7 – Horizon, Illuminated
Yesterday’s ice storm was erased by the night, and my little portion of earth has rolled around into sunshine, clouds dispersed, streets cleared, warm.
*
My flight (flight away from…? flight toward…?) departs in seven days, one week into which I will pour as many tangible tasks as I am able: a last box of odds and ends to be packed, a shipment of our personal belongings to be negotiated and executed, a three-automotive albatross (one broken car, one damaged car, one motorcycle to be stored), a “last dance” or “parting dance” in Boston, a rented house to be cleaned cleaned cleaned of everything that was us and is me.
I find that my heart expects the modest if incessant demand of Minstrel the Cat to nudge me in the direction of her bowl or tug me toward the door, but she is gone to her winter caretakers’ home in Albany (thank you, Sal!), so instead of waking to responsibility, I wake to the emptiness I have created.
I guess we always do – emptiness of fullness chosen or embraced. If I had perfected equanimity, perhaps my boat would not be tossed so remarkably high and low, right and left, as it seems to be on this heart’s Internal Sea. But we never really perfect such a thing, do we? And in the end, through the greater and lesser pains of arriving and depsarting, I prefer to feel my human feelings instead of vilifying them, and rather enjoy the rocking boat, despite the monsters that are pulled up in its nets. Maybe because of them.
That may be why I travel: hello, monsters; hello delights!
*
Here we are on the slowly turning planet, stewards of our actions, which oddly makes us stewards of the actions of our species. The sun has drawn a line in the sand, a line on the horizon, that slowly marches its brilliant way from east to west, erasing (already mentioned) last night’s ice, and pausing at its zenith to look down on You and Me. “How have you spent one-half the day?” he challenges. “How will you spend what remains?”
“SkyScape XII” (colorized) by Hengki Koentjoro @ DeviantArt.com