Autumn

Everywhere the sounds of leaf blowers and scraping of rakes accompany the annual weeks of leaf collection.  If you pile them at the curb the city comes with road equipment and lifts them away into a big truck.  Halloween has been put away.  The local stores have skipped right over Thanksgiving and gone straight away to Christmas.  Eek!

Pioneer Park

Last year at this time I had moved into an apartment I thought good enough and came to hate almost immediately. By March I was in my own home again, a condo with a yard service to gather up the leaves.  Nothing like a little bad to point out the good.

I have a cruddy cold and I've been having a lot of cold related vivid dreams.  Visiting places I lived before, longing to still be there, even those places that really no longer exist.  Spending dream time with people I used to know, some of them dead and gone, like my parents and my first high school boy friend. It feels like searching for some new form or shape in my life.  It's made me call people I haven't contacted for awhile.  That's been good.  And it's also made me think about forgiveness.

There are some people I have forgiven but will never connect with again.  Our time together was toxic.  Some things can't be resolved just accepted, there's a pragmatic side to me that is okay with that.  There are some I just need to be very centered to be around.  Then there are my own mistakes. The ones I have a hard time forgiving myself for, and I poke at old wounds again in my half sleep. When I'm awake I know the "why" and made my amends.  Why is it so hard to forgive oneself?  Always the same old stuff, often around my children, wish I did this, didn't do that.  A job I never should have left but wanted to venture out.  These things ambush me when I'm half asleep or moping around in the night with a bad cold and feeling vulnerable.  I will be so glad to feel rested again.