toss & ripple: May 2025

May 27, 2025

Pick Two

The piece below was compiled for a writing group in which I participate.

I feel some vulnerability in sharing it here on toss & ripple.

Why do I even want to share it?

Why do I share anything on my blog? (A question I've often asked myself.)

Well, this time, I'm sharing it because of the responses I received after reading it out loud in the writers' gathering...

~*~~*~

[5/27/2025: WriteTime]

I have written since our last gathering.

But, not for public consumption.

I've only journaled.

I'm so tired...

Should I just transcribe a journal entry or two and read that?

Okay, I'll pick two...

Journal entry 5/20/27, late night:

I am safe.
Circumstances have not changed, factually.
But my perspective has.
The circumstances do not feel real; it kind of feels like I am making all this up.
But my journal entries from November 2000 are factual truth showing otherwise.
Well then, I must be making a mountain out of a molehill.
But the long essay about the effects [of this certain circumstance] validates my own experience.

A half-hour ago I felt-thought, "My life is like a comic book."
What does that mean?

It means my life does not feel real.
So, in psychology, that feeling is called dissociation.
And that is okay and actually a normal response.
Wow. That may be the most normal thing I do.

Spiritually, it is taking a step back and viewing the circumstance from outside my body...

I'm sleepy now...

Journal entry 5/26/25, late night:

At this moment my heart feels anxiety.
That is not unusual; I swim in uncertainty.
Do not we all? Or am I projecting?
Perhaps most humans feel certain.

What does "certain" mean?
"Sure."
Hmm. When I think of something being "sure," the context is an event in the past.

I see a picture.
Like if I wonder if I turned off the stove, if I'm sure, I would see a picture in my mind's eyes in my brain which is different from my soul's eye which is in my heart.
My soul's eye -- some would call it a fantasy.

But isn't that what the future is? A fantasy?

Oh, where was I?
Ah! Back to the word "certain."

Is the word "absolute" a synonym for "certain?"
Ab sol ute.

I wonder if that comes from words that mean "without a doubt."

Do I believe anything is absolute?
That's a hard question.
I think of absolute as something that cannot be changed.
The only thing I can think of is the past; the past cannot be changed.
Or is there some other plane where the past can be changed?
And how would the one living it even know?

Oh Carol, you started this stream writing that you feel anxiety.
How about now?
Well, I've journaled and lived into the future which just now became the past.

One thing is for certain.
There are at least three time zones:
Past. Present. Future.