"There is no power in a square."

Yesterday Karen and I woke up in different places, mentally, and spent a good part of the morning trying to find our way back. Maybe in the everyday dance of life you find that you and your loved one are not in sync; someone is out of step. If the mental place you woke up in isn't fun, then trying to get back together, trying to find and establish the rhythm of life together, won't be fun either. Somehow, when I should have just listened to what Karen had to say, I went somewhere else and there was no dancing allowed.

No one was really at fault, though we each wanted to claim part of the blame. When we did talk about what went wrong I pointed out that sometimes these things just happen. O the depths of my wisdom. Of course these things happen. We all know that. We don't like it much when they happen in our lives but often we are better off by not giving them too much credence. The thing is, Karen and I didn't have this happen very often when we lived in the tipi and when it did happen, we got back in step, a whole lot sooner.

The title of this blog comes from a quote by Old Lodge Skins, one of the main characters in the novel Little Big Man, by Thomas Berger. An outstanding movie was made from this book but of course, the book is better. When I started to write about our life in the tipi I used this quote but there is a lot of truth in what Old Lodge Skins said.

The tipi we live in now is all straight lines and corners and hallways and rooms. We like our home a great deal, especially in rainy weather and we especially like our main living area because of the openness and the windows which let the outside in as much as windows can. One of the things we are not fond of is that we can get lost in this tipi. There are too many places one can hide if you don't feel like facing a problem, or a loved one, or, I suspect, oneself.

Living together in a circle we had no place to hide. Our thoughts and emotions, our energies, could not get lost in a rats' maze of turns and hallways that always led to a dead end sooner or later. And then you have to find your way back. Karen and I had no place to retreat to, when we felt off. We had to stay in that small circular space and work things out, together. We found out quickly, that was the magic of the circle. Everything we projected went 'round and 'round but never left, never hid and always came back to the center. We still had times when we were 'off' but they didn't last very long. We grew closer and closer because we had to and we had fewer and fewer 'off'' times because of the power of the circle. We look back on our time in the tipi as one of the best things in our life together and we cherish what we learned living there. I guess, for a few hours yesterday, I forgot the lesson. It happens.

Karen and I did talk and did find a rhythm that got us through the rest of the day. I may cover that some other time. I have to get ready for work now. Enjoy your lives, people. Enjoy each other and stay out of corners. Old Lodge Skins is right: There is no power in a square.
Peace to you all.
Mike