17 March, 2009

A Rock and a Hard Place


Backbone Rock
Originally uploaded by pfly
Things this week have been unraveling in a most peculiar way, often leaving me feeling like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. No one likes that feeling because it's suffocating. Even the mental visualization of being between a rock and a hard place gives me the creeps, and makes me feel like I'm going to hyperventilate.

Tight squeeze. The whole world feels like that right now, or at least that's what the news would have us believe. Sure, we feel the crunch, but isn't there something we can do about it?

So that whole rock and a hard place analogy got me to thinking. What does nature do when it's stuck between a rock and a hard place. At first, it may seem like nature does nothing, but that nothing is actually more commonly known as erosion. Wind, water--both eat away at the surface, slowly devouring it over time until a hole develops and nature can pass through.

Of course, I am a force of nature, but I am also man (woman....), which means that I need to use the forces within me to eat away at the rock that has lodged itself and pinned me to this hard place. I think about dynamite, but that's too messy. It also has the potential to destroy me while destroying my predicament. So patience. It is the only way. Patience, and the slow burning knowledge that the forces within me are wearing a hole through this rock. One day we (yes, I'm a Gemini, I speak in dual,) will slip through the hole in that rock, and we will be free.

Watch out then. There's a reason forces like this are kept between rocks and hard places.

In other news, I spent the afternoon with a dear friend and her family. We hadn't seen each other in over thirteen years, and it was so wonderful to sit in the sun together and just be. It was like time stopped for a couple hours, but then it had to pick up the pace and move forward again. The sun burned my face a lovely shade of pink, but it was worth it. Here is the photographic evidence:
owy sunburn owy sunburn 1

6 comments:

Nicole Ireland said...

Although, I don't know what's going on with you, you know I do relate to that feeling of being stuck. You are right that you need to eat away at that rock. Although patience is hard, it's definitely worth practicing, because slow and steady wins the race!

Susan said...

Your use of "we" could definitely relate to more than the fact that you are a Gemini...

Jenny Melzer said...

Susan, we are not suffering from mpd. :P

Sheri, RN said...

Great picture of the rock and hard place. I feel stuck right there right now too.

Helen Ginger said...

Hope you wiggle out from between that rock and the hard place.

I gotcha beat on the sunburn. I'm a bright red, this hurts and is gonna do major peeling eventually, burned. Never spend hours upon hours at a golf tournament, no matter how much sunscreen you applied.

Jenny Melzer said...

Awe, Sheri, I hope you can work you way out from behind it, or that the patience you need to endure the erosion period finds you!!

Helen, I hope you have lots of aloe. I am Scots/Irish and as fair as the winter snow! THe only time in my entire life I ever got a tan was the 2 weeks we spent in Florida. I burned to a crisp almost every day with 50SPF sunscreen on. OWCH! My poor mother actually got sun poisoning during the trip because she's almost as fair as me.