It ain’t always purty. I have ran this thread through my careening, screaming brain waves too many times to even try to put it down in words. so here is the short version – do I create the whirlwind that surrounds my being? The vortex that seems to draw stress and strife towards me? Am I so afraid of dying without tasting, smelling, inhaling, embracing, and merging with the whole experience, that I can’t just sit back and be content?

I could have married any number of men that would have gone to work, drudged through the 9-5, came home to dinner and a houseful of kids, and given me the paycheck. I could have been little Miss Homemaker – watching my kids go to school, living in the same house, becoming a grandparent, living in the same house, having coffee with the women in the neighborhood and gossiping about who did who and who thought what and who was going to do who/what, and living in the same house, buying the side by side burial plot for hubby and me, and eventually dying in the same house. Would that have removed the vortex – even though it would also have killed me way before my time because I would have seriously died of an overdose of drugs or in an alcoholic stupor because the thought of that existence makes my soul DIE SCREAMING. But on the other hand, if I had done the above, would the vortex have still been present because I’m me and I can’t stand the thought?

I see people that appear to never have a calamity or problem in their life, other than a dead car battery or flat tire now and then, or a possible home repair that jumps in their face when their finances won’t handle it. But is this really true? Nothing ever happens in their life? I doubt it. Perhaps they just never talk about it or see anything about it that would make any part of it an experience rather than a ritual or necessity. That would bring me back to my side of the street, where everything I do and encounter is considered an experience.

Although I’ve learned to settle my soul with peace and contentment (most of it was an extreme effort and takes a lot of work STILL on my part), I’ve never learned to ‘settle’. I don’t believe in just settling for something because it’s the easy road. If you can see the overview, and you’ve put everything in the picture on a set of scales, and the benefits of ‘settling’ outweigh the benefits of drop kicking ‘settling’ off of a cliff, I would go for it. But honestly, I’ve never managed to find the scales that tip in favor of ‘settling’. Is that what creates the vortex?

My side of the street is an experience of 59 years, of course the feminine side of 59 years, and includes children, marriages, loves/lovers, loss of friends and family through death and life moves, supporting myself financially – add a few others to that, learning about myself and how I blend/meld with others, wanting more texture to my view of life, learning the true meaning of love, dreams of better times for mankind and the Earth, visions that can only be witnessed by me because I can’t even paint the picture in words, and so much more that one has to stand on my side of the street to see them.

My side of the street may also be your side of the street, although our addresses would never be the same. Because how would I be able to feel your life experiences? And how would you be able to feel mine? Yet if we live on the same side of the street, we may be able to relate to each other’s life experiences because we have shared many of the same, just in different scenes and acts with different people in different places.

And I have always believed that vortex drove me to my first hand of poker. Hell…I used to be a legal secretary and now I stay up at night with the visions of poker hands and meeting people at the green felt racing through my head. And don’t most serious poker players have their own vortex? Talk to any one of them that’s been in the game long term and they’ve all gone broke and started over.

If you’re not from my side of the street, you’ll never step too close to the fire – damn it, you’re going to miss so much if you just settle.

My side of the street is such a bundle of complexities, always whipped into high gear by that vortex…