my lingering anger and resentment over getting ignored and not believed by staff last shift over the same issue. That was really my only mission though I don't think I voiced it at all, was to speak the truth of my experience as I see it, and not worry so much about the consequences of what people think or who I am calling out. I can be so much of a better and more effective mirror than I have been lately. I would reflect to Amy I think how indirect she communicates, and how frusterating the mixed messages she sends to us are. I would try to shower her how shes been acting compared to how Sara was that first week, and also remind her how much Sara's whining and special treatment frusterated her in that moment. I think I would also maybe see if pushing the whole mind-body connection might get anywhere, though I kind of doubt it would....but see if she can track on how she is feeling emotionally whenever she is complaining of feeling sick or hurt.

I'm sort of feeling the West today. I identify that as the yearning for the North but not quite having the resources or the energy to quite access that place. I want to go there and do that work, but feel like lethargy is keeping me rooted, staring at the sunset on the western horizon. I sort of feel like I have so much going on in my head that I should be able to work and move things and discover. Thats sort of exactly the problem though, I am fully stuck in my head. All the thoughts and feelings which I'm sitting with are totally and completely coming from my head. I think my North work at least for the next good long time will be learning to come from my heart more than my head, and distinguish the two. Most of my turmoil and haze this week has definitly been head oriented and head bound.

My heart? In my heart I feel excited. I feel tremendously lucky and sort of incredulous that any of this is even happening to me. I feel scared and anxious when I think about what has happened and the possibility of what is to come. I feel that in the small of my back, between my shoulder blades, and just below my xyphoid process. It feels tense and squeezing, and sort of rumbly. My heart sort of bounces between blissful exhiliration and close to terror. Though on second look thats not that far from normal...