Takes a deep breath and sighs.

Ahem, well, interesting times here, Journal Mine. First it was Ursel, my boss, my friend, my second mother coming to the festival and while I was psychically open having that experience with her aura...and feelings. Then yesterday, end of a long one of struggling physically, shoveling, weeding, scrapping, sweeping the driveway of rubble and using the huge street-broom to scour the foundation walls of the house...on hands and knees on the pavement and squirming around to lay on my side to prime those at ground and below ground level nasty basement windows, after all that, a quick shower to get off the paint and collapsing into bed on my face, at that moment the phone rings.

It is Ursel of course, voice bright and chipper after the full minute it takes for my aching back to unlock and I use hands on the doorframe to haul myself up off of our floor-placed futon mattress (gods damn legs. Useless! Useless!) and take the phone from Emile who is not going to be a go between in this. First thing she asks is if I received her email? I tell her no, I have been outside working on the house foundation all day. Little pause and slight “Oh” from the receiver.

Then she goes “happy” again and says how it is full of her thanking me for giving her that printed report, how both she and her husband are very impressed with it...then she asks me about this Thursday, am I coming into work?

Some talk, I explain--once again--how overwhelmed Emile and I are right now, how it is just us, how Emile has come down with a cold, how we need to have the house on the market in a week, and that basically, I can’t.

The voice at the other end of the phone goes silent. It continues for long moments before the question comes through in a soft voice:

“Are you saying that is it for Thursdays?”

Sighs... And I have to leave things there, sorry.

Today, woke up with the start of the same cold that has Emile in its grip; 4pm now and it is really seizing me up. Sinuses aching, move too fast and a pounding behind the temples starts. No biggie, got it covered.

No, what gets me a bit is earlier today, when Emile and I are standing in the shop talking about a sale--on everything. “What do you want to pack up and move with us?”

So that is it, the ending of many things of which our lives have revolved around and upon for many years. Things that were never supposed to end...and yet the time has come. It is here, it is now. Out with the old and in with the...what? What from here?

Well, I know many good things. I do not believe in hope, consider such a illusion, however, I do have sense of things, only today, right now, it is hard to pull myself above the weight that drags downwards. I hurt; I cry; I do my best not to think of anything, or worse, feel.

Well then, only thing to do is keep busy, keep active as am able.

Funny thing, the guy who said he read my blog at the festival sent me an email saying “I hope I didn’t scare you.” Chuckles. Wrote him back, he was the official photographer and here is the link to his website, WHALESANDWOLVES.

Jessie, that old friend I was mentioning the other day also came back in today. Missed Emile again since he was upstairs sleeping for a few hours, so it was just me and him talking about the events and energies occurring now for so many. Bunch of college kids came in and he left.

Ugh, I feel fear in my belly right now. I wonder why? No matter. Hardly the first time and quite frankly, I am too tired to care overmuch about it. I think it is because the clock is ticking down here, it is no longer a matter of months, it is days, hours, minutes.

How strange. The feeling so strong about what we are doing, what we have to do, and yet the Logical Minds says one is being a fool. That’s where the fear comes from, the “fact” that so little of this makes sense to the Logical Mind, this ending off all things known and knowable, the staid and “comfortable routine” of life being chucked out on whole. And yet it is there, these things are happening, and Inside there is a firm knowing it is the right thing to do...only what are we going to do?

Time to shift gears here, Melissa. If there is something that you can not do, then go do something else. Keep busy. Think--but do not dwell.

Fuck. Whole god damn house is out of tissue. Ha.

It’s time for me to go help out a friend...as if I were capable of doing any such thing. Well, if nothing else, one must try.

I hold up my hand before my face and see an image of scooping up all that rubble yesterday; bits of dirt and crumbled pavement and cement. Feel it in my hand, the powder and the dust sifting between and through the fingers. Dead weeds and the odd, rusty screw. It’s grittiness; the desiccated chemicals and old paint a chalky, clay-slick talc which disgusts, the filth left behind in the grooves of my stained palm and under nails when it is all gone. It is the past. Things built will never survive time’s passage. Chucked it all in the garbage bin.

I feel the world crumbling.

Ah well. Just take a deep breath, Melissa. Time to re-stitch the “Happy Face” back on.

Catch you later, people.

M.