March 21 to April 7—the
junction that takes us out of deep winter and into spring. It is nearly over. “When the seasons change,
we experiences a sympathetic internal shift.
All life forms open themselves up to receive cosmic redirection from
nature during these crucial seasonal transitions, so we are likely to be more
vulnerable and unsettled.” (Maya Tiwari, The
Path of Practice, p. 348)
The seasonal junction into spring is
different for me this year. Usually this
time of year, I feel full, heavy and overwhelmed, which can lead to paralysis and avoidance. This year I feel empty, devoid of fecund material. This is a different kind of paralysis. The junctions are fickle for me. I swing wildly between vata and kapha
excess. And everything feels off.
April 4, 2015—the lunar eclipse
and the red moon. According to Sky
and Telescope magazine, "That red light shining onto the moon is
sunlight that has skimmed and bent through Earth's atmosphere: that is, from
all the sunrises and sunsets that ring the world at any given moment."
Something about that sounds beautiful. from
all the sunrises and sunsets that ring the world at any given moment.... It could be a line in a poem or the title of
a poetry book. I think of how all those sunsets and sunrises look and it is a glorious pattern of orange to pink hues flickering around the edges
of the planet. It reminds me of how everything is always transitioning, shifting, reacting to all that is happening around
us.
The emptiness has been overwhelming to
me lately. Empty can be defined in many
ways, so what do I mean when I say I feel empty? Does it mean I feel like I contain nothing?
That I’m devoid of anything? That I am not filled or occupied? Does it mean I
lack force or power? Or that I lack purpose or substance? Or does it mean that
I need nourishment and that I’m simply hungry for something substantial??
So many facets to this word, but as I
read over the definitions, what struck me most was that emptiness means lacking nourishment. The emptiness of not feeding myself all the
things that I need. And I don’t mean
food to fill my stomach. I mean the food
of creativity and joy. The things that feed my dreams and plans and desires. I
have been feeding myself many of these things over the winter, but I don’t know
where they went. Does that mean I have misjudged what I really needed? Walking out in the red moon yesterday, I felt
a surge of life and joy. I could breathe in the fresh air and look at something
that I don’t always get to see. It was a beautiful reminder of how big the world is and how I am a small part of that life energy. But still part of it. At the end of my journaling this morning, what came to me was
that I need to write. I’m not writing
enough. I have found all these fleeting
moments of sunrises and sunsets flickering around me and I have not given them
enough time. When I write, I give them
more time. More attention. Something new emerges in those (these) moments.
Writing—the conjunction between self
and the world. The way I transform
intangible experiences from my body into the world. I sometimes think things get lost if they
don’t get written in some way. Written
in a poem, a journal, in a painting, in a clay bowl I made. Creativity is transformation. So is creativity the conjunction between self
and the world? Not just writing?
Conjunctions are essential. They are a
part of speech that connects words, sentences, or phrases. This definition may
overlap with that of other parts of speech, so what constitutes a conjunction must be defined for each
language. So conjunctions are not
obvious, they can be fickle, and chameleons in language. So it would make sense
that in general, conjunctions are not always the same all the time. It is why sometimes writing and creativity
can connect my self to the world. But if
I’m not in it, not committing to what I am and what I want to be, then writing
is not a conjunction. It is a task to be done, to finish. (A lonely verb?) It comes and goes, habit energy.
