Waxing Moon in Scorpio 10 Sept 2021 – Photo: L. Weikel
Unspeakable Beauty
There’s something magical about September days. It’s possible to experience one or two and feel transformed simply by the unspeakable beauty and perfection that unfolds simply by ‘being.’
There’s going to be a lot of recalled trauma this weekend, especially tomorrow. Grief and sorrow will abound. Disappointment, regret, and rage will also be among the greatest hits.
Our feelings are our feelings. No one can reasonably tell us how we feel or how we ‘should’ feel. But there comes a time when the realization hits us that just feeling the feelings isn’t getting us anywhere. We need to purge them so they be transmuted or channel them into useful action.
Monarch sipping – Photo: L. Weikel
Be In Nature
If you do anything tomorrow, please: make a point of allowing yourself to be in nature. Seize the opportunity to bask in the warmth of the sun while a cool, refreshing breeze ruffles your hair and caresses your brow.
Take comfort from the birds and animals, trees and flowers and grasses with which we share this planet.
Remember to breathe.
Allow yourself to continue dreaming the dreams that only a few days ago you planted as seeds at the new moon. Look toward the west and the setting sun and pay attention to the crescent moon growing every single day. Know that it’s reflecting how your aspirations for the future, your passions for how you want to live your life are growing moment by moment. Ever so slightly, perhaps, but inexorably.
And all the while we’re surrounded by vibrant colors and astounding creatures that – if and when we notice them – make our human lives infinitely richer.
Bee finding the sweetness – Photo: L. Weikel
Find the Sweetness
So much has changed in the past twenty years. So much has changed in the past ten. It’s important to look back and appreciate what we’ve lived through, what we’ve endured, and what we’ve lost.
But it’s even more important to taste the sweetness of now.
If you are shying away from the inevitable commemorations and wall-to-wall coverage that will be taking place over the next several days (especially on Saturday), I’m with you. And I’ll admit it: there’s a part of me that feels a little guilty about my visceral desire to avoid revisiting that horrific event.
That’s why I’m the first one to confess how shocked I am that I’m rushing to get this post written. Why? Because I’ve been immersed in the MSNBC special Memory Box: Echoes of 9/11. It is well worth your time.
We All Cope Differently
Everyone deals with the unthinkable in their own way. I’m not one for hashing and rehashing trauma and tragedy. That’s not to say that I don’t see the value in it for others. Sometimes we need to see and replay what we experienced because it was too shocking in the moment to comprehend. I get that. Believe me, I’ve hashed and rehashed some of my own traumatic moments. But over the years, it’s often felt to me like our honoring of 9/11 was exploitive.
The attacks on 9/11 not only inflicted devastating wounds on thousands of people personally, they also ripped away a lot of illusions we held as a country, leaving us feeling uncharacteristically vulnerable and afraid. Airing repeated images of the devastation only picked those scabs and made us bleed, year after year.
Transmuting the Pain
My personal preference is not to relive those excruciating hours of disbelief, fear for loved ones, and uncertainty about, well, everything. I would rather focus on transmuting the heartache into greater understanding and solidarity. I feel this was a huge missed opportunity as both our country and the world came together immediately afterward.
Indeed, it’s probably fair to say the unbelievable horror and loss (on so many levels) of that day and its aftermath – both short and long term – changed most of us. Indeed, I have to wonder if our focus on vengeance instead of understanding was the poisonous seed that, in its sprouting, has led to the rending of our hearts and our country.
Perspective and Story
My belief in the power of speaking and writing our truth is unshakable. I’m particularly fond of the written word because it is so accessible to all of us and also gives us the opportunity to go back and reflect upon what we’ve written after time has intervened. It’s through the telling of our stories that we effect that transmutation of our pain and transformation of our lives.
The artistic and healing project represented by Memory Box: Echoes of 9/11 is powerful, heartfelt, and hopeful. I’m glad I watched it. It’s soulful and poignant and personal, and gives us all a unique perspective into the varied experiences of those who were right there and how their lives have been transformed by that fateful day.
We are entering a time in our evolution, as humans, in which we are facing some fundamental, existential choices. And this ‘time’ that we’re entering is not some epoch or age, some grander than our mortal lives massive measurement of time. No. We are in the initiation. The existential questions are being asked now. Right now. Right in the midst of our tiny, very tangible and measurable lifetimes.
I’ve mentioned before as this pandemic started looming on the horizon (before it was even characterized as a pandemic) that I sensed some major shifts in our reality coming toward us. Shifts that make us realize that the course we’ve been following not only is unsustainable but has hit a wall. Shifts that tell us, “Nothing is going to be the same.”
Self-Inflicted 9/11
In some ways, we might look upon what’s happening as a self-inflicted 9/11. When the United States was attacked by those three hijackings that gorgeous, azure-skied September morning, and we watched the twin towers crumble before our eyes, we knew instinctively that nothing would ever be the same.
And yet…in many ways, we humans resumed our blind and tone-deaf ways. While the world stood with all of us in the U.S. in the days and weeks following 9/11, eventually we – our government, our leaders – turned those events into the perfect justification to not only continue on our selfish, unsustainable path of war and greed and abuse of power, but to double down on it.
Greed Unchecked
Indeed, our selfishness and greed roared back to life, seatbelts or restraints on behavior that could easily get out of hand were removed. Everyone in the U.S. celebrated the amazing recovery we were enjoying, not a little bit funded by the seemingly never-ended wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, neither of which had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks, which supposedly justified them in the first place.
And then the 2008 financial debacle happened.
That, too, was going to change everything.
It didn’t.
Not only didn’t our over-consumptive, unsustainable, greedy ways continue. No, we flouted the existence of climate change. We pursued fracking here in the United States, a process of injecting unbelievably toxic materials into Mother Earth all in the pursuit, not only of unsustainable energy to burn but also money to burn. Climate effects be damned.
Out of Balance
All of these opportunities to make choices on how we are going to proceed in our evolution (or not), have resulted in us making choices that have caused us to grow more and more out of balance with everything else on this planet, including the planet herself.
The virus we’re facing right now is ravaging our species – all over the world, without care of nationality, skin color, religious affiliation, sexual orientation – because we have no natural immunity to it. And because we’ve lied to ourselves and willingly swallowed the lies being told to us. In order to deal with all of this, without losing massive numbers of our own, we must work together.
So far, our reaction, the reaction of the United States, has been barreling along on the trajectory we seem to have been following for many years, but most especially since entering this century.
We can still turn this around. But we need to do it now. We need to take to heart this dramatic, unprecedented challenge to what we think of as our lives and our societies and make some drastically different choices.
A Wonderful Perspective
I recommend this lovely thought-provoking piece as a completely different way of looking at what we’re experiencing right now. I, for one, would love to continue reflecting upon the questions posed here as the days, weeks, and months of this new life of ours unfolds.
I’m sitting here on my couch this evening wracking my brain for something – anything – to write about.
I shouldn’t really say ‘anything,’ since if I weren’t exercising a modicum of discernment, I could write about all sorts of things that are parading through my brain. And that’s where the title of this post comes in: A Lot of Nothing.
There are, indeed, many subjects I could riff on this evening. The obvious, extremely low-hanging fruit, would be 9/11. I don’t want to write about 9/11, though.
If I did start writing about 9/11, I’m sure I’d go down the rabbit hole and rant at the way the first responders to that horrible situation have been treated by Mitch McConnell and the Republicans. And I don’t want to do that.
I don’t want to write about the fires continuing to burn in the Amazon.
I’m decidedly sad about the children being forced to live in cages in Arizona – beyond sad. Sad is such a pathetic emotion. I’m outraged. I’m disgusted. I’m furious, and I don’t want to say it, but I’m bordering on feeling heartsick over what these people are enduring.
But I don’t want to write about them. Or this issue. It’s just all so relentlessly awful.
Weather Anyone?
Yes, indeed. I could write about the weather. But no; I won’t.
You’re welcome.
An Awful Thing Tonight
I could write about something awful that happened during our walk tonight.
The sun was long set and Mama Killa (pronounced as in Spanish: the ‘ll’ being like a soft ‘y’ as in ‘yah’) was blasting her reflected light down upon us, even casting distinct shadows, as if we were illuminated by a spotlight.
Two vehicles – big ones – at least in the range of Suburbans, but possibly even Enclaves or Armadas (you do have to roll your eyes at the names of those beasts, don’t you?) – were barreling toward us from the direction of the park (High Rocks), which technically closed at sunset. We made sure Sheila and Spartacus (as well as our own carcasses) were well off the side of the road, and Karl had his flashlight with green flashing warning light in full display, just to be safe.
As the first vehicle approached, its headlight flooded the pavement in front of us and I suddenly saw a snake absolutely booking it across the road. It was slithering in characteristic ‘s’ fashion astonishingly quickly – but it was headed in the wrong direction. It was headed away from us, toward the grass on the opposite side, almost certainly because it didn’t want to share space with us and the pups. But that was the ‘long way’ across the road.
Just as quickly, I could see that the Armada was going to mow it down. I knew it. I could tell simply by the speed and momentum of both snake and vehicle that the serpent would get clipped by the Armada’s far tire – the one closest to the edge of the road where the snake was headed. I yelled out, but I’m certain that not only didn’t the driver hear me, but even if they had, they wouldn’t have had any idea why I was crying out.
Giving Us a Wider Berth
I’ve been telling myself all night that the driver didn’t see the snake. That I didn’t really see the truck move over to the right even more – just to make sure they hit the creature that was brilliantly exposed by the headlights splayed across the pavement and moving as quickly as possible to get out of the way.
Even Karl had the same thought, but couched it this way: “I’m sure they moved over just then to give us a wider berth.”
Yeah. Sure. We can tell ourselves that. (And even if that is the case, I feel bad that we frightened the creature and caused it to move into harm’s way.)
So…that’s what I was thinking about tonight. Life. Death. Random loss. Cruel indifference. A lot of nothing.
Geez, it’s nights like these that you all probably wish I had some ‘canned’ pre-written posts about kittens. Or clouds.
Garter snake – Photographer unknown
P.S. It was a garter snake – a decent size, about 12” – and I moved it into the grass at the side of the road, hoping its head injury wasn’t life threatening. I’m pretty sure I was fooling myself, but I wanted to give it a chance to survive if it could.
