Winter slogs on at the pace of a
minute hand. It must be moving but watching the clock makes it seem stationary.
It has been a challenging season. I find January and to a lesser degree,
February to be the time of year when time seems to halt. Presently our family situation appears to
become more complicated each day. My first response is to feel victimized by
fate but my other self is aware of the humor as well. Our Subaru is now the family bus and PQ was
the sole driver until cataract surgery. It gave me a few days to renew my
driving skills and that was a good thing.
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| Inspiring Crossroads (Click to Enlarge) |
We dream of a week in Arizona but
we are unfortunately still indispensable in Taos, still hitched to the threshing
wheel. However, I’ve noticed that my
gray mood is shifting on the scale toward color again. Nothing in life is
secure or actually predictable and so we never know in what condition the road
will be around the next curve. I have
Jupiter conjunct the Moon rising in Cancer. My moods and outlook do shift to
extremes but I’ve learned that this allows me to follow sensations that have
not yet formed into ideas that congeal at mid swing. I’m a skeptical optimist.
I haven’t been able to write for a
few weeks but ideas are now beginning to bubble to the top. I keep a notebook
and sketchpad in my bottomless black bag to write down ideas before they disappear
like fish that jump above water quickly and then just as quickly disappear. I
tell PQ this bag is a real medicine bag containing PQ’s prescriptions, keys,
bookkeeping info, makeup, brush, lots of pens and pencils (I am a Gemini, and
running out of writing/drawing material can’t happen), my iPhone, sunglasses and
Square. Oh yes, also a book to read in waiting rooms. I could read from the iPhone but I still like
real paper books so that I can write comments in the margins. For me reading is
a conversational activity.
Slow winters are conducive to
reflection. Beneath frozen earth and snow, new growth is preparing its debut. I
don’t ski, we are held close to home by current circumstances, the garage is
too cold for painting and there is much time to steep in an alchemical brew of winter
weather, mud and memories renewed.
FROM
THE LAST WAITING ROOM VISIT:
Memories heavy with years
crushing my chest,
Pressing down on my heart,
Stopping my breath.
Memories present in sensation
Though distant in time.
People once so present
Parted by a deep gorge of time.
Great times, lost times
Times I’ve strained to repair,
I’m being overcome by oldness
Though I've barely learned to be new.
Seeing life from the future
With backward focused eyes
Hoping for good providence
Around the next blind curve.
Memories, is that all there is?
Memories created of stacked up nows.
Kaleidoscoping round and round
Each twist changes everything.
Patterns ascending from center
Still bright from that first light.
I’m still new at being old.
There is a long way to go.
I’ve noticed
that my flights of fantasy are now cruising closer to earth and real time. I
would rather get to Arizona in the near future than dream of trips to Europe
that can’t happen without a miracle. I would rather perfect the things I do now
rather than take on new skills. And while I am deliberately renewing some
skills that atrophied from neglect, I doubt that I will ever fulfill that old
desire to learn French or Russian. Once I wanted to raise and train horses and next
to be a dancer more than anything, simultaneously an anthropologist, and finally a
psychotherapist. At first, I was stunned
to realize that time was narrowing my options. It took so long to get through
the deep muck at the trail head. Was it bad luck, being born into a
family that assumed that my nature and everything I cared about was demon possessed? Or, more likely perhaps my life was about mining
for gold in a different field. Yet it will be disappointing if there is no
picnic after a long and difficult hike. I’m coming into the closing stretch and I want
to focus on something I can still realistically access. Most of my disappointments turned out to be
blessings after the initial suffering. One of my life lessons seems to be
dis-illusionment.
Turning
sixty was a seminal moment. That is when I realized that the rest of life would
have to be about being, not doing, and while I’m at it, I can let my hair go
grey, quit listening to Dr. Oz tell me how to remove those wrinkles or direct me to the latest
weight loss miracle, all the while aspiring to look like I did at 30. On whose authority is it a sin to follow
nature into the greatest unexplored mysteries of the 21st century.
