February 24, 2020 - Time

When I first met Time, he ran along beside me laughing and playing.  We soon became the best of friends and were every day together.  In those days, the sun shone so much brighter and warmer, and every leaf on every tree stood out separately and individually, and one by one they called my name.  The wind would rustle high in the secret places the trees kept at their very tops, and they would tremble with ardor whenever the wind approached.  It was a secret love affair, and I was able to witness the greatest of passions.

Day in and day out, Time and I watched them with a sweet satisfaction, until one day we stopped.  We never discussed why we did so, but we were so pressed to move on.  Time always ran a few steps ahead of me, looking back with a smirk on his face, and I would run after him.  On each occasion when I thought I might finally get a hold of him, he somehow slipped away again, laughing and running.  How I chased him back then in those days of warmth when he had become such a beautiful man.  I still remember.

But then the days grew darker, as they always do.  My burden became heavier, and it was difficult to carry.  I asked my old friend, Time, to help me, but he never would.  He was so spry and so strong, but he would not help.  I should have been angry then, but his impish behavior always made me laugh, so I carried the ever-increasing burden with me in silence wherever I went.  And I began to walk a bit slower.  No matter how Time mocked me for what he called my laziness, I could go no faster.

The cold crept in slowly but steadily, and Time continued to prod me.  I grew weary of his constant needs, his constant reminders, his constant busy schemes, but he never seemed to notice, or if he did it was only with an attitude of irritation.  Often, I would stop and rest for a while, looking for the trees I knew so long ago.  But they were all gone, felled by a lumberjack one day after a secret conversation he had with Time in a field near my house.  They thought I couldn’t hear them, but they were wrong.  No matter, though.  The trees had been gone for many years by then.

So many days came without sunshine at all, and then came a sudden day of death.  All death seems sudden, even when a person is waltzing with it for quite a while.  I saw Time kiss the lips of my dying friend, and his breath just ceased so quickly and easily.  And I was angry!  I screamed at Time, “You can’t take him from me!  Please!”  But Time ignored me.  Please….I thought….take my breath instead.  Kiss me instead.  Kiss me, beautiful man, and take my breath instead.  Please….you can have it.  Take all that I have and more.  Just let my friend live again.  Time did not appear to hear me, although perhaps—perhaps—for the first time ever, he looked at me warily.

Our relationship changed then, although if I had been honest with myself, it had been changing all along.  I often felt an underlying current of anger, and I would seek to hide from Time, to remove myself.  No matter where I went though, no matter how elaborate my plan, Time would always find me and chide me.  “Pick up that burden!” he would yell with a sneer, and I felt compelled to obey.  No matter how often I threw the burden down, when I turned around, it was always somehow back on my shoulders again.

That went on for what seemed like a long while, but in looking back it was the blink of an eye.  Each day, the burden grew heavier.  Each day, Time would order me to carry it.  Often, I would rebel only to have Time sneer at me again and whip me until I picked the burden back up.  But then one day, I didn’t seem to pay attention to the burden anymore.  It was just like any other part of me—like my hair or my hands or my smile.  My burden was me, and I found that while it was difficult sometimes, I didn’t mind it very much at all anymore.  From that day forward, Time never sneered at me again.  He never ordered me around, and he never whipped me again either.

The hate that I had been secretly harboring for him, the hate I never told him about because I was terrified of what he might do, seemed to slowly evaporate until it was gone completely and seemed like just a dream from long ago.  A dream that was lost in the passing of the years, hidden somewhere in the secret rustling places high in the treetops of my youth, each leaf still calling me in my sleep.

And so I find myself now, walking here alone on a snowy path in Maine, carrying my burden along proudly.  How I have come to love that burden!  That weight that cuts into my shoulders and makes them bleed, that forces my feet to heavily scrape the Earth in pain, that sears my back like a firebrand.  How I have come now to love and accept the pain the burden has brought me.  Each new tiny piece added to it carries a memory from my life of people and things I have loved and lost, their faces rustling like leaves before my eyes in the twilight of each day.  And still, we walk together, Time and I.  He leads me as craftily as ever.

Kiss me, beautiful man, and take my breath away.  Take it quickly and easily like I have seen you take all the others.  You can have it, I tell him.  Take all that I have and more.  Just let me see the beautiful boy from so long ago.  Time laughs it off when I say that to him, but we both know that someday he will do it.  Then I will finally put my burden down, and I will not pick it up again.

February 21, 2020 - The Door

There’s an old woman who lives not too far from me.  She is very old.  I am not young, and even by my standards, she is very old.  I have only seen her once.  It was last spring when she was cleaning up some old leaves from her garden.  I stopped my car suddenly because in all these years, I had never seen her before.  I have seen her presence, but I have never seen her in the flesh.  Instinctively, even though her back was turned, she knew I was watching her.  She turned and looked at me with the strangest look I have ever seen, and then she went back to her work.  That was the first time I ever saw her.  It was the last time, too, I’m quite certain of it.

But her presence is everywhere.  You won’t know it from this winter photo, but she has the most hodge-podge, mismatched, labyrinth of a garden I have ever seen.  Yes, I have sneaked up in the twilight hours and investigated.  In the season of life, it grows over immensely.  There are secret passageways everywhere and odd little ornaments peeking out from the strangest of places.  There are things that don’t belong in gardens at all, but somehow they are right at home in her garden.  There are odd lights, too.  Not of the solar variety that is common, but of the will-o’-the-wisp variety, the kind that twinkles and shimmers here and there, beckoning the unsuspecting traveler, tricking the lonely wanderer, enchanting the solitary lover.

There is this feeling, this strange feeling that if you were to enter her garden, it might be hard to find your way out again.  Yet you feel compelled, called as it were.  To compound it all, a few years ago she added an old wooden door with the number 58 on it.  That is not her house number, just the number of the door leaning against the crooked tree.  As the seasons and holidays come and go, she adds and takes away silly decorations from the door.  It’s as if she thinks the door is inside her house and not propped up against a frozen tree outside.  No, she’s not crazy.  Well, no crazier than me.  And yes, I know how that sounds.

But, you see, there’s a problem, and that would be me.  I have this almost uncontrollable urge to walk up to the door, open it, and go right through.  “But you’ll hit the tree head on!” you say.  No, I don’t think I will.  It all depends on what you expect to find on the other side and what you expect out of the door itself.

Because doors have a meaning!  They are entries and exits.  They keep things in and they keep things out.  They close things off.  They partition and hide things.  They act as transitions from one place to another.  And just because you yank them out of their traditional spots and place them haphazardly elsewhere does not mean that their inherent function changes.  If I took a teacup out of my cupboard and placed it on a ski lift, it would still be a teacup and would function as a delivery device for hot tea, as always.

“For heaven’s sake!  It’s just a decoration!” you say.  The hell it is.  It’s a door, and by its inherent nature that means I am on one side of it only.  You can’t be on both sides of a door at the same time.  It’s one or the other, and I have a sneaking suspicion I’m on the tedious side.

The ancients had special gods for doorways that were called liminal deities.  These gods ruled over boundaries, doors, and thresholds.  Yes, these things were considered so important that they had their own deities.  The ancients knew that when you crossed from one side to another side, something magical occurred.  There is the crossing from life to death (and back again), the crossing from one season to another, and the start of a new path that lies on the other side of the door. 

The door is the dividing factor from one world to another.  This is why traditionally a groom would carry his bride across the threshold.  He took her from one life and brought her into another.  Her feet were not to touch the threshold or the spell would be broken.  He changed her and transformed her by carrying her across, and then she in turn built a new home and transformed him.  Crossing the threshold of an open door represents the beginning of a new choice, a new life, a new idea.

The old woman knows what she’s doing by placing it there.  She’s issuing a challenge.  We country folk are an odd sort, I’ll grant you that, but we know a provocation when we see one.  We know when we’re being tested.  I’m not the only one who stares at the door, either.  I have seen others doing it as well.  Some of them looked quite vexed.  Cowards.  Someday I’m going to walk right up to that old woman’s door, open it up, and walk straight through.  I highly doubt I’ll be back on this side of it again when I do.  It’s a prearranged agreement with the god who sits upon the threshold and bides his time.  That’s the one thing gods have an overabundance of:  Time.  The rest of us have to keep on walking through the endless doorways.

February 15, 2020 - Magic Mirror

Bony white fingers reach out from every direction.  It is a natural thing that the cold should court the warmth and the warmth should secretly desire the cold, although there are times when the pull is balanced and times when it is dangerously askew.  Most people live in times of balance and seek to stay in balance only.  Me?  I seek the raging imbalance.  I seek the storm.  I seek the hidden hardship.  I embrace the coldness of steel.  I am the lover of the Ice King.

Because I can balance it in my mind.  I can take what I see, conjure it in my mind, and then cast a balance upon it from my imagination.  I will add a touch here and take away a touch there.  Like an artist, I will paint my heart’s desire on the canvas of the mind.  When properly done, the result is growth and pure delight.  When not so properly done, I hang dangerously from a tiny branch suspended over a high cliff with razor-sharp, jagged rocks below me.  But it reminds me that I’m still alive.  It encourages me to work harder.

Looking at the results in our life is like looking in a mirror.  All you see is the sum total of what you have done so far.  To be sure, it is an excellent guide to show us what we did right and what we could have done better, but if it is mistaken for reality instead of a reflection of the past only, then it becomes dangerous.  To mistake effect for cause is a crime you commit against your soul.  To worship effect as if it were primary instead of secondary (thereby ignoring cause altogether) is to give away your godliness.  And the merchant is only too happy to greedily snatch it from you.

If you look in the mirror and see its reflection as solid reality, then you are a slave.  If you look in the mirror and see it as a current measurement only, then there is hope for you.  To look in the mirror is one thing, but to continually sneak back and look in the mirror is to be slavish to your past, which the mirror reflects perfectly.  But there is something else more terrible at play here, because if you continually use the mirror as a crutch instead of a tool, you begin to unconsciously conjure the identical results in your mind.  Instead of seeing what you do, you start doing what you see.

You become stuck.  You cannot move.  You see your reflection and then you reflect what you see.  It is a trap because you will continue to live and move and have your being, but you will do it unconsciously instead of purposely, mistaking the mirror for your mind, and God help you when you see the unintended results finally reflected.

Surely you remember the lesson from Snow White?

“Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?”

“My Queen, you are the fairest of them all.”

“Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?”

“Famed is thy beauty, Majesty.  But hold, a lovely maid I see.  Rags cannot hide her gentle grace.  Alas, she is more fair than thee.”

The Queen had no future because she was stuck in a perpetual past.  La-la-la-la-la-la-la forever and ever on one note only.  She mistook her reflection for herself and sought to continually keep that delicate balance, to continually be what she had been and not what she was at the moment or could have been.  In order to be successful, she needed to leave the mirror, but as I said of mirrors, she was enslaved.  There would be no conjuring in her mind of what she wanted to be, only acknowledgement of an old, tarnished image.

These bony white fingers reach out all around us as we continue to walk through the Season of Death.  They seek to remind us that all things die, and there is beauty in that.  There is beauty in the end because only the mind can conjure anew, and it knows that the Omega is also the Alpha, that the spinning yin and yang never cease, that what was old is new and what was new is old.  Our eyes can only see the culmination of the past.  They cannot see the fruit of the future.  That is for the heart and mind only.  Leave the mirror.  Give up being a slave to the past and become the master builder of your destiny.

February 9, 2020 - February Storm

Then came a storm, as storms are wont to do.  They wait for you to think they are gone, to think that you are safe, to think that warmer and softer times are here.  They wait for you to let your guard down.  They wait for an opportunity to slip inside.  Behind each corner they peer, sniffing the air, looking for a sign of weakness.  And when you are at your weakest, when your attention is placed elsewhere, the storm unleashes its wrath.  This is Holy Fury!  This is February.  This is the time that tries our souls.

The storm came after the sweetness of the January thaw.  When we had all smiled and raised a glass together, the storm crept in, waiting for its chance.  In the dark of the night, He came riding in on a horse still darker, with all the fury of the Underworld at His command.  With hands as hard as steel and eyes as cold as ice, He laid the countryside to waste.  He destroyed everything in His path.

It is not unlike the storms that steal into our minds, those we endure silently, those we think no one else knows anything about.  For who would admit to it?  Who would admit that as they sit in a silent and darkened room, the storm creeps upon them?  Though you try to protect your mind and your heart, though you try to pull a shawl closer about you for warmth, He creeps inside.  Then the dark cloud descends upon you, and all semblance of happiness and decency and love seem to leave you.  The storm takes hold.  The gut-wrenching sorrow.  The darkness that comes upon us all from time to time.  And he whispers, “You are nothing….you are nothing…..I am your destroyer….I consume you….” 

And you run from the room screaming with your hands tightly covering your ears.  No more!  I will not listen!  Please, God, no more….take this storm….make it go away….  Somehow you find yourself on your knees, and how long have you been there?  How long have you knelt in abject disgrace?  It’s hard to tell.  But this is the storm.  This is what it does.  This is the February of our lives, and no one escapes it.  No one.  Do not purport to tell me that you have slipped through the cracks.  You have not.

Then the morning finally comes, as it somehow always does.  It always does.  The sun shines brilliantly upon the field.  I look fearfully outdoors, wondering if I am really still alive.  And lo!  I am met with stunning brilliance!  The world is covered in ice that shimmers like a million diamonds!  Every tree, every bush, every rock is covered in ice that shines like the sun itself.  How can this be?  I ask myself, how can beauty ever exist again after such darkness?  How is it possible?  I reach out and He places an icy diamond on my finger.  I am the Bride of the Underworld.

Yet I cannot help but feel betrayed.  I ask the storm, why did you push me to the limit and beyond?  Why did you destroy my world?  Why did you annihilate all semblance of goodness and calmness and decency?  Why?  Why do it?  What is the purpose?  What are you gaining?  And he responds, “Foolish girl.  There is nothing under this sun—nothing!—that does not exist without express permission.  There is nothing that is apart from the whole.  There is nothing outside of me.  I am the razor-sharp ice that cuts like a sword.  I am the brilliant sunshine.  I am the murderous darkness.  I am everywhere.  I am everything.”

February 2, 2020 - Oimelc

Out in the fields, there is an old woman with a basin.  The occasional passerby pays her no mind.  If they see her at all, they write her off as just an old drudge out in a half-frozen field.  If they think of her at all, they most likely think she’s a bit odd, to put it kindly.  Off her rocker, they might say.  And in truth, we do have quite a number of odd people here in Maine, and we like it that way.  But I know what she is doing, and I will tell you this:  She knows exactly what she is up to, and it is a good thing, too, because someone must still do it.

She walks among the semi-frozen furrows, looking for the best spots, and when she finds them, she begins to pour the liquid from her basin here and there.  It might be hard to spot because the liquid is milk, and it is the same color as the snow.  It is a rich and deep and warm and heady kind of milk.  It is the kind that feels thick on the tongue, the kind that coats the mouth with a heavy sweetness and a slightly oily thickness.  The kind that leaves its fragrance long after it is swallowed, warming and feeding the human condition.

And on the field it goes.  She pours and pours the milk.  At first it sits on the surface, and then it slowly sinks in here and there.  She smiles when she sees it, and she whispers a little prayer.  What are the words to the prayer, you ask?  Well, it is a prayer of fertility, a prayer of bounty, a prayer of abundance.  It is an offering, a gift, a trade.  Take this hard-won milk, the first of the lambs coming into season, and drink.  From the Earth it came, and to the Earth it goes.  And bless the seeds below the surface, frozen and eagerly waiting for a kiss from the Sun.  Let the milk mingle with their expectation.  All of the world is in a constant embrace of revival and reenactment.

Far beneath the surface, the white drops of sweetness fall, and their drip-drip-dripping plays a melody in the Underworld.  Persephone raises her head from her sweet slumber.  What is that irresistible sound?  What is that hypnotizing fragrance?  What are these deep and satisfied sighs I hear?  I have a memory . . . and I must bring it to fruition again.

The old woman calls it Oimelc.  You call her crazy.  I call her mother.  Persephone calls her sister.  There is a good deal of winter left still, but the milk is on the fields now, and it is just a matter of time.  She cannot be stopped.  Surely you are aware?  Surely you remember?  Fecundity is her handicraft.  This we know.