I'm getting ready for my solar return. I'm during 54. For the first time in years I'm comparing where I was my last birthday and where I am this one, and the difference is so vast it could be another life, a parallel world. And while such a change was never a goal of mine, was feared in fact as much as hungered for, it doesn't feel wrong, or extreme, or anything other than right. I feel reborn, more so than even after my heart attack. Then I moved through death to life, but it was my old life, the one that nearly killed me, and so it was a triumph, but a minor one. This was a leap made in hope and hunger, and healthy dose of desperation. And the resulting change is so huge that it seems small, as if I'm merely more myself than anything else.
Coming close as I am, to my birthday, I found this illustration compelling. There is something young and tender about her, as young and tender as I feel now, green in the way growing things are green, soft in the way those growing things are soft in their beginnings before they grow stronger, more rigid and unyielding, change harder and harder until it's almost impossible. There's no explaining it, really, how I can be this old and feel so young and hopeful. And I love how she stands, naked and unsell-conscious, in the world and of the world, magic all around her. I think I feel that way too, sort of, despite my 54 year-old body and battered heart. I feel the pulse of the earth in this picture and feel that same pulse coursing through me. I'm not sure this isn't just where I should be; it's certainly where I want to be. I can't imagine a better way to start the next half of my life.
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