A New Shape of Things
As the Wolf Moon wanes, I’m sensing a new shape of things, and my place in it. Like the visions of sugarplums dancing in the heads of sleeping children on Xmas eve, I see things I could or should do, ideas I could or should make happen. But these are all based in my past, and let me be the first to say they are super-great ideas for my former self.
Now, in my deepest listening to a deep new inner heartbeat, I think I discern a code for what is actually to come, what is truly to be. I put aside those colourful dancing sugarplums. I can tell that each is a whole world or enterprise that would take a lot of time and energy to make into a reality. The transition from idea into physical form takes energy from all the human beings who want the idea to become real in the world, in matter.
We want to see what really matters!
For me, I can’t select and sort from a large menu; the mix and match at the make-your-own-poke cafe has too many options. And if I don’t want what’s on the suggested menus? That’s where I was this past week.
What am I supposed to do?
It has something to do with an exhausted heart. The Australian fires. The actions of Trump in Iran, the tragic loss of life in the Ukrainian plane shot down, the fog of all the misinformation. The fear of escalating war. Twice last week, for brief moments, nothing mattered. I was done. Empty. The game closed down. This never happens to me. I can let down, be sad, feel deeply, all that. I can angrily “not care”. But this was not that. It was empty nothing + mortal exhaustion.
Like everything, that didn’t last. Whew!
Today, I sense something new is coming into that gap in the continuum. It’s waiting in the wings, gathering molecules and setting up vibrations to open a new direction. I’m watching, still, thinking.
Mrs. Moore
When I was in university, I wrote papers on E.M.Forster’s Passage to India. At the time you’d think it was the story that got me - all about racism, colonial politics, British cruelty and hypocrisy, suppressed sexuality, the silly goose Adela Quested, and the mystery held in the caves. But it was Mrs. Moore who compelled me to return again and again to that novel. The crowd chanting her name, Mrs. Moore, Mrs. Moore. The inner character of Mrs. Moore and her deep detachment while all the drama was escalating around her. I’d never seen a character like that in any book.
In Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander, the grandmother, Helena Ekdahl, also has some of that quality. Sitting late at night with her brandy, looking through the family photobooks.
Shirley
Ruth Sheen’s performance in Mike Leigh’s High Hopes has stayed with me for days. Her character Shirley’s soft genuine simplicity was so luminous and optimistic, kind and natural - an earth-mother-to-be. Also I was uplifted by the extraordinary moment of reveal, at the very end, the last line spoken by Mrs. Bender, played by Edna Doré.
Those four (mostly old) gals: Mrs. Moore, Fanny and Alexander’s grandmother, Shirley, and Mrs. Bender come to mind just now, singing snappy harmonies together like a WWII sister act. Caring or distant, holding the world together like goddesses or letting it just fall apart, each takes a solo with a little tap dance or turn. How I love the rich world of these women from the imagination, keeping up their spirits, and mine, with a cup of tea, a sip of brandy. It helps.
(Oh, I know its much more complicated than that, but I’ll stay here for a while anyways.)
This week’s photo is of a poster from the gift shop of the Alhambra, in Granada, Andalusia, Spain. Inspiring me to write next about the confluence of forces in Andalusia, the beautiful intertwining of mystic paths and knowledge when Jews, Muslims, and Christians shared and studied together in harmony.
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