Old Words

New chapters. They are always written with the same old words. Words that have been said and written the same way for centuries.

I had a nightmare last night. In my dream I had awakened to find myself laying in the dirty streets of a third world country. My mother was walking up to me and started up a conversation as if it was a perfectly normal morning. The ever present thought in my head finally blurted through my lips in a scream-disrupting her commentary on the crazy, filthy world around us.
“I don’t want to be here!” I sobbed, looking around me as tears poured down my face.
“Of course you don’t.” she smiled. “No one thinks they want to be where they are. They are always reaching up for something better. Something cleaner. Something more than what they have been given..”
She stood me up, straightened the thin cotton dress I was wearing and tucked a stray whisp of hair behind my ear.  “But it’s only once you are able to start walking here that you can get somewhere else.”
“But I can’t move my feet!” I whimpered., feeling the claustrophobic oppression of the world crashing in on me.
“Ah, it takes practice to acclimate to where you are. And once you finally start moving you will realize the new places you will be are not nearly what you thought of them. You will find you don’t want to be there either.”
“Then why should I even try?”
“Because… you must.  If you don’t you will always be here. Filthy, scared, dirty and unhappy.”

This morning I sat on my porch drinking my coffee. I had just watched my four babes pile onto the country school bus. The same one that has run on these streets for years. My youngest was asleep-wrapped in yards of stitched string that had been grown, produced and spun the same way since man discovered the wool of lambs could be entwined into beautiful, useful masterpieces of warmth. The breeze ran around me and played with my hair. Birds were singing their same song-Everything so familiar, yet new to me today.

I look around my house and chuckle. Clothes and toys strewn all over the floor. Our Australian shepherd, Archie curled up by the window-an essence of dog emanating from his furry being. I can smell the dirty dishes wafting in from the kitchen. An empty gutted piano sets beside me waiting to be sanded and for its transformation into a writing desk to be complete. Everything around me sits in chaotic silence- waiting for me to make a move.

I haven’t really drawn a point from my wandering thoughts today. The same idea seems to weave in and out of my words, yet after rereading them all I am still unsure if anything I’ve written has supported my thoughts

New beginnings start with the same opportunities and  the same dreams that have been alive for generations.
Today is a beginning. Today is a monotony of sameness. Today is perfection.

And as the chair I have been sitting on has just broken and left me in a heap of solitary giggles on the floor- I shall bid you goodbye.
 Or hello.
 It’s good to be back.