Plateau?

I feel like I'm riding the tail end of a bright and sparkling comet, hair blowing in the space-wind (there is such a thing, right?) and face alive with the future ahead of me and the recent triumphs of the past few weeks behind in the stars...

Except this feeling is so fragile, so sensitive... a house of cards (to switch metaphors) leveled by the slightest touch. Such is my life that I know to expect not only the unexpected but also the bitch-slap of reality and daily trifles.

To quote Elise, "I've hit a plateau." I could perhaps be headed toward greater heights, merely settling for a moment to enjoy the view, or I could be seated atop what is to become the peak of the mountain, about to slip, tumble, or descend with caution, who knows?

I suppose this is just classic anxiety kicking in or maybe some deeply-ingrained WASP sense of guilt for having been so happy and blessed of late... my friends are incomparably wonderful, my family has even reached some sort of stasis, my days have been filled with events and memories and I feel loved and appreciated...

So what could possibly be coming around the corner to tear it down? Is it completely terrible that I'm so terrified? I'm just not accustomed to long spans of general happiness... or really any span of general bliss... the past decade of my life has been certainly positive in many ways but oh so incredibly dark, "so dark, so dark and deep... the secrets that you keep..." [apologies for the Les Mis. reference]

It's just that... my life is a lovely and precious thing at the moment, certainly far from 'perfect' or 'ideal' or 'well-planned' but remarkable in the way everything is seeming to appear... even the weather is better and brighter than it has been in years... aside from the fact that it's mid-October and the record-shattering heat is a most alarming environmental issue... but it's sunlit and embracingly warm. One of my neighbors* (one I actually don't know and don't think I've ever seen in my life before) decided to take a little siesta in a chaise lounge outdoors this afternoon... wearing nothing more than a speedo!! SPEEDO! As in man bikini!

*For the record, he was at least quite attractive... and kudos to a fellow uninhibited spirit... but this is certainly uncharacteristic of Indiana autumn behavior. IE: Von Maur has already transformed itself into Santa-Snowflake-Holly-Jolly-Christmas-Land and there are roadside stands selling pumpkins.

Anyway, perhaps this is just life as it should be always?

From Blossoms

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

- Li-Young Lee