Imbolc and the Waiting to Cross Moon
Friday gratefuls: How to Change Your Mind. Philpott. Pollan. High Winds. Lodgepoles swaying. Doverspike. Marilyn and Irv. Aspen Perks. Tara, pronounced terra. Mussar. Luke at mussar. Rabbi Jamie. Alan. His castle in the sky. Making the new office mine. Doug the Painter. New Amsterdam, a show with a lot of heart. Ditto The Last of Us.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Dazzle Jazz Sunday Brunch with Ruth
Realized I’ve focused on relationships of late. Making lunch and dinner and breakfast dates. Spending time with friends. Family. Talking with folks on zoom. Texting. This is not a change in focus, but a change in both quantity and quality. As I age, my precious, the one ring that binds them all, is love.
Much less focus on what might be considered work. Much more attention to the lives of others. Not volunteering. Did enough of that. No, this is about the thicker web of close in family and friends. About being there for them as they are for me.
Seeing and being seen. Touching and being touched. Something to do with living alone. To paraphrase Alvin Toffler who said High Tech, High Touch. High Alone, High Touch.
In other words to live alone happily, as I do, means I have a greater need for intimacy with friends and family. And so it has come to be. As the authors of The Good Life, the book about the longest longitudinal study of human development, the Harvard Study of Adult Development say with a nod to the favorite wisdom of real estate: Relationships. Relationships. Relationships.
Introversion does not mean isolation or hermetic solitude. It means gaining energy from your own company. I find deep conversations with friends a source of solace, a source of gladness, a place to give and receive thoughts about life situations. I do not find them energizing. Though in their wake I do feel stronger, held up, buoyed by their now invisible presence.
Alone, but not lonely.
Perhaps you could call this the emet, the truth in context of introversion, of widowhood. Those of us already inclined to recharging ourselves alone. Those of us in an unwanted, yet fully accepted life without our partners. We can adapt well to the role of widower, from the Latin root *uidh-, to separate, divide. (Etymology) But we cannot adapt well (and should not) to a life without others.
If that final separation, so final, drives one into a dark place, occulted from the world of the living while still with breath, then. Well, then. There are two widows. One dead and one among the quick. Be it not be so for you if you encounter the abyss made by the departure of one you loved.
And yet. That abyss, perhaps the one into which you stare until it stares back at you, that abyss has meaning in its vasty deeps. Meaning you cannot find if you turn away, run in fear to the corner of your living room or the bar or to the arms of another.
In my own viewing of the deep I have come to accept both Kate’s permanent absence and her undying presence. Yes. She is well beyond my reach. Yes. She helped me cook the other night. Be patient with it, Charlie. She delights in the view of Black Mountain with me, her arm around my waist, her head on my shoulder. She rides up Shadow Mountain Drive with me, looking to see another Mountain Lion, Bear, Elk. And I am glad.
