Dust

It was not a night for long sleeping.  Perhaps the double feature of Sherlock Holmes and the movie The Girl in the Cafe had something to do with activity the prevailed upon my time of restoring sleep.  Perhaps it was the chat with my son.  Perhaps it was an example of how Pisces affects the dreamers like me, stirring the dreams into the waking sector of the night while being fully awake.  When I was first woken from sleep it was the hard pinging of rain outside the cracked window that niggled.  "Oh, you can ignore that surely."  I tried to convince my woken dreamer.  Shutting the window tight did not cease the stirred consciousness.  I climbed from the futon, Pete lay asleep deeply.  The rain had indeed begun.  Smiling to myself the thought of the snap peas we had set into the freshly tilled community garden in Lowell drew a grin onto my face.  We hadn't watered them yet.  The clouds did that for us, and I thank 'em!  Dressed in my night shirt I unlocked the front hatch, slipped into my boots.  Glad for my glasses already in place I stepped consciously on the wet wooden steps.  The dust from the short night of sleep washed from me, and I rounded the back of the vardo to find the Denny foil we use to cover the tires from their out-gassing.  "When did that blow free of the wheels?"  Asking no one but my own dear self, I picked up the foil, the offending receiver of rain drops and tossed it under the trailer.

A small thing like this is a magnifying glass of accomplishment for this old gal.  In the years of our flight from this or that, I have been too weak or debilitated in some way, to do such small and comforting things to comfort the two of us.  It has been Pete who shouldered the fix-its and dos.  I climbed the stairs with an acknowledgement ... "Well done, old gal."  I said to myself.  Believing I might be able to reclaim the night of sleep I nestled under the silk comforter and sought sleep.  As I said in the beginning, the dust of dreams was stirred into the inbetween times and instead of sleep there was an inventory of my present come to give me a call.

Rather than ignore or ask the dust of dreams to wait for a more convenient time (and when might that be?) I met accumulation as a gift-present and the result shows itself today.  There are actions I need to take with assertion during the remaining days of Mars the planet of action in my 7th House of relationships.  The dust that accumulated last night was all about my relationships.  Fueled with that tiny step outside our home in the drizzle of rain, it was my own act that moved the small yet disrupting metallic pinging of raindrops on foil.  I call upon myself rather than habitually call upon my beloved asleep beside me.  In the darkness of early morning I felt my place in the life of my only son; weighing it for worth I felt the old 'not-quite-good-enough' dust devils clotting up the corner over there.  I heard the voice of strength and clear-sightedness telling me "Dust that!  Out with it, old gal.  Dust that!"  I did.  My role as mother/parent/role model is as real as I can make it; and that will be good enough.  "I am here for you," I said to my son.  And it is true. 

Last Friday, I wrote about the actions I have been taking to use the energy of Mars in retrograde.  Click here if you'd like to tie it with this "Dust."  Seems my crisscrossing dreams of last night were working on my notes and so I continued by doing some internal home-keeping.  The reminders on that list are ...

• Learn to barter so everyone wins

In my waking dream, the dust of fear and toxic regrets offered up a solution as Pete and I create a new venture.  We have a vision, are in the process of details to create a service and live with our very best of friends who is also the advertising manager of the community newspaper where we live.  I saw ways to partner up ... those ways are moving up progressively FORWARD!

• See yourself through the eyes of others

Earlier this week I chanced to meet a collegue from a former life; a life where I was visibly successful and the only woman of color creating the first computerized systems in the field.  The irony of that success is that it was during that decade that I became exposed to product, fragrances, chemicals and building processes that would add to the toxic-over load.  There is a massive ball of old dust the clings to me as past failures.  That life is done and like sleep that will not come, I try to force that dust into hiding.  No longer, the meeting cleared old faulty self-description.  The collegue was kind and we welcomed our common past.  If he saw my tattered clothes, he did not include judgement in his conversation.

• Commit to something or someone

It is to my marriage and the goodness of that something and someone that I commit.  Dust collects quickly and is easily ignored.  While my husband slept and I dusted, I heard him stir with the sounds of burden that comes ... I reached for him and soothed his spine curved into the protection of the fetal curl.  The curl did ease.  How difficult was that?  Not difficult at all.

• Set standards for yourslef as a role model and seek that in your partners

Pete is outside now wiping down and dusting the walls and floors of the vardo as I conclude this rambling.  In the full spectrum of the cloud-muted Mill Town morning, a piece of email waited in my INBOX.  Serendipity?  That could definitely be its name.  The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is a collaboration of experts with this mission:

At EWG, our team of scientists, engineers, policy experts, lawyers and computer programmers pores over government data, legal documents, scientific studies and our own laboratory tests to expose threats to your health and the environment, and to find solutions. Our research brings to light unsettling facts that you have a right to know.

Clip art: gustavus.edu/groups/unitedway/images/cleaning.gif

I subscribe to the EWG newsletter, as a source of facts that help us sort the fiction from the near-truths.  The mail I received today was about 'TOXIC CHEMICALS IN HOUSE DUST?"

This is the way the EWG Tip begins:

TIP 9: GET RID OF THAT (TOXIC) DUST



Dust bunnies aren't just unsightly and sometimes allergenic; they contain toxic chemicals. Why? The many chemicals in and around your homes wind up in your indoor dust when they migrate from home products and come in through open doors and windows and on your shoes. But the good news is it's pretty easy to keep those dust bunnies at bay -- and reduce your family's toxic exposures, too... click to read the entire article

It's a rambling one today ... and isn't it just like dust to be that way **smiles**

Dust away!
Mokihana