Death and resurrection.

Where I grew up, Easter Sunday was important. There was usually a new Easter dress and sometimes there were hats, but there was always an abundance of pastel-clad people. And green plastic tinsel grass inside bright cheery-colored Easter baskets with chocolate, Paas-dyed eggs and jelly beans.

Until this year, I didn't really have much experience with death. And it turns out, resurrection feels pastel-colored only if you don't know what it's like to go through some sort of death.

Here and there.

• I bought vacuum cleaner. A Miele. I love it. It's black and silver, though I chose it for other reasons. However, it coordinates very well with my home's color scheme.
• I vacuumed the whole apartment the day I brought it home. There are no longer little rocks on the floor in the 3-foot (half) radius around front door. And Booboo was pretty comfortable around it, which is a huge change from how he was with the previous vaccuum.
• At the store, the registration process for the 10-year free warranty (!!!) asked for the reason for buying a vacuum. There was not an option for "My ex left me for another woman and took the vacuum cleaner with him." So the guy at the store said I should just choose "Replacing a broken vacuum."
• My new Miele rolls behind me so easily, like a happy little puppy following me around. It was on sale, plus I even got an extra $40 off because I took one that had an almost invisible scratch on the bottom. Honestly, I probably did more damage to it on its maiden voyage around the apartment the other day.
• You know the risk I talked about in the last two paragraphs of this post?

Darkness and light and the belly of the whale.

I've been thinking a lot about darkness and light, death and rebirth, and the journey into the belly of the whale.

In writing about the monomyth, Joseph Campbell described three overarching stages of the journey: departure, initiation and return. The last step of the departure stage is the journey into the belly of the whale, where the hero seems to be swallowed up by death.