https://www.elephantjournal.com/2016/08/and-you-will-carry-him-poem/
Found that again today after thinking about it for a few weeks and promptly forgetting every time I got near my laptop.
That is kinda how the life of a writer goes sometimes. Think of the perfect idea, hear and amazing song lyric while switching radio stations and have it erased moments later by the next shiny thing.
My muse is intermittent and I do not honor her as well as I should.
I stopped writing this spring and summer. There was a boy. And in the way of the Gunslinger, there was a boy but there wasn’t and my brain was sundered in two. He’s gone now and I am finally beginning to feel like myself again. Remembering how good that clack of keys sounds in the early morning silence, the sun pouring in my window, the sugar in my coffee because I am home and he had none.
God bless Facebook memories, I know once a year I will find the things I hold most dear, maybe not on the day I need them, but they will come. So will the reminders of the places I do not want to be and the girl I was in the time called before.
I leave myself karma markers and reminders, lists of wishes and once upon a time, rants about things I thought I wanted, now I know I was in the wrong place for the wrong amount of time, which was any.
I make wishes every day, some days count more than others when the cosmos adds an extra step to its never-ending dance across the sky and we tiny humans gaze up in awe.
I have lived through 2 eclipses that cut across the continent I was born on. Today marks my third that I am aware of. Another may have happened in the time before internet, south or north enough that there was no way of noticing. But I can’t remember. Internet says June 2000. That was not a good year for me.
The first one, I was young, it was a school day and they kept us in the gym for the duration so we didn’t look up. Grade 3, I would have to guess.
The second that I remember must have been a partial eclipse. I was 19 or so, working my first restaurant job in the kitchen. There were two women that the staff despised due to bitchiness and pickiness and their penchant for returning food. But I recall very clearly walking to the parking lot of my job and one of those very same women putting her arm around my shoulder and handing me her viewer for a minute. The world turned to twilight and felt magical for a few minutes.
We both teared up at the glory of it all and then she probably sent back her salad two days later mid lunch rush. But for a minute we were equal.
And now today.
Today I am picking up my son and heading to the quarry, I have no viewer and it is only 50% visible from where I live. I had plans to go to Nashville Tennessee with kiddo, but logistics were not in our favor. So I feel like floating in the water at 2:32pm our time is a reasonable and wonderful substitute.
I have already had a fairly magical summer. My lists of wishes has matured substantially since I was 19 standing in that parking lot. I want a house of my own with a porch and a yard, I want to keep writing books and writing for you good people and making money at both. There was a ten year breach wherein I didn’t get to see my extended family and that was repaired last week so, more of that.
I would like a truck or an SUV for adventuring purposes.
In fact the last 4 years of my life have been rather glorious and free.
Yes, there has been heartache and heartbreak, but that seem like the only area that needs improvement, and I am getting there, slowly. I know he will come for me in the fall.
So my eclipse wishes are simple things.
A house that is my own and I never have to leave.
A better relationship with my muse.
More books and words by my own hands.
The sense of family and belonging that has already began to show itself to become…more.
A global sense of equalization between us and them, when tiny moon blots out the giant sun and for a few minutes, nothing matters and we are all just insignificant specks on a rock floating through space.
