exhaustion

One of my friends was telling me a story about filling jars with objects of different sizes. If you fill it with large stones, then with pebbles, then with sand, and finally with water, it is “full” at each stage, and yet continues to accept more. Try this operation in reverse order, however, and as you can imagine you won’t get very far.

As a metaphor for life, this means that if you don’t put the “big” things in first, you will never have room for them. I guess those large things are different for each person, but in my case I have long known that one of them is time to be alone and unhurried. Somehow, that knowledge slips away from me, though, and I find myself frantically running from meeting to work to appointment to date to telephone conversation with no space in between, no rest, no peace. I couldn’t even find time to write a short post on this blog.

And then this Friday I hit the wall. I didn’t want to talk to people, read anything, work, or eat. By the end of the day I was so exhausted that I couldn’t even imagine going to my belly dance class, no matter that I had stayed up late washing things to wear there. On the way home I stopped in the cigar shop to thank my Yemeni friends for helping one of my coworkers out (she needed pictures of tobacco products for an article). They had a huge bag of bread that someone’s sister in Brooklyn had baked, hard and round, with whole cumin seeds scattered through it and corn flour mixed in. They used to give them to me last Ramadan when I was fasting. I took two, went home, and sat in the back garden slowly drinking a cup of sweet tea and breaking the crusts off with my fingers. The night was still warm, no wind because of the high walls around me, no other people outside. Bliss.

In the end just giving myself permission this weekend to do nothing, meant that I didn’t have to. I did go to belly dance on Saturday, filling my body with a wave of “ gold endorphin light,” and drank a beautiful cappuccino standing up in an Italian-style espresso bar in midtown. I stayed in Union Square park next to a fountain with four drooling lion heads (they really do need to turn the water pressure up) and watched the brilliant light come through a swath of red tulips planted at head height.

That night I started a photography project I’ve been turning over in my head for months (more about that later, when I have something to show) and went out to celebrate the time I’ve spent with a friend who is leaving soon for three months of travel and then medical school.

Sunday was full of sleep, a very late lunch, and hours in a community garden, sitting in silence with a beautiful woman and her pet rabbit Toby. I had met her before, and liked her before, and sat quietly with her before -- I guess it is not the company of people that tires me but only the requirement of talking to them.

The large stone of silence and motionlessness, added first to the jar of my days, makes me feel curiously light and open, and suddenly adding in smaller things felt less like a burden and more like a balance. Why is it so hard to remember this? How many times must I have an epiphany before the shiny newness and wide-eyed surprise wears off, and the concept becomes part of my everyday knowledge?