Tens

Tens - a reading (on YouTube)

I’m coming up on a decadal birthday anniversary. These are the ones everyone in our society seems to take most note of, as if reaching a certain age is a major life accomplishment. It beats the alternative, I guess. Though honestly, 13 and 21 are bigger events in most young people’s minds than 10 and 20. But 3-0 begins the first in a series of “big” birthdays.

I can’t say I’m looking forward to this one. Not because I feel old, merely older. It’s like losing my hair, my age is not something I hide, or hide from. More, I think I’m apprehensive because the past has taught me that big birthday anniversaries often bring big changes, not all of them for the better.

Within six months of my turning ten, my parents divorced which pretty much turned my world upside down. By the fall of that year, I had gone from being distinctly middle class to qualifying for free lunch at school. The next few years were the darkest of my childhood.

The day I turned twenty, my father called my mother to try to convince her to cut off what support she gave me for college. Their divorce agreement mandated he pay for half my tuition because of money he’d raided from an educational fund. His call chained to her calling me in tears, and then me calling him to tell him never to call her again when he’d been drinking. But he succeeded in his quest a year later when she cut me off without warning. Unlucky for him, I came up with the cash to hold up my end of the bargain so he was still on the hook for his.

When I turned thirty, I was in the midst of planning a wedding. My wife and I were married a month later, the best day of my life. But six months after that, I learned a family secret that led to arguably the two toughest years of my life, perhaps barring 2007. The scar they left still aches some days and in fact may never heal. My only comfort lies in knowing my reaction may have prevented someone else from sharing her experience.

A week after I turned forty, my wife was in surgery having the last real hope of our ever having children removed. Only a handful of people came to visit her in the hospital, giving me my first real taste of how in hard times, friends sometimes disappear. A few weeks later, an erstwhile friend decided it was a good time to malign her in an email. It didn’t end well for him, or the friendship.

Those were hard years. Against that backdrop, I’m uncertain what this year will bring. I am not superstitious just cautious from my experience. Coincidence does not indicate causation. And the changes those years brought helped define who I am now, much of it for the better.

As I look back, in an odd way I take comfort from the tarot. Okay, first, let’s clear up a misconception. Like the I Ching, the primary purpose of the tarot is not some sort of mystical divination. More, both act as intuitive guides to illuminate sometimes unrecognized patterns. The Major Arcana of a tarot deck track a spiritual journey from the Fool to Enlightenment (the World). The Minor Arcana highlight aspects of the ordinary distractions that crop up along the way.

The Minor Arcana are divided into four suits that mirror the four classical elements of antiquity, coins – earth, cups – water, wands – fire, swords – air, with the Major Arcana acting as a binding Spirit. Together, they create a useful metaphor, a lens through which to view this life.

Similar to ordinary playing cards, each suit of the Minor Arcana is divided into ten numbered cards and four face cards, princess, knight, queen and king. Each ace through ten tracks a secondary cycle of events shaped by the influence of its suit. Where the ace represents the essence of an element, the ten represents its excess, for good or ill. In the case of cups, it’s an overflow of joy. In wands, an oppressive burden. In coins, material comfort taken for granted. In swords, a ridiculous amount of pain. Where the nines truly capture the epitome of each suit, the tens are like that second helping of ice cream you know you shouldn’t eat. Even of a good thing, they are little too much. And of a bad thing, they are overkill.

If you roll all those tens together, you come up with the ten of the Major Arcana titled The Wheel of Fortune. Depending on which interpretation you ascribe to, the Wheel is the random events of life over which you have no control. Or sometimes, it’s reminder that pride comes before a fall. At its heart it represents the constancy of change. If you’ve been cast low, you have nowhere to go but up. If you’ve been raised high, be careful of that next step.

Which brings me full circle to the beginning and what this year will bring. A little bit of everything I expect, some joy, some tears, some success, some burden. In that way, life is a little like the weather: If you don’t like what’s outside at the moment, just wait a while and check again. I’ll guarantee it will be different.

As a friend pointed out to me this week, if we’d had six fingers, or four, instead of five, anniversaries divisible by ten wouldn’t be such a big deal (though I suspect anniversaries ending in zero still would be). The Chinese have such a system, a cycle of twelve years overlaid with a greater cycle of five. As with the I Ching, maybe they see life in broader patterns. So by that thought, in ten more years maybe I get to start again.

But at this point, the best I can hope is that I’ve only lived half my life already. It’s more likely I have less time left on this earth than I’ve already spent. If anything, that’s what weighs on me most about this birthday, what on my list remains undone and whether I get the chance to do it.

In the end, I need to remember to enjoy each season of each year while I’m in it. Winter for its quietude. Spring for its rebirth. Summer for its warmth. Fall for its harvest. And then we start over. Like counting up to ten. After all the events in recent years, maybe a little change wouldn’t be such a bad thing right now.

© 2014 Edward P. Morgan III 

Words (Imbolc 2014)

Words (Imbolc 2014) - a reading (on YouTube)

Years flow by in much the same cycle as nature. Some years, the fall acorns in our front oaks are light, other years heavy. One year, they filled up our neighbor's pickup bed. A few years ago, they were still raining down in December, something we’d never seen before. The fullness of each season is determined by unremembered events many months before. How cold was the previous winter? How wet was the previous spring?

Like those acorns, my writing goes in cycles, some lean years, some fat. Some years, I fill up notebooks and index cards with a bounty of excess, others I’m lucky to post handful of essays. Each time I sit down to create a new piece, the process is the same. After the initial excitement and inspiration, I come to a point where I hate everything I’ve written, where I want to throw it all away, where I think the piece will never come together. Eventually, it does but not before its time.

On days like that, I’ve learned to still my mind and let it wander until over-shy words creep in to fill the surrounding silence. Sometimes they surface in the memory of a long, lost vocabulary word. Other times, in snippets of dialog echoing through my head.

Everything begins with words. They form the rich loam in which I plant my ideas. I spot interesting usages in articles. I run across rich histories perusing my dictionary. I seek intriguing alternatives by consulting my thesaurus. I can spend hours surfing through sources like some people browse the web. Many words, like wine, need to be rolled along the tongue to be fully appreciated. Some words blend and mellow with age while others sour to vinegar if left too long unused.

Words written not spoken. Spoken words evaporate once uttered, scattering like a flock of winter starlings, or sometimes their restless companion crows, a murder or a murmuration. A few stragglers cling to memory here or there, forming a pattern or a stain but rarely a complete picture. Written words develop and endure, comforting me for many years before their edges become yellow and worn with age, and are eventually discarded.

I shroud myself in words. They are my blanket. They provide my warmth, my solace, my insulation from the cold, harsh world surrounding me. Words are my thoughts, my ideas and ideals, my identity. They are the glue binding together the book of this fragile, contradictory personality. Words form my cocoon, my chrysalis as I change and grow beneath them. They protect me at my most fragile. They console me as I age. One day words will bury me. And be buried with me.

The beginning of each new year reflects my writing process. As I impatiently await the first blossoms of spring, I lay out goals and inspirations, map out stories and ideas. Carried with the cold at Imbolc, there is electricity in the air as the energy for new and colorful creations swells the roots beneath the snow. To the outside eye it looks like nothing much is stirring. But like the lambs lingering in their mother’s wombs, unseen words shift below the surface, restlessly awaiting the right moment to emerge. 

© 2014 Edward P. Morgan III