Purpose

Saw this coming. At least the weather service did, and I attended. Sometimes blowing sideways, or droppping these huge conglomerate flakes, some the size of squashed quarters, these snows of February. Rather beautiful, as I sit with a cat and a cup of tea.

Thinking about Dorothy L. Sayers, and P.D. James comment about how Sayers' problem was, she fell in love with her detective. At the time, I could see her point. But since my therappy, I think Sayers did what she had to do for her own life. When we can't have what we need, we flexible humans can create it inside and fill that need. Patch it up, make do.

Also realized that my insistence on facing the truth, although useful at certain stages of my life, became… well, how do I put this? I somehow thought that by facing the ugliness, I could make those who inflicted it, or stood idly and witnessed it, to see the harm. I could shove it in their faces, somehow, by bringing it up in my own head over and over. A test of courage, that was actually self inflicted martyrdom. This is not rational, of course. My therappist taught me to reimagine it, and I resisted abandoning the truth. Struggled with that, until I realized - I knew what laid beneath, nothing wrong with a fresh coat of paint, maybe a doily and a flowerpot.



What it was, what I needed to do, was to take what I had, and recreate it imaginatively. Just as an old, leaky tub can be filled with dirt to grow flowers. Make the rotten fruit into compost. Break it down until the parts are useful. The reality is not denied, still there, but turned from garbage into growth, art, function.

So Sayers took her broken heart, and wrote clever books with a love story to heal herself, and for some of her readers as well. Sour grapes. Stories to calm our yearnings.

Emotional recycling.