Barbaric Yawps

Days, years pass.  I've kept silent for a while, closing myself off--in large part due to forced online social exposure for "jobs" breeding a rabid desire for privacy at all costs.  Now, I've had the brunt of my work forcibly stripped away from me due to a new diagnosis, and I find myself missing something.  

And so I find words again.  Words that burn.  

And I find moments to rest and plan and dream.  

And then I take the time to mourn. 

I mourn that my photos app is now filled with pictures of treadmill statistics and pictures of meat labels so that I can track the prices. The hallowed place that I used to document beauty and wildjoy life has become a functional reduction.  It's been simmered down to a folder of documents and digits to "help me remember."

What to remember, though?  Remember the meat prices?  Remember that I'm making healthy progress after 20 years of chronic inflammation?  Yes.  But it could be so much more. 

So this day, I mourn.  I mourn that I haven't made space for intentional creation of beauty in the last few months since receiving a diagnosis.  I've been barreling through, cleaning the spots that haven't been cleaned, fixing life, and finding the "pain points" in the functionality of our family.  And I have been creating beautiful systems, but not beauty for itself.  

I suppose there is some sort of beauty to be found in a more peacefully run home, well-ordered, a more documented budget, and cleanlier bathrooms.  There is less chaos.  There is predictability.  Control?  

I'm in a time of reimagining what could become.  I suppose it's a whittling and a weaning, to mix metaphors.  What more will I lose?  What more can take shape?  Who will I become?  

So coming back to my words is a tenuous Song of Myself.  I'm sounding my own barbaric yawp.