Winter First Moon of the Winter Solstice
In February I will turn 65. And I’m happy to do it. Not that I have much choice in the matter. What I mean is that I like this time of life and anticipate with pleasure the next decade or two or three.
This transition has already begun to cause changes. Once back from our cruise in late November, I realized I needed to step back from the Sierra Club and focus on home, family and my work.
Home and family have obvious content, kids and grandkids, wife, gardens, bees. Remaining active and engaged with all of them. Not that I haven’t but recognizing that the grandparent and long married aspects of those relationships alter past patterns and demand new ones. Just what those are will become evident as I live into them over the next few years.
My work has three ongoing facets: a series of novels set in the Tailte mythos, reimagining faith and translating Ovid’s Metamorphoses. To this last I have added creation of commentary similar to Pharr’s for Vergil.
The portion of my life dedicated to art will also to need to change, but I have not yet paid attention to it. At a DAM site, the Palette Restaurant, Kate and I discussed how my relationship with art could transform.
Art could become a larger part of my writing, using techniques or artists in my fiction. Just how, undetermined right now.
Reimagining faith has as its long term hope the redefining of our relationship with nature. One way of rethinking, or seeing anew, our current relationship with the world we live is to investigate how artists portray nature across cultures.
A third way of integrating art in a different way might involve selecting a research project focused on an artist, a movement, a period, a culture. This might have some written work as a component or end product.
In service of all three I could begin taking art history courses.
A significant thread of all these changes is a pulling back or away from the world, shedding responsibility to others or for others and concentrating life more at home. This feels age appropriate and is a definite inner drive for me right now.