LUCKY 7 ?

As Jen and I enter our seventh week of what began as self imposed quarantine, we wonder if it will be a continuation of declining numbers with optimism for the future on the rise. This is a time to look forward. Looking back is a trap. Things are always problematic when it comes to memory. We can become "stuck" in the past. As Jim Morrison of the Doors put it: "The future's uncertain and the end is always near."

So the present is what matters most.

Right now I am grateful for every deep breath I take. Every moment of every day is precious. Every life. Precious.

I have been, for the past year, plus, contemplating what to include in my life. Long before this reset button got hit, (Corona Virus Lock-down,) I was trying, as ever, to figure out what’s next. I have finally completed my tours of duty and done my best to fulfill an oath to do some good in this world. Thanks to the help of so many amazing people, that I have done, and will cherish always. But what next?

Do I jump back into the mad scrum of people clamoring for attention? To “sell myself” and my cultural wares?

Do I put my work in order so that when I am gone those foragers for literary truffles, miners for pop-culture gold, cultivators of originality, can easily unearth my work and discover it anew worthy of attention?

Or shall I consign myself and all memory of my experience, existence, my truth and passion, to oblivion .          (I hear a tiny violin!)

It is a mighty power and heavy weight. A cross to bear. I hold my life in my hands. I love my family in the nostalgia which is our collective past. I cannot even explain how much they mean to me now.

My failures are complete in that I have not achieved any level of success in the arts which had been a blind, ill informed ambition for so long. What a waste, but even now, I indulge in that self centered sorrow which has habitually held me back.I must stop looking back, lest I be frozen, turned to salt, paralyzed...

Yet still I ask: what is this life? So many before me with much more extraordinary eloquence have asked as much and given more enlightened answers. And I still question: what difference do we make?

It is not despair I feel, though uselessness is more akin to my present state. What does it matter?

And yet...

My breath...promises another moment to delve, to discover, to ponder and search. My heart will not let me forget Love. My body still yearns to be touched and admired. My mind is ready to be engaged. Desperate for a new perspective.And I am working my spiritual self. Ceaselessly.

Hope is a verb. An active movement of spirit. Toward better and away from worse.

For me, there has never been a crisis of faith so deep that I refused to believe. And there-in I have found life-lines a plenty. Salvation seems too large a word with negative connotations. Yet, here I am. Saved from silence to wonder about the Mysteries. To contemplate my wounds and the fires which caused them. To know that no person is at fault for my supposed suffering. That I am responsible for all of it. In that knowledge there, I find solace. 

 

Most of all I feel a great need to share. Share what ever may be beneficial to my loved ones. If it be a song, a poem or a few bucks. In my self-absorption I may forget a birthday or an anniversary, but I will not let that stop me from trying to reach out. Love you all...