Imbolc Imbolc Moon
Wanted to mention two internal conversations. Both have occurred while in transit through the mountains.
The first, perhaps the simpler, has been about how to describe our environment in the most economical way possible. I know, I didn’t say it was deep, just persistent. I’ve come to these nouns: sky, evergreens, slope, rock, streams. Yes, it leaves out houses and wildlife, roads and cars. But. The context for life up here can be described using those five words.
The second has been about destinations and journeys. Whenever I leave home, on foot (rare) or in the Rav4, I have a destination in mind. I’m leaving Black Mountain Drive and going to Beth Evergreen or to Jon’s house or to King Sooper or to Dazzle. Something is attractive enough or is needed enough to make me get up, go outside, start the car and go.
Because of these motivations, whatever they are, the journey tends to focus itself on the destination. Not surprising, eh? What do I need to get at the store? Did I remember everything? My wallet. Coffee. Keys. Phone. The destination can infect the entire journey, put us in blinders so that we’re like horses headed to the barn for hay.
Yet. The journey can occupy more time than we spend at our destination. But we view it as incidental and the arrival at the destination the real act. This is not about whether the destination is more important than the journey, the two require each other, rather it’s about intention and attention.
If the present is all we ever have, and it is, then the journeys we take, no matter how mundane, are also the present at the time we are on them. There is no future. We only imagine it. There is no past, it is a memory. There is only this moment, keys clacking, letters and words appearing on the screen, a car going by, Black Mountain and blue sky out the window.
So. What? What I’m trying to do is appreciate the journey for what it is, not as wasted time between this destination and that one, but as an experience sui generis. Our whole life is a journey between emergence and disappearance, how sad it would be if we missed our life along the way.
