knackered

it's late, i'm way tired. but i can't sleep. tried. an hour into the attempt, i opted for ye olde keys. figure i got something to say if i can't fall asleep (or i'll come up with something since i'm here, your call).

knackered is a word i've heard a bit lately and it is how i feel. wiped. utterly. one friend i'm getting to know here in ny commented,

you guard your time.

and i do. fiercely. i have not written here much of late, some by intent, but mostly because i have so much going on. i try to only do one homeschool excursion per week, factored in with other run of the mill excursions, it works out to a couple days out of the house a week. the other times, we are at leisure to go to the library, or be about the house, whatever we'd like. and that is how i like it.

running around in traffic, getting lost, they hold no allure for me. if it weren't for the people waiting at the end of the chaotic drive, i'd not venture out. i'm content to be about the house.

the old style of homeschooling. staying home and doing school. seems there's a term out there that is: carschooling. something i could not do.

i say no to a great many things, so when i have to exert monumental amounts of energy (for me, that is), to be about the town and relatively decent to my fellow man, that i can do that. i don't like being frazzled when i arrive places. or frantic when i have to get out the door.

but i'm tired now. it's very late, and i just can't seem to catch any zzzzzzs. so i figure i needed this little cyber chat to soothe me into slumber.

i've been thinking a lot about the people i like the most, those deeply centered types. spent the better part of the day with one (and i hope i didn't rub my bad vibes off on her), but she gracefully managed her house full of guests and seemed at peace.

that's all i want really. that deep core of peace. i don't got it. (i was thinking, wouldn't it be great to have a bad grammar day, when we just use atrocious grammar and get it out of our systems? it would be fabulous if you ask me).

hyper-drive is more than just a luminous core at the center of the space ship enterprise. sadly, it is, appears to be, my core, at least to a small degree. the only way i can combat that tendency to freak out is by copious amounts of down time. silence. stillness.

hard to come by in new york. there is hardly anywhere unpeopled here. saturday when i went for my hike, i ventured off alone. i was on a trail that i probably should not have been on alone. i kept thinking, as i nearly tripped over a stick that was buried under leaf debris, this is how people die. no one knew where i was because i was supposed to be by the lake, not in the woods. but i had to get in there. to see the place unadorned. to tread upon the carpet of mulch which once twittered in the breeze. i could hear the last dry souls clatter, it was that quiet. i sat by a brook for a while and listened to the babble. i saw ferns holding their own against the cold, and wondered if i was the green mossy growth clinging to the monolith boulders protruding from the mountain. if i had found sheltering nooks where precious little could grow, carpeting the hardness with a lush green plume of spongy softness. or do i do myself too much credit? it was not so starry eyed a thought as it sounds. i was thinking, moss is so transient. so easily torn in great swatches from that to which it clings. nothing can hold it there against the rend. while the boulder stands for all time. steadfast. immovable.

but i've gone off my point. if i had one.

one thing i did not mention (and i tell you everything), is i went to an exhibit in the natural history museum called butterfies in winter. paid fifteen dollars to get in, and i'd pay it again in a heartbeat. though it was ten thousand degrees and humid as the day is long, it was sheer delight. no butterflies landed on me, but i saw there, the atlas moth--giant of the winged world; zebra longwing; many others i don't know by name and will likely never see in their natural habitat. it was the kind of display i find immensely gratifying.

amidst all the stuffed animals peering at you with glass eyes, snarls forever frozen on their faces, these gentle souls wafted up and down without a care in the world.

the butterfly lives to reproduce.

not a bad gig if you ask me. not too different from humans. though we don't get about with such ease, or style.

i long for the butterflies of spring. the long cold to end. the deep silence to begin afresh. and me to find some place in it all. my place. at the center.