A Melancholy Day

The energy around here has been kind of weird today.  It’s like I slipped into another dimension, as it seems to be particularly hard to relate to my surroundings.   It could also be the weather or the recent solar flares.  I suspect that there is something bigger than just my stuff happening. 

It all started 2 days ago on Friday.  I attended a pot luck luncheon given for the ladies that I work out with and who are in my Zumba class.  Our Zumba teacher also works as a social director at one of the local nursing homes, and she was going to bring one of the residents who was living at the facility because of her dementia.  I was shocked when they came through the door, as I knew that lady with the dementia.  It had been several months since I had seen her at Zumba class, and I also remembered her from my ballroom dancing classes.  Apparently, her dementia had gotten worse very rapidly.  I said hello, and I think that I got her standard response of “I know you from somewhere”.  None of the elders on either side of my family had ever gotten Alzheimer’s or dementia.  They all went to the grave with their wits intact.  So this episode kind of threw me off.

Then yesterday, I got a notice in the mail that one of our local non-profit organizations, the Cortez Cultural Center, was closing its doors because of the increasing financial difficulty that it had been having for the past several years.  It was such a hopeless situation that they were also being forced to sell the very historical building that they had occupied for almost 30 years.  This facility had provided programs on archeology, art exhibits for local artists, a kids camp in the summer, and our annual birding festival, to name a few of the activities.  This is also where I had been renting space for the QSH workshops and had used the facility many times in the past for evening workshops and shamanic trainings.  Closing the facility will be a huge loss for the community. 

So I sat down to get to the root of my melancholy feelings of the day.  Loss seems to be the theme.  I am sad about the loss of the mental faculties of my acquaintance from the nursing home, and sad for the loss of a great cultural institution.  Sad that I will never have the interactions with both that I had in the past.  Something has been taken away.   Other losses in my life have come up, and there is a grieving process underway.

There is also a sadness for what humanity has lost and for the many losses that we will inevitably be facing in the near future.  We are reaching a crisis point and most will not emerge unscathed.  It will be up to each to resolve with their life so far and the losses that they have endured and will be enduring in the future. 

Perhaps what I am feeling is also due to some planetary or cosmic forces affecting our planet.  I hope so, as it will eventually shift.  In the mean time, I bought myself a lobster tail to fix for dinner.  Maybe that will pull me out of my funk.