epiphanies

On the dramatic day of canyons I found myself crying tears of joy at least three times. One thing that really got to me was the realization that in the married years, I had a purpose. I was rarely gripped by doubts about what to do, because what to do was obvious. As the head of a family, I need to work and work well. Beyond that to participate in joyful encounters between us. To dream with my spouse about what comes next. And having dreamt, to slowly accrete the foundations so that these dreams make an appearance in reality.

I see many young people out here. They don't have kids. They are so sufficiently free, that to me, they seem to have the problem of late middle age, when the kids are gone and you start asking yourself what you really want. I wouldn't want to be in their shoes. Or, I should say, I couldn't have successfully worn those shoes at that age.

I was half asleep. I needed a "default" purpose, or, let's say, a template. I think even then, in the 90s, when we began living that template, it was already outmoded. We were both joyfully living it. Looking back now, I'm so grateful for it. And most importantly, for my partner's energy, love and creativity in matching that idea of growth and togetherness to the particular shape of our lives.

As I walked and scrambled between canyon walls, the rightness of the constraints I felt in those days gripped me.

It was right that my freedom was within a limited sphere only. I was part of a loving team, building a real form...a family. And all forms require constraint on freedom. They enable new freedoms, built on their platform. In the Kaballah, there are three pillars that uphold existence, of which the two on the outside are relevant here: the pillars of force, and form. Force is the masculine desire to be here, there, and everywhere at once. Form is the feminine knowledge of choosing, of constraint, of shaping force into forms that a new thing appears in the world. Of course, we each contain and express both of these... The appellation of masculine and feminine is only a kind of tendency or handle for the concepts.

We made magic, she and I. My freedom (or "force") was put to good use, and I don't think it could have been used better. In fact, I know it was perfect. Because the final form of what we did is before my closed eyes as two strong, gentle, and highly conscious young men. 

There is something to this world.

In these hot and shattered blank spaces on the map, maybe I better see the way I have been gently used by the life force within and around me. 

I can only say... Again and again... Thank you. Thank you for giving me a role to play in this dance, spinning from small particulars into a timeless realm. For the faces of the loved do not age, they only deepen. And events in time do not affect them. They only better reveal what is already there.

I wrote under my tarp, in real mountains now, with a stream to bathe the feet. With no cactus, no tumbleweeds, and a morning of climbing higher into them before me.