Summer                                                               Moon of the First Harvests

A torpor always follows completion of a manuscript and it set in today.  It’s a sort of aimlessness, a nothing to do so what could I possibly do sort of feeling.  Yes there is a tension between doing and not doing and yes sometimes I fear that the doing is only a way to shove aside the great fear, the dread of dying.  And, further yes, sometimes I fear that I lean too far toward the doing and away from acceptance and that the torpor I describe only underscores it.

And it may be so.  It may be that I write, garden, learn Latin, get involved in politics and family only to push back the confrontation with my own non-being.  It may be so.

Or it may be that I do these things because they are my flower and leaf, that they are the what I am.  That is my belief.  In doing these things I do what a lily does when it pushes up from its corm, strikes a thick green blade through the earth, gets to sunlight and puts on leaves and flowers.  I am this variety of human.  In this sense those things I do are not avoidance, but completion.

This time between creative efforts becomes a fallow time like the fall and winter months, a time to gather in energy and prepare for the next growing season.  Perhaps lilies, after the flower has bloomed, the seeds are made and leaf and stalk have died back wonder, too, what is my purpose now? I am not what I can be, so am I avoiding my end?  No says the older, wiser lily.  Not at all.  Now is when you become stronger, able to support more flowering.  We do not end, this older lily might say, but develop in such a way that others follow after us.  May it be so.