No Place Like Home

I woke this morning to that old familiar feeling of fingers walking up the thigh. You probably know the feeling I mean. My first thought, as I lay there underneath the blanket, was that if fingers are ankling up the leg, then the hand doing the walking belongs to the ghost that resides on the third floor of the Inn of the Three Sisters in the Genome ancestral home in Pittsboro. 

If you're not familiar with Pittsboro, it's the village that lies beside the Haw River south of Chapel Hill and is not to be confused with Saxapahaw, which also lies beside the Haw River. Easy to tell them apart; they're spelled differently.

Gene Jirlds Copyright 2000 - 2024

But I've jumped the rails again. The topic is the ghost that's tickling my thigh. To face this ghost, as you may recall from an earlier post, requires a steel resolve if that's the term. But resolve isn't always abundant and it's been in short supply in recent days. I took a moment to breathe deeply and to muster the will. 

Be still, I said to Princess Amy, who you probably know as that almond-shaped cluster of gray cells sitting on her throne in the middle of my brain. She's fond of stamping her foot and yelling, Off with their heads! or alternatively, Run for your life! I believe Napoleon had the same temperament.

As I lay in bed, taking my moment, I happened to remember an old saw I heard somewhere--it may belong to Ms. Wonder. The gag I mention goes something like this (I paraphrase, of course): There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.

Well, you know how we Genomes are; men of action! I took that tide at the flood and threw back the duvet ready to claim the pot of gold or whatever it was the man had in mind.

Well, imagine my surprise, to discover not a pot of gold and not a ghost. It was Abbie Hoffman, the white-gloved assassin, walking up my leg and I was not in Pittsboro but back home in Durham! And Durham is a good place to be. All's well that ends well and all that.

Now, I would be misleading my public if I said that the prospects of late have been more than bleak. The birds have been singing out of tune and I'm pretty sure I overheard the bluebird talking about cashing in her chips and retiring to Miami. 

But today is different, which isn't surprising because nothing is permanent, as the man said.  Was it the Buddha or Shakespeare? I get them confused. But surely it was one of the other. They seem to be responsible for everything that's worth repeating. Have you noticed?

Wen, the Eternally Surprised, my once and future martial arts master, taught me that life comes hard and fast and that the prudent person is ready for anything. How to be ready he never said exactly but I gathered that it required acceptance rather than resistance.

Though things came that close to falling apart over the last few days, the flame of fierce qigong never died and I was able to extricate myself from the looney bin that is my limbic system without a stain on my character. Almost no stain. Very little stain. No stains that won't come out in the wash.

Where once the birds seemed to be in an unending argument, today they sing as though spring were just around the corner. It's a positive frame of mind and it's contagious. I share that positive outlook today and it's due in no small part to paying attention to those birds. Master Wen might say it's due to simply paying attention--period.

Whatever the cause of my new attitude. I'm not questioning it. I'm just happy that knotted sheets didn't enter into it. I must give Ms Wonder credit for helping to clean my mental windows so that I could see more clearly. That's all I'm going to say about it for now.

I will say that it's good to be home again. There's no place like it.