Empty Containers to Put Things In ...

Des epices by Laura0509

Once upon a time since 1999, my brain got punched in its guts.  Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is a tiresome and boring name, reflecting what happens to your life when it strikes.  But I much prefer its other name, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis.  It sounds much more mysterious, and now that I have committed it to long-term memory since it first befriended me those years ago, I can roll it like ribbon out of my head, enjoying the texture of the name as it unfurls.  I say it in my head as it rolls out of my brain - myalgic encephalomyelitis.

I also like it because its description honours the battering my poor brain received via the inflammation that I'm sure is the cause of my brain being simply so much more rottenly-behaving than it used to be :)

But then there is age.  There is that, too.

My brain might feel like it's rotting pure off its stem sometimes, but I still feel like it's got a bit of flexibility to it.  I like to sit and think and give my brain exercises specially designed for it.

Pic by Catface3 (noncommercial CC)

I love brain containers.  I like to inspect the mental containers that I put things in.  Sometimes, if I take something out of one container and put it in another, amazing sparks shoot out and new synapses form and I see something I didn't quite see before.

I hope to never, ever stop seeing new things.  

Sometimes, when I redefine the container I have put something in, I paint the outside of the box a different colour.  Or I put the box in a different spot, and notice in the new light a hole in the bottom of the box.  Sometimes I slot a divider into the box and put something else in I've never thought of putting in before.  And then suddenly, the contents of that container spring to life, and I see the contents so totally differently.

Who has time to work when you could sit and stare out the window all day, repackaging your containers?  I mean, sheesh, when is somebody going to pay me to do this?  :)

I love containers.  I especially love cultural containers.  We don't have a lot of them in the West so we starve, but I think that is going to change.

Pic by Thrift Store Addict (CC, non-commercial)

One day I would like to make real-life containers for other people to put themselves in, containers that are dark and womblike where people enter in and are transported to a different space.  A space to experience ritual.  Play for grownups.

The world is alive.  And the sinusitis that has plagued me for a couple of weeks has apparently returned my face back to me.  When you make space for something, and you don't even know what it is, when you put the lid on it and leave it to ferment in the dark, the contents spill in magically, into your dreams, into your noticing.  A space for you to fill. 

Something out of nothing.

Make space.