Winter Waning Moon of the Winter Solstice
Just back from the former Kinko’s, printing the invitation for Kate’s retirement party, Coming of Age: the Art of Retirement. We have entered the good-bye phase of life. Good-bye to work. Good-bye to cousins, aunts, uncles. Good-bye to homes and states. Good-bye to life. Viewed from the vantage point of youth this must seem a dreadfully depressing, black life stage, in fact the opposite is true. As death comes closer, most of us finally get the message: live in the now. Live today, not in regrets about yesterday or anxiety about the future.
A calmness comes with this perspective, a realization that this life, this moment has the only juice you’ll ever get. So, we try to ring as much as possible out of the day: Ike’s funeral, Kate’s retirement, the days we have when we’re able to garden and tend the bees, the opportunities we have to work on environmental advocacy, to roam the museum and spend hours talking about art, to eat and talk with friends like the Woolly Mammoths. These are life.
Corny as it sounds, I always liked the very existential Schlitz ad: You only go round once in life, grab all the gusto you can. Laissez bon temps rouler!
