“the tapping at the walls of your life”

Depending on whether you follow the meteorological or astronomical definitions,

Here in the UK, we are either in the final lap of autumn or just off the starting grid of winter.

I happen to follow the latter and would consider us to be at the very sharp end of autumn, but based on the -4 degrees temperature this morning, it felt like winter had made an early arrival.

Either way now is a turning time.

A threshold.

A journeying from here,

to there.

An arrival and a departure.

And like all great transitions,

Add transformations,

It is briefly punctuated,

by a pause.

A waiting.

And I took such a pause this morning.

At “my place”.

The one I have journeyed to on an almost weekly basis since the start of the year.

The fact that I was accompanied by the Cold Moon this morning,

Made it doubly surreal.

I have spoken about the Moon Palace in an earlier post,

But this morning, I really did feel like I was there, and most importantly, ready to depart.  Do you remember what the old woman in the said?

“You are only three steps away. You were only ever three steps away. But it is so important that when you come back down to earth, you come down with your eyes open.”

Now, at the end of his commentary on the Moon Palace story, Martin Shaw described Plato’s four ways of “growing down into this life”

“Plato used to speak of four modes of growing down into this life, none of which seem very glamorous: growing down into your family, growing down into a relationship with nature, growing down into a ritual life, growing down into your own body, honouring its every season. Glamorous or not, without some sense of them, we are a talking head in the snow, or a spider looking for prey.”

Tomorrow, I am paying my respects to someone whose song in this life has come to end, and all too soon, and as I type, my laptop has just alerted me that there will be “heavy snow soon”.  In fact, I know that there is already a thick blanket of snow laying where I will be heading.

And it seems that heavy snow is the aptest of weather for an occasion like this.  Mythic almost.

So whilst there’s the necessary moment of waiting between this season and the next,

I am reminded that there is no time to wait, just as Leza Lowitz reminds me, oh so poetically.

 

Waiting

by Leza Lowitz

You keep waiting for something to happen,
the thing that lifts you out of yourself,

catapults you into doing all the things you’ve put off
the great things you’re meant to do in your life,

but somehow never quite get to.
You keep waiting for the planets to shift

the new moon to bring news,
the universe to align, something to give.

Meanwhile, the pile of papers, the laundry, the dishes the job —
it all stacks up while you keep hoping

for some miracle to blast down upon you,
scattering the piles to the winds.

Sometimes you lie in bed, terrified of your life.
Sometimes you laugh at the privilege of waking.

But all the while, life goes on in its messy way.
And then you turn forty. Or fifty. Or sixty…

and some part of you realizes you are not alone
and you find signs of this in the animal kingdom —

when a snake sheds its skin its eyes glaze over,
it slinks under a rock, not wanting to be touched,

and when caterpillar turns to butterfly
if the pupa is brushed, it will die —

and when the bird taps its beak hungrily against the egg
it’s because the thing is too small, too small,

and it needs to break out.
And midlife walks you into that wisdom

that this is what transformation looks like —
the mess of it, the tapping at the walls of your life,

the yearning and writhing and pushing,
until one day, one day

you emerge from the wreck
embracing both the immense dawn

and the dusk of the body,
glistening, beautiful

just as you are.

For the full Moon Palace story, follow this link.

Moon Palace, An Inuit Story of Transformation by Martin Shaw – Little Toller Books