suitcase by the door....

I've lived in this house for several years now, but it is the hardest thing in the world for me to stay put.
So I have a suitcase by the door...and another couple of suitcases upstairs that are always half packed.
It gives me some some of peace of mind.  I haven't always understood why.
I seem to require freedom of movement or at least the promise of it.

There are settled gypsies and roaming ones and some that do a combination of the two.
It amazes me how much of this is peeking through our lives, shedding hints of our true nature.
I am speaking of our cultural gypsies...not by blood or birth....but by nature.
However it got there...it is under our skins, in our dreams or aspirations...
We evidence it in odd ways and we learn to deal with it in a modern society.

Perhaps Gypsies remind us of what we have almost lost in today's world...
In a primal way we are both attracted and repelled by what they represent .
They are redolent of what we all are deep down and in our past. They call to us...
Freedom, mystery, a life without care.  Passion, extravagance, authenticity...
They remain a mirror to help us remember our primitive and cast-off selves.
So people project onto them their admiration or disdain or wonder...or fears...

Maybe we are all just a little bit of everything...wild and tame, lawless yet virtuous,
hard-working and lazy, familial yet free of obligation, home loving yet yearning for the road.

I see my Artisan gypsies making books from scraps and peddling them at art shows,
Dance gypsies of many forms...belly dance, contra and folk dance, flamenco and world beat.
There are certainly love gypsies, who never know how to settle and those who settle briefly
and then disappear in the light of dawn.
There are Road gypsies...truck drivers, cabbies and those who travel for a living.
Despite the hardships, it is a comfort to them...
There is Gypsy-ness everywhere once you open your eyes to it....
There are those Gypsies that flood the world with color and exotic beauty just for the pleasure of it.
They remind us that we must eat more than food to live.
We must eat music and dance and color and art and laughter to thrive...

So we live out our mixed-up facets, thinking we have to struggle with the tangle of what we are.

That we should domesticate and tame and rearrange what we find inside..

We judge and are judged by our very selves in the light of whatever society we find ourselves in.
Judgment blocks life...every time.

It is past the time for such struggles, inward and outward.

We are what we are...and that is all we are and need to be...each unfolding according to our true natures.

Why not enjoy the richness and the confusion and live in accord with what we find?
Why not be amazed at all we are instead of chipping away at ourselves and others,
trying to conform to hollow and unnatural standards?
Why not be intrigued by our exotic and mundane mixtures?
After all, we are old souls coming out of centuries of experience.
We are each our own peculiar archaeology, built over all the preceding layers of culture and history.
Who knows what lies beneath?
Why not embrace and make the best use of all that we find inside?
Better to give loving expression to each aspect, sit by the fire with them and hear their refrains...

Blessed are those who learn to integrate...