My Wild Son – Photo: unknown

Full Circle

I’ve been looking forward to reaching this moment and yet dreading it at the same time. We all know it’s been on my mind – it’s not as if I haven’t kept a running “T minus” count at the bottom of each post. So here it is. My Act of Power is complete. And the weirdest thing of all is how truly ‘full circle’ I’ve come. It’s more than you might think.

When I wrote my first post in the Act of Power I ended up dubbing my ‘1111 Devotion,’ all I knew was that the goal was set. I didn’t project into the future. In fact, I remember dividing 1111 by 365 just to see roughly how long my commitment would play out. And I distinctly remember wondering what day the project would end but making the conscious decision not to figure it out ‘with specificity.’ I didn’t want to consciously know the end date. In some way, I think I didn’t want to get ahead of myself. Who knew what might happen between then and now? In spite of my very best intentions, circumstances might have interrupted my efforts – so why put a date on it.

Over the past few months I began to get a sense of what the end date would be. (Yeah, I know. I’m weird.) And the fact that this effort on behalf of honoring Karl would end tonight seemed, oh, I don’t know. Too perfect.

Last Night

And so it was only last night that I finally permitted myself to pull out my journal from the time when Karl died and check some of the dates that were dancing around in my head. What I discovered may have contributed to my difficulty writing last night’s post. No. They absolutely did. My mind was going both a million miles a minute and simultaneously whirring, sort of stuck in neutral, in another time and place.

I was both rejoicing and thanking myself for keeping such detailed notes of thoughts, feelings, experiences, and messages – and also feeling a profound regret for not having kept even better records. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that I was berating myself. It was more a feeling like when you’re watching a great movie or reading a book that’s totally engrossing and yet…you want more.

On some level, I knew I’d feel this way even as I was walking through our shock and grief. That’s why I did make an effort a couple of times to write out in copious detail some of the more amazing experiences we had. But there were many, many more mundane connections and contacts made between Karl and us in the days and weeks following his drowning. One thing that apparently happened frequently – so frequently that I clearly started taking it for granted – was a classic sign of the presence of spirit: a sudden and often fleeting feeling of a cold draft or pocket of air.

Funny. I totally forgot that that happened a lot in the two weeks or so immediately following his death. And yet even other people experienced it. Even people who called me to say they felt his presence in that moment and had a word or a message to convey.

Tip of the Iceberg

And all of this is just a taste of what I re-discovered when I went back and started reading my entries from that time. As I said above, it sent me into a reverie that, honestly, I feel I’m still in.

Indeed, a part of me wanted to try to write this final post in my 1111 Devotion ahead of time. What?!? And break with tradition? I’m pretty sure you all know I’ve written each and every post spontaneously, every night, often jettisoning an idea that had been lurking at the edge of my mind in favor of a thought, inspiration, or outrage that was simply too compelling to quell.

So no. I couldn’t write this ahead of time. And now we’re sort of stuck with this polyglot of thoughts.

YCMTSU

But of course, I must conclude with the final YCMTSU (You Can’t Make This Stuff* Up) of this 1111 Devotion. Today is November 26^th 2021. Our Gathering in honor of Karl was held – you guessed it – on the Saturday following Thanksgiving in 2011: November 26^th. This post, because of the way I stay up late writing and have it set up so that the email version gets batch posted at 1:00 a.m., will actually be posted on Saturday.

So yeah. Through absolutely ZERO planning or intention on my part, this 3+ year endeavor, based solely on writing 1111 consecutive posts (in tribute to his death on 11/11/11 – at or about 11:11 p.m. Pacific Time) is ENDING on 11/26 (my Friday night), but technically Saturday – the literal day on which his Gathering took place ten years ago.**

There’s More

Reading my journal entries has reminded me of some experiences that I’m still digesting, in that I honestly believe they mean more to me now than they did when they occurred. It’s almost as if they’re messages that I wrote down then but were meant for me to read and recall now.

This is something that happens a lot with dreams and shamanic journeys. That’s because time is an illusion, and sometimes we receive messages or have dreams that we know or feel are profound, but don’t really make sense in the ‘now.’ It’s only when we go back and read them weeks, months, and sometimes even years (or decades) later do they click into place.

Ah yes. Good stuff.

But in the meantime? I thank you all for sharing this epic journey with me. Knowing at least one other person (besides Karl – he has to live with me, so he was kind of obligated to at least fake it) was reading my words meant the world to me. Instead? I was blessed with so many of you.

Thank you.

*you know what I really say

**As usual whenever I mention 1111 Devotion, I added the link to the very first entry I wrote (the ‘Devotion’ post), above. For the first time in a very long time (ever?), I re-read it just now in its entirety and I see that – apparently – I DID calculate that this would end on November 26th. What I realize is that it obviously didn’t even CLICK that this would be the exact 10 year anniversary of his Gathering; and as a corollary to that, I don’t think I was counting eggs, much less any chickens, at that point. I can confidently say I never assumed I’d reach this goal without missing a day. I still can’t believe it.

(T-0)