mulberryshoots

I had a good day yesterday after a long string of bad ones. I sometimes get an idea in my head that I’m intensely engaged in but the next steps seem out of reach. I try different things to reach that end. I explore taking lessons, for example. It doesn’t feel right, or it’s too costly, or I can’t justify it to myself. There are lots of reasons why it’s not working. This kind of process can go on for weeks, sometimes months. I have learned that these periods of stagnation serve a purpose and that they too shall pass someday. Even knowing that times change, though, doesn’t help when you’re enmired in this kind of trough.

Yesterday, things shifted. Solely by listening to my intuition, answers emerged. Not just on one front or idea but on multiple fronts on the same day. I was in a flower shop and felt a strong urge to walk into a secondhand book shop down the street in a town far from where I live. I had a feeling that there was something waiting for me there. It was still raining after a sudden cloudburst had dumped torrential water from the sky. The air conditioning in the bookshop was still turned up and it felt chilly on my damp clothes. I didn’t know what it was that I was looking for (which is the case most of the time) and I picked up one book after another, paging through them.

Then, I knew I had found it. A paperback collection of short stories written by a minimalist writer. FINALLY! someone who wrote in a way that I had been searching for without knowing it. I had plowed through a list of writers whose work I was supposed to revere. But I didn’t get what they were trying to do; and I was puzzled by what all the fuss has been about. I had begun thinking I was so out of it in my understanding and taste that I’d never be a good writer. Or even a good reader. So many trips to the library with hopeful books only to be put off and returned unread. I paid for the book and slipped it into my bag.

The other thing that came together yesterday was somewhat different. I like figuring out how to reposition things that I already own so that they are not wasted. I think they call this “repurposing.” Weeks ago, I had seen something that looked beautiful on my hand but was so outrageously expensive that I dismissed it from the front of my mind. Yesterday, it resurfaced when an idea I had in the morning mushroomed during my drive into town. I had proposed the first idea to an artisan whose shop is nearby. We were on bartering terms now, turkey pie and farmstand corn on the cob for supper in exchange for some small repairs that he would not let me pay for the last couple of times. When I visited him the second time, his quick grasp of what I envisioned (and coveted) out of pieces that were languishing in my drawer felt like a trifecta of satisfaction: a) waste not; b)fulfill a dream; c)manifested by a magician/helper who is also a friend. It’s as if pieces of wishes and thoughts floating in the air suddenly clicked together once their magnetic fields got close enough to each other. This has happened before: alchemy that turned a sow’s ear into a silk purse.

I feel lucky today. More importantly, I have been reminded by the Universe that the magic is still working. I’m so grateful knowing I don’t have to do everything myself. And that help is usually on the way.