In search of a mountain

At the crossroads.

In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you. — Lev Tolstoy

Now that I’m about to receive the Master level attunement, I wonder if I’m already seeing things more clearly than I did even two months ago.

I’ve been beset. My parents, Great Spirit continue to bless them, are every bit as mentally sharp as they ever were, but I can see their physical presences deteriorating right before my eyes. It isn’t even like the kind of difference you notice in someone when you’ve been away for a while and you mark how they’ve changed since you saw them last—it almost feels now as though I’m seeing a difference from month to month, sometimes week to week, even (less often) day to day.

When one parental unit takes the Cadillac out to go to the store or the library, I find myself worrying now about other drivers on the road and that parental unit’s  current state of reflex. When they’re both out, one as a passenger for the other, that’s double the worry. The best that can be said when both Mom and Dad have vacated the house is that I can actually record things down here in the Sanctum with a microphone; when they’re home, the clatter upstairs tends to preclude that activity, as do the incessant interruptions and the increasing amount of errands on which I find myself for their sake. So I have my choice: worry about when the records will be done once and for all, or worry about whether today is the day some idiot runs a red light and totals the Caddo (or if [heaven forfend] my parents manage to do it themselves).

The records, by the way, are probably not going to be finished by the May deadline. (The celebrated Douglas Adams quote comes to mind: “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”) The sudden appearance on my system drive of a Trojan horse virus from an unknown source about a month ago pretty much saw to that. I’m still at least partially in recovery mode: the disk drives are working and the audio apps and plugins are functioning again, but so far no amount of reinstalling the printer driver will force the MacBook Pro and the Epson Stylus to recognize one another.

So, in an effort to make things just a little easier on myself, I’ve placed the Luminous City remaster on the back burner and will concentrate exclusively on the first Arc album for the time being, with the hope that it finally sees release in July.

If there’s money to release it. I’m investigating now whether I am to be one of the 7000 residents of this state to lose my unemployment benefits on the 12th of this month—it strikes me as ironic that the state legislature would cancel the extended benefit program because there’s merely less unemployment in the state. It’s as though they’re saying, we’ve got the unemployment level down to what we feel is a manageable level, now those who are still unemployed can go stuff themselves.

And it has dawned on me that if there were adequate skilled work here in Connecticut, I’d be doing it now. Yes, lately I’ve been concentrating on acquiring the skills needed to become a Reiki Master/Teacher, and I still intuit that a good chunk of my life’s work will be in the healing arts (with another good chunk of it in music, and still another a good man to a good woman).

Today, I considered a drive up to Washington to hike the tower trail at Mount Tom State Park, just for the view and for the cardio that I’d burn on the way up—then remembered that the tower was closed for repairs the last time I was up there a month ago. I considered hiking the tower trail at Sleeping Giant—I hadn’t been there in four years, the day before I met Jersey Girl for the first time in the flesh—but I told myself it wouldn’t have been enough of a challenge. The morning was rather moist, so the Blue Trail at the Giant was out of the question: lots of rocks and opportunities to slip and fall over a cliff.

So instead I drove through the exploding greens and intoxicating Russian olive blooming in Oxford’s back roads. I passed a signpost—and at that precise moment, my spirit guides reminded me that I had been neglecting a third skill set, which if it hadn’t sustained me through the beginning and end of my marriage, had at least kept the bread on the table.

Yes, I said, I could go back to IT, but you’ve already told me that’s not where my future lies. I turned the car around to head back to the T-junction.

It isn’t, the guides said, but then again, you’ve always known your future isn’t here in Connecticut. In order to have the future you’re going to have, you need to revisit that other set.

But there aren’t any jobs here, I protested.

That’s true. There aren’t.

So.. I have to.. go where the jobs are?

No verbal response, but a gentle rustle of the wind as I alit from the Explorer with cell phone in hand, readying the camera at the intersection, told me my guides were nodding in agreement.

But.. my parents? I asked. Leave them now, in their twilight years?

They need to do what they need to do, and you need to do what you need to do. If anything was going to happen, it would already have happened at some point in the last four and a half years of you being under their roof. Your life’s been on hold for quite a while now, and it will remain on hold as long as you’re living there. You’re not getting any younger, and pretty soon your sell-by date will pass just like you were afraid it would.

As I kept trying to reason my way around what my guides were telling me was necessary for the next step down the path, there came a voice I didn’t recognize at first, until the words formed sentences and recognition came: Ray Bradbury.

If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business, because we’d be cynical. Well, that’s nonsense. You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.

I snapped the picture and wished again for a nearby tower.