TODAY I'M FEELING...

[This is perhaps a bit atypical of posts to this blog, but it kind of deals with a form of contemporary insanity, and I'm in a sharing mood, so you get to hear it anyway. Plus the metaphor is just too good to keep to myself]

I think I understand how Jack'O'Lanterns feel. I would go so far as to say it's the most appropriate way to describe my current state of being. I've got this kind of warm glowing feeling, this sense of shining with friendly promise. At the same time, though, it's a bit drafty - as if everything that actually belonged inside me has been completely scooped out, as if I've been scraped clean and left empty. It's a very curious feeling, to be spilling over with light and yet completely hollow, and I'm not sure I'd recommend the experience. It's got its pluses and minuses, but it's got them at the same time and that's a bit tricky to deal with. I can, of course, deal. I know this because I've felt this dichotomy before, I just didn't have such a good name for it at the time. Now I do, though, so that's something... I can and I will deal, and in the future I'll be much more sympathetic to the pumpkin plight.

Also (and this is the one place where this feeling differs most from that experienced by the Jack'O'Lantern) it makes me feel tremendously alive, not tremendously pleasantly alive, but very alive nonetheless, and it's been too long since I've felt that.