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I'm out of sorts. Is anyone else feeling out of sorts?
What does "out of sorts" mean? Where does the silly term come from? Is sorts "normal?" When I'm out of it (them?) am I feeling not normal?
There's a definite pejorative feeling to the term. You're absolutely on the wrong side of your norm when you're out of sorts. You don't say "I've had such good luck lately that I'm really out of sorts." No, it's always on the negative side of normal.
I feel headache-y. Mildly depressed. It's hard to see the bright side. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. As I so often do, I'm living in the midst of my calendar rather than from my own core. (Today, after this I do that, and then I have to remember to stop for that and then when I get home I have to do whatever and then my potluck dinner friends will come and will the dining room be ready?)
And that's just today. Tomorrow and the next day are equally crowded with this and that and the other, and then there's the next day and the day after that.
So where is my central being in all this? I've been sleeping through the alarm lately instead of getting up to meditate. That's not helping me to find that central core, is it?
What's going on here? Let's have a story. The cure for being out of sorts is a story!
After our divorce, the children spent summers with their father in
During one of those summers, we were living in our second house on High Street. It was on a corner lot, and its big yard was fenced in the back but open in the front. The house across the street had been rented out to a group of five or six male university students. I didn't know them and didn't see them often.
But one Sunday afternoon they had a party, or a beer blast, which seemed to consist of a lot of oversized young men drinking beer and playing touch football in their yard.
And then touch football in the street.
And then touch football in MY yard.
Now, I've never known how to confront anyone. We were raised to avoid confrontations. If it can't be swept under the rug, then suck it up yourself (although I don't think my mother, Eileen, would have phrased it quite that way).
So there I was, alone in the house, watching these big, noisy, boozing, young men encroach on my territory. They were completely harmless, I'm sure. But I was really angry that they were in my yard.
I had been sitting in the living room listening to the Leontyne Price recording of Cosi fan Tutte. The noise of the football game was interfering with the opera.
What were my options? I could ask the boys to leave, or I could keep quiet and hope that they'd eventually go away. There was no way I would confront them, so my only choice was to wait.
But I decided to facilitate the process. I cranked up the volume on the record player and opened all the windows on the first floor. The noise of the opera was deafening inside the house. And "Come scoglio" thundered out into the yard. Thundered! Leontyne Price louder than life-size.
I showed no mercy. More bass. More treble. More volume. Mozart filled the neighborhood.
After a short time, the boys left, drifting back across the street into their own yard. But by then I was too out of sorts to want to hear the rest of the opera.
Would an actual face-to-face request have been as emotionally draining for me as cowering on my couch waiting for Mozart to do the job? Don't know. We do what we can with what we have.
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