Musings Putrid

“Imagination, therefore, is nothing but decaying sense…”

— Hobbes

“I felt a strange delight in causing my decay.”

— Robert Browning, Pauline: A Fragment of a confession

Allow me to share a story about potatoes…

the ones I bought two months ago.

They were sitting on top of the microwave oven in the bag from the store.

Just four potatoes.

I glanced at them in passing

every time I walked by…

they looked fine

no problems

“I’ll cook them soon,” I would think — but I don’t eat many potatoes.

Today

Today

Today of all days

I looked closer

— picked up the bag to examine them

and a familiar necrotic, putrid, smell of decay hit my nostrils…

On my way to the garbage can, trying to get the flimsy ‘bring the vegetables home from the store‘ plastic bag to its destination without getting the smelly oozing nastiness on my person

it broke.

The potatoes that looked okay on the surface,

fell to the floor

splattered

and

exploded

all over me

the floor

and G-d knows where else.

---

After my initial “Holy shit I am going to throw up” reaction I set to cleaning up the mess and started thinking.

---

I thought about how my soul is like those potatoes

my grief and mourning is like those potatoes

my healing process is so much like those potatoes.

I set the intention to cook by buying the potatoes

I know how to do it, I have the tools to do it.

The vision is clear. The plan is in place.

But the execution of the plan, the follow-through, the completion? The end-result?

Is entirely up to me.

How badly do I want to eat those potatoes?

How badly do I want my soul to reflect radiance?

My grief and mourning to be purposeful?

All to contribute to the process of healing?

Because one can look positively ravishing, mouthwateringly, gorgeous on the outside,

but be as putrid and disgustingly full of decay on the inside as those potatoes.

Intention

Action Plan

Execute

Result

I will heal

I will use the tools I have been gifted with the support of people who sit on the bench with me in my safe, sacred place. Knowing, and fully aware that I will move between the world of the living and the dead. Between mourning and healing. That the journey will never be complete until I take my last breath. I will continue to do the hard, hard, work of being present, stopping the self-sabotage, and leaning in.

I Will Heal.

I will become Radiant from the inside out

XO Lisa