Sanity and Endings

"How's it going?"

"Am still sane. You?"

It's Christmas madness time--I've brought my homeless-tent to a thrift shop, letting all that go, to gift another's need. The can-do man who builds and organizes the shop grins and nods.

A strange time altogether. I attended a Messiah performance in the midst of "Mercury retrograde"--think: dyslexia, confusion and Murphy's Law--and as topping to that disarray, a total lunar eclipse!

An awkward timing to perform anything, including coherent conversation, let alone Baroque entanglements--sopranos fainting, wild frisbee-polyphony, and many fine musicians skidding and careening, as though partner-skating on ice.

In the interest of life steady and predictable, we tend to discount being affected or thrown off balance, if it involves energy we may not fully understand.

We've got all that under control, right?--satellites on the prowl; military locked and loaded.

We're beyond paying attention to heavenly bodies. Other than those offered up by sex-sells-Madison Ave. and Hollywood.

Nonetheless, we are creatures electrical; our bodies shimmer. Quantum physics explores cosmology of light, of waves, of ancient understanding. An amazing time to be alive.

A friend and I rallied to watch the December total lunar eclipse at oh-dark-thirty, and freezing cold. It being cold, we decided against struggling with ice on windshield, and warming the car engine for a jaunt to greater wilderness.

We threw the porch swing cushion up onto the chest-high adobe wall and clambered up, straddling the wall, bundled up like Eskimos.

We watched the celestial show as more sensible neighbors lay snugged in bed. And snow lay all around.

Over an hour the moon darkly occluded, nibbles deepening from above. For a wee while, the usual, the vibratory status quo, simply shut down. As though a rebooting were to occur.

Endings of unknown consideration at year's end. Sun and moon and mountains dark below the flowing Milky Way.