Day: 4/9/08

A strange night this night.

I awoke at 1:30'ish in the morning to a fit of coughing. I had taken some Robitussin to control the cough not an hour earlier, but it didn't seem to have the punch to knock it out. So, I was left wondering what I would do about this situation. I felt a bit sore from the coughing so I figured what I needed was a good warm bath. Perhaps the vapors from the hot water would ease my sinuses and cough, and the warm water would ease my body.

We had some aromatherapy bath crystals from an earlier cold that had been in the house, so I threw a good heap of those into the tub and turned the hot water onto high. The crystals immediately dissolved into the water and the smell filled the bathroom with a pleasant odor of eucalyptus, menthol, and echinacea.

Not wanting to wake the entire house, I figured I would keep things dark and just sit in the tub without turning on the lights. I also thought that this would keep me from starting up my night owl tendencies to want to stay up if I kept things like I should be asleep. Not wanting to kill myself around the bathtub, I found a small candle and lit it and placed it on a small shelf in the tub so I would have a little light to work by. By now, the water in the hot water tank had pretty much run out and the water had turned cooler. The tub water was plenty hot, and I tested it, finding that it was too hot and added some cold water. Of course, this would be much more pleasant if I had a tub I could actually relax in. But, we make do with what we have.

So I'm relaxing as best I can in the tub and given that I did not really have much else to do, I sat and watched the candle while the water and bath crystals did their things. It is a funny thing to sit and watch...

I sat thinking about the past. People I could remember. Places I had been. Things I had done. I thought about the day's events, who said what, where I went, who I saw. I watched it all with a cold detachment, like it was a fleeting memory. No real emotion to it, just a fading film of time past.

I sat and thought about the future. I had talked to a friend, Faith, earlier regarding just what the future is and how divination foretells the future. I have found it best for me to consider that the future is not a set thing. I have believed it to be the result of a course of decisions. Given any decision we are offered, we have multiple paths that extend out from the decision. Each path is an option. Depending on which option we take, we lay out the future in a like manner. Divination is just the Universal Concious saying, "Hey! You've got some decisions ahead of you. Given the past and your nature, this is the most likely way it could turn out."

I sat and considered the relationships in my life. Some are better than others. Some I wondered what purpose they served. Some I wondered if they were really worth even keeping. We are often defined in society by the company we keep. If you hang out with a certain type of people on a regular basis, society has the tendency to just lump you in with them, even if that is not who you really are. Society does funny things like that. I normally dismiss such assumptions, knowing better who I am than what they perceive. But, like so many things in our world, things are based more on what we see than what we know.

I sat and considered the candle. Yeah, I know, but it is really interesting when you sit and watch the flame. The way it flickers back and forth. Almost...as if it is dancing for you. The way the wax melts, normally a bit unevenly. The smell of the burning wax and the slight wisp of smoke that you can see if you watch just right. I thought of days of old when candles were all there were for light. Before electricity, but out of the stone age. Simple, yet deadly, times. I watched the shadows and the light dance on the walls, in the water, all around. How it stretched and skewed this way and that with the changes in surface.

I thought about where my life was heading. What I needed to change. How I needed to change. Why I needed to change. In the world of the Chaote, everything is a possible change at some point. I even considered coloring my hair a nice shade of neon green. :) I thought it would look pretty good, but probably not until I was tanned instead of pasty white. :) My job, that was an easy one to decide on, that needs to change. My family...that is a difficult one to consider. I would say I am probably stuck with them until I die, or run off into the wild, change my name and never look back (but that might be a bit extreme... :) )

I finally found out that the water was getting a little on the cold side, so I broke out of my thoughts and took a few minutes to chuckle at how I had spaced out for nearly an hour and a half. I felt much better after all my time in the water. I wonder how much of my ease was caused by the water, the crystals, or just letting my mind go a wandering.