Why do you linger at this fork in the road rubbing your eyes? (Richard Powers)
In your Christmas prayers this year, say a prayer for the wind, and the water, and the wood, and those who live there, too. (from John Denver)
There was a long low bank of clouds to the southwest last evening, and so as Jupiter and Saturn whizzed by each other, no “Christmas star” was apparent. But I saw it in my heart. Don’t quite know what it would have meant for me to actually see it, other than perhaps its being a lovely symbol of new possibilities, new beginnings.
Perhaps it is only a further indication of my wish for an exciting new “project,” something absorbing in which to invest my creative energy. A journey waaayyyy across the mountains and deserts to find a newborn king would probably do the trick. I wonder what those Three Wise Men talked about as they lumbered along on the backs of those ubiquitous camels . . . And how many companions they had along to protect them, because how come nobody ripped off all that pricey gold, frankincense, and myrrh . . . The story could have really done with a little more detail. But I guess it wasn’t about the wise men. They were only bit players.
But they weren’t bit players to themselves. This was their life! Each was the star of the show in his own story. Perhaps, like me, they were getting along a bit, and struggling with retirement, and needed something compelling to do. Like ole Odysseus, who, after all his wild and crazy adventures at sea, in his “old age” was given a final task of carrying an oar inland to those people who had never seen one.
???
Aside from a ridiculous mixing up of stories, what’s that about, ole girl???
My so-called projects during these nine months (and counting) of pandemic “quarantine” have been myriad, but one of them has been to increase my walking fitness. I set a seemingly impossible goal for myself of being able to do ten miles at a stretch, as I could do (not easily!) at one point in my life. I am now up to three and a half miles, and seem pretty stuck. I even have a “walking circle” in my house, 100 steps, around and around, that I do in bad weather.
Aside from wearing a groove in the pine floors, developing prodigious calf muscles (at least for me), and dropping some weight from my chubby frame, has walking in circles around my house really been a project comparable to following a Christmas star?
I reckon we all do the best we can. Walking in circles just doesn’t seem to have the same cache that carrying an oar inland or following a star does, but I’ll deep doin’ it ’til something else presents itself.
Perhaps there are those of us just not meant to be in a story of mythic proportion. Or, on the other hand, perhaps all stories are of mythic proportion. I’ll just betcha ole Odysseus, when told to carry that oar, said, “you gotta be kidding.”
So I’ll keep walking in circles. And praying . . .