Imbolc Waxing Wild Moon
Back at the novel today, 1,800 words. There’s an uphill struggle to get back in the groove when I let a week or so slip by with no work on it. Like navigating the turns in the fast luge track at Whistler, I get stuck at the start, but once the momentum picks up, I can dive into a chicane with confidence. Back at it now headed down the track.
Self confidence is so fragile, at least for me, and I expect for many of us. If I could graph mine’s rise and fall even in the course of a day, it would mimic a wild stock ride, selling up at one moment, then a run and a price in sudden decline. And then the reverse. Again. Even now.
Example. I came downstairs feeling pretty good about getting back to the novel. Granted I skipped exercise tonight to keep on writing, but overall that felt good. Then I went on Amazon’s website to check out an author Mark Odegard recommended, Dan Simmons. Sure enough, he’s doing stuff enough like what I’m trying to do to make me nervous. He’s already sold a lot. I haven’t.
Now there’s a steadier core that chugs alone just underneath all this oscillation–the ego worried about its reception in the world–and that core is the one that, walking the garbage and recycling out tonight under a gorgeous waxing wild moon, reflected that no matter how gifted and accomplished, we all die, then sink away into oblivion. Yes, a few don’t–Homer, Socrates, Qin Shi Huangdi, Confucius, Emily Dickinson, Boadicea, Teresea of Avila, Pancho Villa, Montezuma, Geronimo, Einstein, Chopin, Bach, Da Vinci for example–but the bulk of us, the 99.999999% of all who have ever lived, live in the best way we can, then slowly fade, first in body, then in memory, then we’re gone.
This one knows that the best life is the one we live on our own terms, not on borrowed hopes and dreams and not judged by externalities. At 63 the core has become stronger and stronger, often balancing the ego’s surges and falls before they happen, but it is not yet dominant, at least not all of the time. The devil of expectations still sticks a pitchfork into my ego every once and a while. Predictably, my ego squeals.
If you have a chance tomorrow night, go outside and look at the moon around 9:00 pm if the night is clear. The moon sat up there in the sky tonight, Orion off to its southeast, other stars around it like diamonds around a fat, lustrous pearl. A work of art that needs no hand, but satisfies the eye.
