Peace Is Boring?

In my writing room
beneath the shady sycamores
on a hot July day
my writhing head rests.
I summon the muse
but she sleeps like the dead.
Not even espresso
wakes her.

The famous blogger Monkey Man dreamed up the idea of the “Sunday 160” wherein one makes a statement in 160 characters counting periods and spaces between words.
(That explanation was in exactly 160 characters too.)
What people are able to say within the context of a text message is interesting. You can find them on the Monkey Man’s blog.

I haven’t had a real job for four years. My days consist of reading, writing, various projects, Alcoholics Anonymous activities, household chores, gardening, and managing the needs of my mother’s Alzheimer’s disease. Every so often my lifelong dance with depression spins out of control and I have to get involved with psychiatric stuff.

Recovery from addiction has lent a structure to my life for 20 years. It influences my outer life, because I go to a lot of meetings, and it influences my inner life, because I’m mindful of how I interact with the world.

I’m saying these things because today I’m a little bored. There’s nothing on my agenda except dinner and fireworks tonight with my daughter and her significant other. The projects that have consumed my life lately either have been completed (like preparing my poetry manuscript and getting a novel ready for a workshop next month), or are in suspension because it’s Sunday (like the pursuit of justice for my mother).

I’d like to write a poem, but nothing is jostling around inside of me, looking for a way out. Nothing is jostling around in me at all.

And the outer world isn’t exactly clamoring for my attention. The things that give my daily life structure are all quiet today. Both inside and out, it’s…. boring.

I once called my AA sponsor and complained that life was boring. I didn’t like confessing that because I had told my daughter a thousand times that “boredom is the product of an unimaginative mind.”

My sponsor told me that perhaps I was experiencing the lack of drama, chaos, resentment, and fear. In fact, maybe I was feeling PEACE for the first time in my life.

I guess I’m at peace today. I hope you are too. I think I'll go practice gratitude for feeling at peace by doing a little work in the garden.