the one thing most precious

“what is important does not need to be spectacular”.

i wanted simple. we needed simple. we are few, around a candle, and the rain. i say these words, and they trickle down, penetrate the ultra-density i later realize is my body digesting an eclipse. i’ve been percolating for weeks the phrase :

“when a person chooses the one thing most precious it is a serious act.” (robert bly)

and then, every day, choosing it again.

and in the mirror of these women’s faces and stories i can rest in our common threads. that urge to fidget and peer into the horizon while the next step is still, so slowly, revealing. there are times when i can see the beacon, crystal clear, the flame drawing me into motion with ease and delight - but now i sit in the in-between, holding the horses. breathing. later that night i peruse a horoscope that repeats what was spoken and unspoken in our circle - about that jostling time, when the old doesn’t fit and the new is still an opaque tangle, one inch of thread showing and nothing more.

i’m enjoying the company of very old stories, and the images of waiting I find there. seven years in the forest. six months scrubbing the underground kitchen floor. the cicadas and their 17 years sleeping in the earth. pictures i painted a hundred times, when I was a painter. another of these acts of tending to the inner garden that i only recognize years later for what they were, what they are.

tempering time. 

and that night, I left uncertain that I had contributed anything to these women’s lives. a hand holds mine on the steering wheel and says that that was what they most needed to hear.

“what is important does not need to be spectacular.”

#eclipse #precious #resilience #dedication #temperance #circle

photo by Jaqueline Louan