Time Away, and Back Again. Kinda.

Tags

Blogging, Choices, life, passages, personal, self determination, transitions

Sailors and the Sinking Sun by Emile Nolde – 1946

I took two months away from blogging, most of May and all of June. Some of that time was finishing the first draft of a new novel. Some of it was spending time with family. Much of it was preparing for a trial that has now been continued. I won’t go into the details, except to say it’s part of a long, ongoing saga dealing with the guardianship of my granddaughter. Not something I’m worried about, but due diligence is needed to keep her safe and in good hands. And this is the first time I’ve represented myself in the matter. A long, steep learning curve.

But I’m back. Kinda.

In a weird way, I feel like I’m standing at the prow of a ship and trying to decide where to go to next—with this blog, and the rest of my life. The way is wide open before me. So many choices.

Mary Oliver once ended a poem with this question: “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

We sometimes forget her question comes right on the heels of another: “Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?”

And that follows this: “What else should I have done?”

Which leads, perhaps, to that old clich: “This is the first day of the rest of my life.”

I feel a bit like that now, with all the uncertainty and promise that comes with it.

“We create ourselves out of our innermost intuitions” is another favorite quote.

The seed knows within itself what it will become when it falls on fertile soil. But what of the acorn still clinging to the leaf? What does it dream of? Rebirth in the fertile soil below? Or that wild flight through the crystal air when the way is still wide open. Tethered neither to tree above (the past) nor the earth below (what is to come), but for one brief, infinite instant seeing the whole round world in all its wonders, and itself at the very center of it all.

Far at sea with no land in sight the horizon is round and there is no end to it. We lie at the still center of a vast spaciousness.

Still, the wind will rise before us, the seas will roll beneath, and our eyes will seek something within that vast spaciousness to set our sails for.

And so, while I’m back, I know not where I’m headed next. And, for now, I like this free-fall feeling. The round horizon. The way wide open. For now.