Ritual of the Familiar

A lot of my things are in boxes. My books. My pictures. I believe we are experiencing what is fashionably called the 'in transition' stage.

It was not so long ago that the words 'in transition' made me giddy with the hope of new adventure. New friends, possibly a foreign country, a wild affair, fodder for 'the' novel. Sometime in the last while 'in transition' began to mean a form of menial labor: packing, repacking and then the searching for packed items lost. As months rolled by, the translation of in transition is not so much the promise of adventure, but mostly the discomfort of uncertainty. The other side of the coin.

Curious. Everything out of place and yet exactly where I put it...in the boxes.

I think that I will get to the point where the boxes could blow up or blow away for all I'd care...it seems as though things cease to have meaning without the ritual of involvement.

Now I remember the smell of beloved books, the feel of crushed silk pillows, the sight of loved ones in frames- the lines and creases of their eyes so familiar. I walk by the empty spaces where my altars of love and devotion (not always to Mary; sometimes to long ago abandoned lovers, mostly to the pictures of children and outings to the seashore or a remnant of some old country) used to perch or lean.... and I feel a longing. Maybe for the ritual. The familiar.