The hardest part, the really really hard part, is being patient. Is deciding not to think about the thousand heartbeats before and after this one. Not the mail. Not dinner. This now. Only this now. Letting tonight be only one moment, lived and examined for three hours. Who has three hours? Who has time to think?
When we cannot think we cannot see. In a quantum world where observation collapses infinite possibilities to individual realities, we hurtle forward eyes clenched in the darkest darkness listening to whispered promises of every imaginable desire. There is I think a kind of bravery in Looking, in holding on firmly to one valuable thing as the rest of the parade passes by. A kind of Faith in simplicity, sacrifice, commitment.
I admire and aspire to that faith.
I exercise that faith looking at the change of seasons and visits to dark places.
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Rain is out of habit. Drivers today seemed puzzled, slowing to 25 on the interstate though wipers stumbled intermittently. Less than an hour earlier I felt the brooding darkness press in over my shoulders, and clouds gathering through the blinds. I sat for a third day wordsmithing computer security documents, something that though tedious I don't mind as I'm good at. It was nice to feel competent, something I had discussed with A. the night before, comparing notes on how much we learn and how much we forget. I still feel in my hands the chiseled work of designs that fade from memory. And years of limestone higher education wash away leaving canyons with spare
hoodoos: Kantian ethics, marching band rules, metal hardening, legal briefs, framing public issues, technology-driven history, and the Lorenz attractor.As Houston finally drifts out of the lower 90s, I see Lorenz's butterfly circling, patterning out the weather, summer shifting into autumn. Circling out on a wing, the system eventually oscillates to its familiar modes, the swoop of a front lifting the leaves and spitting on the windows. Legend explains the change of season through the myth of Persephone, daughter of Demeter, taken by Hades to be Queen of the Underworld. Loved and fought over by both, Demeter's joint custody between parent and spouse also explained early wedding rituals, and represents perhaps the original long-distance relationship.
The LDR is a different beast than others I've seen stalk the minds of friends and loved ones, one that Queen Persephone understood all too well. Monarch butterflies migrate south every year, chasing the weather patterns of the world. We too try to maintain, to stay in orbit, to change the system when its oscillations tilt towards winter. But sometimes the system changes on us. Certain eyes and ears are the voices calling you home to dinner before night falls. In their absence, the equations change, the landscapes shift to older climates, familiar weather. Wondering when spring will come, when the next flight will head south, is winter's company.
Persephone's heart froze in winter. Odysseus called her the Iron Queen on his dangerous journey to the Underworld, and it was her handmaidens whose punishment it was to tempt him with their Siren's calls. Only Orpheus ever warmed that heart, with the music of Apollo and the words of Calliope, asking that he should live with Eurydice all months of the year in the warmth of the sun. Understanding love but also temptation and fear, Persephone and Hades challenged Orpheus to walk alone through the cold darkness believing he would not lose her along the way. With only the sound of whispering demons in his ears, unable to speak to his love, he reached out for her in fear and in so doing lost her.
There is indeed a wisdom of age that teaches us when to point our ships straight and lash ourselves to the mast. An art, too, in learning not to listen to the voices we can't help but hear.
