Autumn is my favorite season. I love the darkening days and the crispy weather. I wait all year for the particular shifting of the light that elongates shadows in October and I always get a boost of energy as we move into the fall. I love Halloween, the Pagan holy day of Samhain, and the celebration of the Days of the Dead. This year, as people around me are checking out of this reality and passing into the realm of the Ancestors, and the world seems menacingly apocalyptic, I am thinking about what it means to be alive for a brief lifetime in the face of certain mortality. It is sobering to ponder the power death has to activate a passion for living fully.

 The task of the season of Earthly decay calls for me to take stock and to ask myself what stagnate beliefs do I need to cast into the compost pile? Well, I am certain that what I need to shed are constructed beliefs about what I should be and what I should be doing at this age that are based upon illusions of some phantom authority’s expectation of me. I don’t need another mother, nor do I need to be my own jailer. I think that it is enough that I love my dog.

What mental disease makes me feel that I have to focus upon attaining an elusive static self who will never exist and convinces me that the perceptual moments of my sacred life are not enough? Can I instead take this season to rejoice in the fact that I am living in an impermanent, beautifully sensuous, and seductive world in which my brief moments of consciousness matter, and in which I have the capacity to be aware, joyful, and grateful? Did I mention that I love my dog?

I recently found out via the internet that I have lived 20,718 days as of today. In a real sense, our days here are numbered. Here are my thoughts on this slice of cognitive reality as I ask myself, in light of this season — What the hell have I spent this life doing? And what will I continue to do up until I also pass into the realm of the Ancestors? In that spirit this poem is how I answer that question.

 

20, 718

Living, loving, hating

Learning, growing, seeing

Eating, shitting, fucking

Playing, walking, laughing

Breathing, crying, drinking

Bleeding, studying, writing

Raging, weeping, grieving

Caring, helping, hurting

Cooking, cleaning, repairing

Planting, sowing, reaping

Tripping, rising, falling

Bathing, sleeping, dreaming

Thinking, dancing, wondering

Swimming, mourning, flying

Creating, destroying, maintaining

Engaging, retreating, hiding

Regretting, forgetting, awakening

***

This is for my homegirls S & M who inspire me and keep me sane.

 Blessings in this time of great opportunity in the vast darkness. Namaste!

Little Adam Camping at Samuel P. Taylor Park Summer 2018