Lughnasa Waxing Back to School Moon
Tomorrow we move into the fall equinox position on our yearly orbit. In this sense time recurs again and again and again, each spot on the orbit revisited as Earth passes along on its ancientrail. Of course, the orbit changes slightly each year and the solar system moves further and further away from the center of our galaxy, so in a strict sense the spots are not quite the same, but from a terrestrial perspective over the span of a human life, the differences are not noticeable. Birthdays point as much to a specific point on Earth’s track around the sun as they do to a “time.” Our age, which we consider linear, really counts the number of times the Earth has revolved around the sun since our birth, not linear at all, but elliptical.
Tom Crane said last night that he and Roxann climb a hill at the Arboretum and each time they see a tree. At one point the tree has bare branches, at another leaves, at another flowers and fruit, colors change at yet another point. It feels linear, but, wait…the colors change, the tree has bare branches, then leaves, then flowers and fruit and again the leaves change color.
As he spoke, I thought of our circle, made sacred now by 20 years of showing up, how our hair has gone gray, our flesh taken on wrinkles and on some of us, a few pounds. Again, it feels linear, this aging process. Then, the conversation turned to grandchildren who will crawl, walk on two legs, then three, just as the Sphinx had riddled. Within our species the childhood, maturity, aging repeats over and over again as the fleshly vessel sloughs off, but its genetic information goes on.