Meditrinalia 2013

Personally, the transition moment from summer to post-summer has always been emotionally difficult. Post-summer itself, both autumn and even winter, can be fine, but it is the end of what precedes these that depresses the spirits. But what preceded this round, culminating with the month of September in California, was purely superb. With our Rosalie at the beginning and our Marlowe at the end, two supreme inspirations in themselves, and the Saint, our Pennell and Ram, our Iana with Piper and Dylan, our Becky with Leonard, Peter, Jason, Michele, Liz and even Carol, Richard too as well as Efale, Matt, Kevin, Andy, Ted, KC, Morgan, Geoff, Mary, Paul, Darrell, Tom, Judy, La Stef, Gary, Ron, Roger, Susan, Swamiji, Wendy, Doug, Lulu, Philip, Macha, Corby, Rowan, Russell, Prudence, David, Donnell, Barbara, Patrick, Don, Robert and culminating with Paul and Jonne-Marie all punctuating the likes of Deetchen’s, Nepenthe, Big Sur, the St. Francis Yacht Club, East Bay, the Queen Mary, Telegraph Hill, the new Bay Bridge, Marin, City Lights, Land’s End, the Golden Gateway, the Buena Vista, Wunderchen, the F-car, Hillcrest, Palm Springs and all constituting for the most part the filling of the Rosalie-Marlowe sandwich. Though we missed Thorn, Robert, Jonathan, Marie-Hélène, Gary, David and Kinmont, could it have been better – even with my ‘Palm Springs catastrophe’?

And since the return to a surprisingly still summery New England coast, we have at least laid eyes upon Joe, Lise, Shirley, Kate, Elsa, Charlie, Lynn and Ron. For the rest, it has been Sufi mysticism as well as an enjoyable excerpt or two in The Towers from Geoffrey Gibbs’ opera William Sprague and His Women and, in the Courthouse Center for the Arts, The Odd Couple by 3rd Floor Productions. And through this all, to have a partner who is thrilling, fun and comfortable, what more freedom exists?

“That mystical moment of standstill wishing – in between the a and b or alpha and omega, whether the whole panoply of it all or the space between two events (e.g., NYU and Maplewood): it is not all of it, but it can be an embellishing duration – a joy in itself. Yes, as the ‘authorities’ say, one supposedly seeks to stop the senses – perhaps amounting to the attainment of a pre-state of death, but one can also simply stop the sensual focus within the ordinary bodily world to re-direct it, not to the abstract transcendental, but to the imaginal realm in between. This amounts to a turning of the senses toward a different range of perception. Whether an experience between an a and a b, or between the alpha and the omega, the mystical moment is that which reflects outside the whole of sensate life. When we step back and look then from a vantage of increased distance, we can see a greater extrinsic beauty – in the least, an aesthetic aura radiating from the object or situation and perhaps an imaginal aura as well. This greater picture may be construed as more whole, more complete – and without those nitty gritty details that are not commensurate with the beauty of the greater whole. This disappearance of imperfection in the wider aura is health. A longer-lasting goal or condition is healthier – despite the individual ailments and impairments. In such a state of achievement, one moves into a perception of wonder, the miraculous. We can now remember that the fundamental nature of the miraculous beside smiling and the emotions that go with that is reflection – whether that reflection is an image, a language, an art, an actualized model for living, or the dimension of the magical itself. Let me humbly declare that this is the unio mystica, this is enlightenment, this is freedom!”

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And it was only just after writing and posting the above that I learned that our Esme flower-bird has flown away forever. Shock and sadness and all too unable to commemorate such a dear one at present. When I have it, I will write about her anon.