Breathing

I can't breathe enough these days.  Literally and figuratively. 

I've been coughing that hard cough that hurts.  I guess I need to go see my friendly neighborhood doctor again.  Sigh.  Or rather, hack....

I can't get any breathing room figuratively, either.  I have so many things coming due all at once.  It's unreal.  Every time I get a pile of papers off me, somebody comes in and lays more in front of me.  I feel like I'm caught in a spinning tornado of red tape and triplicate forms.  It's like something from Alice in Wonderland but not nearly that fanciful or fun.

Last night in yoga, our instructor told us to focus on our breath.  I did.  I sat and tried to clear my mind of everything but the act of pulling air into my lungs and releasing it from them.  Between the stress I still carried between my shoulder blades even at the end of practice and the inability of my stupid body to inhale like a regular person without coughing, it wasn't a great success. 

I wish I could go lay on a old white cotton quilt in the middle of a sun-drenched spring pasture somewhere.  I wish I could smell the grass just greening around me, hear the wind rushing through leaves soft and new on flexible limbs.  I wish I could just be there in that place until all the things that are binding me, folding me, restricting me melt away and leave me completely free. 

I don't guess that's an option just now, though.  I guess I'll settle for another mug of hot tea and a daydream instead.  It's an awfully poor tradeoff, all things considered.