Imbolc and the Moon of Tides
Sunday gratefuls: A restful Sabbath. Tara’s home. Eleanor will come. Iran. Israel. U.S. Khamenei. Morning darkness. The power of myth. Rumi.
Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Superman
Week Kavannah: Shleimut. The alignment of the inner self with outer actions, bringing a sense of completeness to life.
Tarot: Six of Arrows, transition
My inner world. Moving to the clinical trial and to a focus on draft 2 of Superior Wolf. With confidence.
One brief shining: Fusing the clinical trial decision with the ongoing evolution of my writing style. A sail like the Six of Arrows, full with the winds of agency, of growth, of resolve.
When I was in college in the last millennium, I met four students who identified as Persian. 1967. Street theater. Guerilla theater. Their Tehran was a place of deep culture and tradition. Long standing Persian culture in contemporary dress. A place of creativity contained and encouraged. They inspired me, then involved in a theater minor and modern dance.
At each turn of Iran’s fortunes, from the self-coronation of the Shah to the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis and to this morning’s headlines, I go back in time to those vibrant students. Their Iran has always stuck with me, especially as the cold hand of Shia dogmatism tried over and over again to crush it.
Talk about civilizational erasure. Bearded clerics. Covering women. Killing dissenters. Funding resistance to Israel and to Sunni Islam. Hezbollah. Hamas. Houthis. Persian culture in a burkah.
Khamenei assassinated. A part of me is so happy. I imagine those students, now in their old age, feeling an opening, a moment for theater of the people. A theater of liberation, one opening possibilities. How I wish I’d stayed in touch, remembered their names.
Part of me grieves his death. Not as a rigid dogmatist, but as a man. His life stopped.
Yet another part of me gets a thrill seeing the muscular actions of the U.S. and Israeli militaries. Taking the fight to Iran instead of suffering blow after blow from terrorists funded by Iranian oil. Take that, fundamentalists. Oh, to live in a world of black and white. Good U.S. Bad Iran. Too old for that.
I admit it. I don’t know what to do with those parts of me. A long time anti-war activist. Fighting American imperialism decades before our own authoritarian grabbed power. Ironic. Work for self-determination. Vietnam. The Lakota. Persians in a closed and throttled Islamic state.
I will not even use war metaphors for cancer treatment. Not a fight, or a struggle, rather a wounding. Needs healing, not gun-boat metaphors.
The problem? A pre-emptive war with no defensive justification. Gun-boat diplomacy. Reactionaries succeeding. Naked imperialism. Might makes right. It doesn’t.
In this frame? A more intellectual reaction. I’m appalled. No matter the apparent rewards, reinforcing the king is bad. Bad for the U.S. Devastating for nations around the world. Don’t catch his attention.
We contain, as Whitman said, multitudes. I see mine in reaction to this brutal smackdown. The dominant male in me. Yes. Yes. Yes. A patriarchal part of me. One I know to not entrust with the steering wheel. In there though.
Dawn arrived on Shadow Mountain. Shadow got fed.