January 2020, I AM A TRIBE DANCING AROUND THE FIRE

 Tired winter snow melts and refreezes outside. Its only January yet time seems to be creeping at the imperceptible but deceptive speed of ancient glaciers. That’s okay, I needed to be in this frozen retreat from the outside world right now. PQ has the impeachment trials on TV droning in the background and history in motion it seems part of the winter weather that hasn’t penetrated to my hideout.  In fact, it resembles the furniture, books on the shelf and pictures on the wall, just background stuff. Any conclusion will probably be as deceptive in shape as an object half hidden beneath the snow.

Instead of digging myself out of the winter drabs I’ve gone deeper inward and arrived at an unexpected family reunion with some relatives I didn’t know I had. I have a Mercurial nature, as Mercury is the ruler of my Gemini Sun. I think most of the time I keep this fact subtle. However, with so much rare introspective time available, I’ve been exploring the different parts I once identified as me—many were almost erased from conscious memory. It resembles a family reunion but more revealing. These mini-selves all work for a common Tribal Boss directing from behind a curtain and has just now emerged from hiding, or perhaps I was just not looking.

I first met this hidden director when I started writing my life story a few months ago. I’m not sure why I did that. It began one day when it came to my attention that many pivotal events, characters and locations from the past were fading like old clothes. This led to the discovery that my personal memory was filtered according to whatever seemed important at the time and this brought up the question; why? Also, what important things have I lost from the past that I might find useful now? I didn’t have the insight to notice this when I started writing the story. As I continued along the backwards trail, I found much more than evaporating memories. Writing an autobiography sounds like an act of vanity and is certainly hard work, but in truth it is an ego deflator if you are being honest. However, if you drill deep it will bring up the things you didn’t know about yourself.

Much to my surprise, I discovered this invisible Tribal Boss overseeing the different selves who ruled distinct segments of my lives, and this boss appears to represent the final picture. It reminds me of a high-flying drone recording the whole journey from an elevated perspective. The motivation to review everything that happened before now came about because that boss had decided the tribe of me was losing some important parts along the way. I see this guiding overseer in a masculine sense although I’m not sure why. Perhaps he is my animus in the Jungian sense, but that title is too small. This guy is much wiser because he is guiding the part of me outside of time—the whole loop. All beginnings and endings. This one hides behind riddles, camouflages and my own habituated expectations in plain sight while overseeing all the alternate selves and tries to guide the various Mes to the crucial experiences of life that will take the to the agreed upon destination. However, my ability to cooperate is always limited by ground vision that sees only as far as the next curve in the trail. I’m sure this boss doesn’t have it easy trying to guide me.

For one thing, I used to be extreme and obsessive about any goal I pursued. In hindsight, and from an increasingly temperate perspective I recognize that the obsessiveness was an attempt to overcome the fear that whatever I pursued I didn’t deserve and probably wouldn’t be allowed to achieve. There are too many of these unrequited loves for a full list right now, but I’m aware that my life is divided into time segments defined around these pursuits. A limited list of these passions is dancer, horsewoman, artist, anthropologist, psychotherapist, pianist, ethno-musicologist, astrologer and back to dancer. Now I’m in my seventies and understand that I’m not going to be a master of any of those pursuits. 

Perhaps I was supposed to explore each partial self for a season so that I would understand the various perspectives in the tribe of me. The spirit dancer moves rhythmically in time and space among them all and it is now revealing itself as the invisible guide that I followed with blind intuition. My greatest accomplishment isn’t expressed in any outward form but in my fascination with where the next turn in the trail would lead. 

When I was much younger, I felt abandoned in a dangerous world hostile to my kind. I believed myself exiled to a place that would forever be beyond the bounds and out of notice to other humans. I dreamed and envisioned the kind of wise guide who might find me lost in the dense woods, and teach me how to navigate the trails back to the human world and who would share secret knowledge and powers to offer others experiencing the same alienation from the normal human world. While staying alive in hurricane force winds, dodging flying objects or starving for heart food, the miraculous helper was guiding the tribe of me all along.

There is also a scribe who has been recording the whole trip under the guidance of The Big Boss, I’ll call it my Higher Self.