Savoring The Weariness

The weekend is ebbing and I’m sitting here, freshly showered and dressed in clean cotton and winding down, waiting to get sleepy.

It’s a marvel that I’m not already sleepy, because I am bone-tired. But not because of physical exertion. A little while ago, I went out and picked some okra, re-tied some of the heavy-laden tomato plants, and watered all the flowers and vegetables. The humidity is hanging in the air like gray tulle, and I sweated heavily merely standing still with a garden hose.  I needed the shower, but I didn’t tax myself.

No, I am weary because this has been a weekend spent thinking, spent deep within myself, spent reflecting and asking questions of myself and of God and of any holy unseen beings who might be listening.

The sensation is a clean one. By that, I mean that my mind and my spirit feel clean from all the thinking and pondering and deep-diving dialogue. Yesterday morning, I knew the weekend would be different. By the time I took my early walk with its photo-snapping and flora-cataloging, I noticed that my vision was unnaturally clear. I usually have to squint to see beyond a certain distance, but yesterday morning, I stood still in the road in a sweet little glade of trees and peered across the pasture at a treeline, where I could clearly see three deer in the shadows. I felt taller, and I felt younger. And all the time this self-inventory was occurring, I was still talking to God, to myself, asking questions, probing, dissecting, inwardly frowning, ruminating, perhaps even gasping a little. Walking back home, I crouched to admire some wild morning glories. They were white, and they looked as if they were made from folded vellum. I was whispering into the morning air and my words, holy as they were, must have disturbed the spider inside the blossom closest to my face, because he came out to rebuke me with his many-eyed glare.

Today was more of the same. My waking hours have been almost completely taken up with reading, jotting in my notebook, and deep, deep thinking. I will continue this inner dialogue until I grow sleepy enough to go to bed. But I wish right now that I could take the entire week off while I am in this deep harbor and drift in the cold waters and think my thoughts and scribble my insights and lose track of time as I have for two days under the yellow heating element we call the sun.

Oh, to be able to maintain this sensation for an extended period. What things I might discover. What conclusions I might reach. I might even come to understand how a purple morning glory on my back deck can look as if lit from within.

I am so very weary right now. And I am holding onto it, enjoying it, reveling in it.

Because it didn’t come easy.

~ S.K. Orr