Becoming Baba Yaga, Part Two (In the Garden)

Time, time, time. 

Ticking away, the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine
Staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long
There's always time to kill today
And then one day you find
Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun

So you run and you run, you catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter
Never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught
Or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
Time is gone, the song is over
Thought I'd something more to say

Time by Pink Floyd

This summer the big lightning bug bloom made the woods look sparkly and magical.  It was such a pretty time of year with all the bursts of life all around - Nature doing her thing, as designed. Life in waves and seasons. Growth then rest. Emergence then decline. Flowers bloom and make the world beautiful and then they set seed and fade away. The world is really is just a big garden. Or maybe a petri dish to the supposed aliens. 

We were always meant to be gardeners. Caretakers and developers of creation. Yes, we have the divine gift of creation. We've made gardens of concrete and steel and wood and glass and plastic using nature's resources. Some believe we have ruined the planet, but not really, not any more than the insects with their earthmoving and hollowing and the aggressive plants overtaking everything in their path. Every organism wants to live. Grow. Expand. We are as much a part of the ecosystem as anything else. 

From an alien perspective the human world might look like just another layer of water-based life on the edges between the oceans and the atmosphere. We in our houses and buildings and running about our communities might look like another kind of coral reef built up and living and shifting and changing with the movement of the watery atmosphere. Watch the movements of clouds and weather systems and you'll see that it is just another kind of ocean.

Individually, our time here is pretty short, just like the flowers' blooms and the tiny fishes of the coral reefs and other little bugs living their purpose. We all have our place and role and destiny.

In this Baba Yaga origin story we are at the point of deliberation and reckoning, when acceptance of fate is still incomplete, not yet ready to assume the new self and stage of life, not yet ready to wither after blooming and dropping seeds. At what point will I be ready to be the Crone without any hope of lust and carnality?

Time is getting away from me. 

Each passing second felt and noted, define this life moment by moment. Some moments are so perfectly beautiful and divine and some moments are miserable torture.

This year has been full of upheavals and adjustments, repairs and healing, culling excesses and finishing things that have waited much too long. Here it is already Autumn even though summer held on long past Equinox. I'm trying to tend to this little piece of property, my little garden carved out of a shrinking wilderness, too rustic and messy for some tastes but it feels peaceful for me despite its imperfections. (Rustic and messy is a good description of me and my life overall.) But I have my sacred well and temples to fire, earth, and air that I have built and that are continuous works-in-progress. God made us gardeners, first and foremost. Moving earth and air as we work. Trying to love the life we live in the space between breaths as much as the life we hope will happen.

There have been some real ordeals, and the shoulder surgery and recuperation were so much worse than I let on. I didn't complain much so I guess it might have looked easier than it actually was. It really was one of the hardest things I've done. I let it hurt my feelings when people didn't check on me. But I know that everyone has their own gardens to tend and that I cannot expect the attention that I think I need. One thing I've learned, though, is that I will drift as far away as someone's neglect pushes me. I might try to bridge the gap sometimes but mostly I try to let go. I am not always successful. The shoulder is good now but still gets a little sore and stiff with exertion. And the spirit is still wounded. The sting of overthinking and overfeeling. Misplaced, misused.

This time, this place
Misused, mistakes
Too long, too late
Who was I to make you wait?
Just one chance, just one breath
Just in case there's just one left

Far Away by Nickelback

When I was a teenager my mom went to a psychic who told her to tell me to never have a red Corvette convertible because she saw a serious accident. Well it happened anyway and that day I think my guardian angel intervened. There might have been some kind of soul imprint, but I lost all the evidence and now I question the accuracy of my memory. The uncertainty is a vexatious curse that burrows into my mind trying to find its name and place. Sometimes it strikes some chords of recognition and I feel a temporary freak-out in my zen garden. Then I remind myself that if nobody cares then it is not enough. I'm tired of things living only in my mind.

Invoking the wisdom of dead lovers while simultaneously throwing wards against the wrath of collateral casualties I whispered that prayer for reunion. 

Generally I can find happiness wherever I am existing in the moment, focusing on it and just being. There are some bad moments when I have to use the same technique to remind myself that nothing is permanent. This too shall pass. 

Just like when little girls outgrow their desire to play with dolls and pretend to be grown up, mature women sometimes outgrow their need to be desired, to be the fertile flashy flower in the garden. The seeds are set and the bees are no longer interested. 

It's probably time to accept my Crone's staff and lantern and cauldron. The staff to assist the last part of this journey while the body weakens, the lantern to light the path in the growing darkness, and the cauldron to craft the medicines from the garden's harvests. No more desires for eroticism because what kind of weirdo freak is into crones anyway?  

I might be about ready to become Baba Yaga now.      

 

        

Jars of Clay

6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ. 7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.

2 Corinthians 4:6-7

It's easy to become perplexed by the shadows of invisible forces, like the swirling dark spots on the pool bottom - not true shadows but refraction of light through eddies in the water's currents.  Our eyes see a shadow but not its source. Sometimes we go through fits of melancholy and struggle with illusions and confusion about our own perceptions. It's overthinking everything and forgetting to let go of our own understanding, weak jars of clay that we are.

God put great divine treasure within us (eternity in the human heart), even though we are fallible and frail, made of earth and water just like jars of clay. And while we live, and rejoice and give thanks for this living, we also feel the pain of loss when our loved ones' jars fall empty and broken. Life crushes us all eventually, back to the dust from which we are formed. But our light lives on.

8 We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 10 We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. 11 For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. 12 So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.

2 Corinthians 4:8-12

I keep thinking about the movie The Waterboy. Silly as it is, it touches this theme of allowing ourselves to be perplexed and overcome by our own perceptions and illusions. The Mud Dogs' coach didn't know how to move past his playbook being stolen and used against him until the Waterboy gave him the advice to replace the image of his foe with something cute and nonthreatening. Likewise, when we are struggling we should look at the divine treasure within instead of trusting the reflection of the world in our eyes.

16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 

2 Corinthians 4:16-18

Wizard Jewel: Epiphany

Your words to me just a whisper
Your face is so unclear
I try to pay attention
Your words just disappear

'Cause it's always raining in my head
Forget all the things I should have said

So I speak to you in riddles
'Cause my words get in my way
I smoke the whole thing to my head
And feel it wash away
'Cause I can't take anymore of this
I want to come apart
And dig myself a little hole
Inside your precious heart

'Cause it's always raining in my head
Forget all the things I should have said

I am nothing more than
A little boy inside
That cries out for attention
Yet I always try to hide
'Cause I talk to you like children
Though I don't know how I feel
But I know I'll do the right thing
If the right thing is revealed

'Cause it's always raining in my head
Forget all the things I should have said

Epiphany by Staind

I'm not quick. I'm slow with the witty replies - they always crawl out of the gray muck much too late to be relevant. Like in this song above, the words get washed away in the chaos of my mind. Unlike writing when I can take my time and think and choose the words that fit, when I'm speaking, especially about vulnerable emotional things, I get nervous and anxious and freeze up like a deer in the headlights. It feels like I dissociate from my body and the thoughts don't get translated into words and I pause too long. What did you just say? I didn't comprehend it because my ears were disconnected from my brain while I was trying to access my tongue to speak. How many important statements have I missed due to this executive failure to multitask processing and expression?   

But sometimes I get struck with an insight from the simplest of instances, like a misread word, and it resonates and clears the internal disarray to a path of epiphany. I recently experienced this spark that lead to a quiet but much needed prayer of hope and appreciation. It came from an unexpected and humorous uncertainty. I love when surprise inspiration comes from seemingly mundane events. It's funny how we can make love out of nothing at all.

Sometimes we feel things that no words are adequate to express. Some experiences and people are unlike anything we've ever known. These are the enigmas and mysteries that burn and churn in the mind and heart and soul. I've been taught that good writing should employ an economy of words, careful use of flourish, precision and thrift, but let's not be miserly about our feelings. There are many kinds of love and sometimes all of them get concentrated in one place. Care, affection, attraction, desire - all together and still insufficient to define this thing. 

I was handed a Wizard Jewel and it led to an epiphany that I am still trying to fully comprehend. Is its luminance real or just a mirage, a limerence, a chimera, a fantasy pulled purely out of my own nonsense? Making love out of nothing at all?

I know just how to whisper
And I know just how to cry
I know just where to find the answers
And I know just how to lie
I know just how to fake it
And I know just how to scheme
I know just when to face the truth
And then I know just when to dream

And I know just where to touch you
And I know just what to prove
I know when to pull you closer
And I know when to let you loose
And I know the night is fading
And I know the time's gonna fly
And I'm never gonna tell you everything I gotta tell you
But I know I gotta give it a try

And I know the roads to riches
And I know the ways to fame
I know all the rules and then I know how to break 'em
And I always know the name of the game
But I don't know how to leave you
And I'll never let you fall
And I don't know how you do it
Making love out of nothing at all

Out of nothing at all
(Making love) Out of nothing at all
(Making love)
Out of nothing at all
(Making love) Out of nothing at all
(Making love) Out of nothing at all
(Making love) Out of nothing at all

Every time I see you all the rays of the sun are all
Streaming through the waves in your hair
And every star in the sky is taking aim at your eyes
Like a spotlight
The beating of my heart is a drum and it's lost
And it's looking for a rhythm like you
You can take the darkness from the pit of the night
And turn it to a beacon burning endlessly bright
I've gotta follow it 'cause everything I know
Well, it's nothing 'til I give it to you

I can make the runner stumble
I can make the final block
I can make every tackle at the sound of the whistle
I can make all the stadiums rock
I can make tonight forever
Or I can make it disappear by the dawn
I can make you every promise that has ever been made
And I can make all your demons be gone

But I'm never gonna make it without you
Do you really wanna see me crawl
And I'm never gonna make it like you do

Making love out of nothing at all

Making Love Out of Nothing At All by Air Supply   

      

 

Event Horizon

I saw your eyes
And you made me smile
For a little while
I was falling in love
I saw your eyes
And you touched my mind
Although it took a while
I was falling in love
I saw your eyes
And you made me cry
And for a little while
I was falling in love
I was falling in love
Falling in love
Falling in love
Falling in love
Falling in love

Space Age Love Song by A Flock of Seagulls

Thinking back on my life all my greatest achievements were fueled by delusion. I believed a thing and pursued it hard despite whatever opposing practicalities tried to hinder me, and many times I found enough success to fulfill the delusion and move on to the next. I was never very special. I was just very stubborn and persistent. Someone once called it fortitude. I might call it illusion. Or folly.  

Some of my most impactful relationships have also been based on some delusion of love. And for a little while I was falling in love. Most of them ended in heartbreak and the mental devastation of discovering that it was absolute delusion and completely unattainable. The utter desolation of empty space, the empty darkness of oblivion, indifference is equal to nonexistence (to be forgotten). And you made me cry. I have reached the event horizon of the black hole several times and each time it's a bit harder not to succumb to the irresistible void. Each time I lose another bit of myself to the gravity. And now I am weak and tired and yet I don't want to completely disappear. Not yet.  

In the TV series Game of Thrones the character Melisandre is a centuries old witch or priestess who uses glamour magic connected to a ruby collar necklace. When she takes it off the illusion of youth and beauty and seemingly all of her powers are gone. That's how I feel right now. My glamour magic has faded or been drawn away by the gravitational pull and I don't know if I am able to reach the escape velocity this time. Maybe I will just keep falling, falling into and then through and then out of love and then into whatever lies beyond that event horizon.

Yes, all of this sounds somewhat morose and depressing. No, I'm not going to do anything any more stupid than saying something that I shouldn't. This is just me navigating yet another "dark night of the soul" and narrating the scenery. When my light and loving muses abandon me I have to rely on the dark and sinister ones. (God rest the soul of that one who already fell into the abyss.)   

Lamentations: Thorns, Poison, and Passion

The woods next to the house are full of thorny locust trees and blackberry canes and very aggressive poison ivy vines and more polite passionflower vines. I'm terribly allergic to poison ivy and someone could probably kill me by rolling me down the poison ivy covered hill (please don't - what a horrible way to go). The locust trees are difficult to trim and are growing too close to the house, but I like the privacy screen they provide. Everything is a compromise. Blackberries make delicious cobblers and jelly but picking them requires a bit of blood donation. The passionflowers look like some kind of alien plant - exotic and fancy with a heavy tropical perfume, but they make a an effective tea and tincture that help with sleep. I haven't figured out how to use their fruits.

We live in what can seem like a lively temperate jungle when we get plenty of rain, as we did earlier this summer. Its life can be loud and insistent with all the bugs and birds and other little critters singing their songs of exaltation and desperation. Their time is short so they must be heard. We know summer's winding down when the doves begin their cries.   

(Why do we love rhythmic movement? It's so cool that cicadas and other insects can vibrate their bodies to make sounds and communicate. Life is rhythmic movement - heartbeats, brainwaves, breathing. Our voices are vibrations. All energy vibrates throughout the universe. Our eyes tuned to see the wavelengths of what we call visible light, but other creatures can see beyond our limits. We have created machines to extend our vision. We are creators, made in God's image. God is the great conductor of the Universe. We search for Him in synchronicities. Sometimes our vibes match with others and sometimes it's hard to escape that rhythm. Eternity in the human heart. Sometimes I need to move my chi because it gets caught in the eddies, vortices, and currents. Sometimes we are overwhelmed and sometimes we are just watching the outermost fringes of a passing evening storm. Grief is a trickster. Time keeps flowing like a river. Let's move on from this stream of consciousness.)

People nowadays don't exercise their auditory sense. Sure they are constantly listening to music, podcasts, social media, etc., but I'm talking about really listening to the world and hearing the distance. How many people can hear a siren and know where it is going and where it came from without seeing it? It takes practice and spacial awareness. People can't look upon the horizon and know where other towns and communities are located because they have become so dependent on map apps. They don't learn the maps in their brains. I am sad for this technological age and the people who are losing the sensory acuity of a life lived in the real world. We are transitioning away from a pure human existence, too dependent upon our machines and now giving them too much control.  AI has no discernment and neither do most people. This is the decline of humanity.  

It's a very hot and dry late summer. The leaves are turning and falling early. The passionflower vines are wilted and dying. The locusts have lost nearly all their leaves already. The blackberry canes are brown and brittle but still viciously sharp and ready to take their blood. The jungle is receding. It's so hot that the katydids have gone quiet. I miss their chatter. It's one of my favorite parts of summer evenings. What do they talk about? Katy did, Katy did, Katy did. Maybe I want to too... Like the end of summer, some things pass and we have to lock away feelings and desires, send our roots into the earth, let our leaves go and hope for spring.

This year has been a lot of upheaval and repair. Of course, there has been the shoulder repair and healing, but we also have done major work on this twenty-five year old house. Beginning with new roof and all new windows. Our dwellings contain and absorb our energy, the reverberations of our lives. Big renovations stir up what's settled into the framework and foundation. Banging on the roof to replace to old roofing shook awake the walls and roused old feelings, and then the windows cut out allowed the house to exhale deeply, to expel the stale before the new windows were installed. Our homes do need to breathe. 

After having to move everything around so the window guy could do his job, I decided to evaluate every item and decide if it still has place here. I gave a lot away. Over the years I've curated a sort of vintage store in my house, collected things hoping to preserve interesting and useful items. Some for future projects, some just for the joy of having and seeing and sharing. But as the house breathed so did I. I was ready to exhale and release adornments and hoards. This was the future time I'd saved them for. Time to pass along to my kids anything that they might like to have. Why wait until I'm dead? Let them enjoy them now.     

Demolition has its own kind of appeal but it takes a lot of effort. I am tired. Sometimes we need to live with the blank spaces for a while, cleared out of ideas, feelings, thoughts. Allow new inspirations after a time of rest and emptiness. The reverberations of all the structural changes and bits of disarray will fine-tune into their next expressions. After the waves of big change then smaller waves and wakes continue to jostle and rearrange ideas and hopes until they settle into place. The blank canvas will show us what it needs. No need to cajole. 

Twenty-five years is a long time to live in a house. Will we both still be here in another twenty-five? Will this house hold up for 50 years? Will my life's imprint haunt this place? What would someone else do with these rooms? Would they tear the whole thing down?

Sometimes I am overcome with horrific amazement at the changes brought by age. Somehow the wrinkly knees are the most shocking, probably because they are so easily visible. Mortality looms large on the horizon, yet I don't feel impelled to move or act. (Except the shoulder repair that allowed me to return to full function I am not interested in major physical renovations just for appearances. Cosmetic procedures are unlike house structural renovations that actually extend its useful lifespan.) I sit in stillness. Just observe, perceive, sense. Find the rhythms and ride the waves. If this is the fourth quarter of the game I'm not sure I care anymore about the score. I try not to think too much about the future because it distracts from the the here and now and it can seduce and create delusions and expectations. My heart has been broken enough. I have regrets. Time is running out. 

Am I repeating myself? It seems like after living this long I can't always remember what I've already said or if I am repeating what others have said. 

Sometimes I feel like the wilted and withered passionflower vines stretched out over the locust trees' limbs, reaching as far as I could until the heat and dryness took its toll. But sometimes I feel prickly and sharp like the blackberry and locust thorns, ready to chastise a careless touch and demand a penance of pain and blood. Sometimes I poison the air against the things that want my blood. Repellents against mosquitos and curses.

Every generation thinks it's the first to suffer, that anxiety and depression are modern developments, but thousands of years ago people wrote of all those same feelings, no less intense than we feel today. I was a very tense child, born tensed up and not knowing how to relax. I didn't know how to release the tension in my body. My muscles were always in resistance, even while stretching. I still have to consciously work to release and relax and breathe. I still catch myself holding my breath too long. Maybe most people are born full of tension. I don't know. Maybe it's because my mom still smoked cigarettes while pregnant and I was born with a nicotine addiction? Not blaming her, not shaming her at all. Just pondering the possibilities. 

The Earth seems to be exhaling and releasing tension itself. It is always doing so but sometimes it needs to shake and shudder in greater intensity. We are all part of it and sometimes we get swept away. We mourn for the loss of life. We fear the destruction that is ever approaching. This dynamic planet was set in motion by God who knew it would move as it was designed and that sometimes we would suffer. We chose that option. We chose to add the thorns, poison, and passion to our Garden. 

"For no one is cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love."

Lamentations 3:31-32

 

Social Entropy

I have lost my chill and my spark. The last couple of years have just about done me in. I'm physically healed from all the shoulder stuff but I'm so tired from life right now. I'm especially bothered by very disappointing long term business relationships. We like having long lasting relationships with other businesses, especially when they have been consistent in good service, but times are a-changing. It seems like nobody wants to work anymore and nobody knows how to communicate or do their jobs.

We have had the same insurance agency for all of our business and personal property for about 16 years. They describe themselves as providing "concierge" service which to me that means acknowledging and appreciating customers when they reach out with questions and needs. They used to be awesome about that, but then their people started to retiring. None of their younger new employees seem to have any sense of commitment to service and some have been absolutely incompetent. How hard is it to send a quick email to acknowledge a question or request and let me know that they are working on it? I'm left wondering if they got my message and if they even care enough to follow through. Do they assume I trust that they are working on things? Maybe I used to but not anymore. Did they never get trained in customer service? Do they actually know what concierge service is supposed to be? Concierge service means that I should not have to beg for answers. Concierge service means that I should feel appreciated and respected, not ignored and unappreciated. Like, come on, do I need to run a seminar on business etiquette? Just shoot me an email letting me know you got my message and understand what I'm asking and how long it might take to get it resolved.

It seems like it's mostly younger people, 40 and under, who do not perform their jobs at the best of their ability but I'm sure older people are falling behind as well. Maybe time and cultural and genetic muddying have created this social entropy where all organization and order fall apart into apathy and disorder. People want the collective to do everything but what they forget is that the collective is only as good as its worst members. The collective can't achieve what the individual is too incompetent to do. There is no personal work ethic if everyone thinks it's someone else's job. When I pay for a service I expect it to be done promptly and correctly. Now I really don't care if it's done by one, two, or twenty people as long as it's done right. When someone is assigned to do a job then they need to make sure it is done to the client's satisfaction. 

Another aspect of this social entropy is how so many people are voting for socialism because they think that it will provide them with everything they want with as little effort as possible. But that is an unsustainable fantasy. I just heard a news report about how so many towns are losing their volunteer fire departments because nobody is volunteering anymore. The young people want the services without having to pay for them and without having to do their part in providing those services. What do you mean all the young socialists who believe in taking other people's money to pay for their crap aren't willing to volunteer their time to help others in need? Dang, see, the collective is only as good as its laziest, greediest members. I'm kind of glad that I'm in the last quarter of my life and might not live long enough to see the total collapse of our society. 

My high school civics teacher used to say that socialism and communism always lead a society to the muck of mediocrity. I fear it is worse than that. What we have now is less than mediocrity. It is pure incompetence and apathy. Social entropy.    

Becoming Baba Yaga, Part One

(This post have been sitting in my drafts folder for a very long time and has ungone many edits as time has passed and I've had more insights and experiences to include and adjust. The topic has become so varied and complex that I am breaking it up into parts, mainly for my own mental organization.)

I've spoken in the past about becoming the Crone and welcoming the mature feminine experience into my life as opposed to "fighting" aging and rejecting its natural changes. I don't particularly care that I might look old to those whose expectations are warped by the industries that profit from telling women that we are no longer "worth it" if we don't cover our gray and inject our wrinkles with toxins. I've noticed a lot of my peers seem to share my views, or at least share my refusal to cover my natural hair color. Honestly, I find it a really weird concept that I would not know the real color of my hair. The women who've always colored their gray are missing out on a that fundamental self-knowledge. It seems to me similar to not knowing what my own toes look like. It's really not a trivial thing to purposely and sometimes forcefully refuse to know something about oneself. 

Anyway, aging is a totally natural part of life and I hope that as we humans evolve we will begin to accept these natural changes and processes. In past centuries life expectancy was shorter. I don't know if that made aging less acceptable or desirable. It might be that aging has always been feared and that the elderly have often been vilified or otherwise maligned. There seems to be some cultural differences in way that aging and the elderly are treated. But in modern Western culture of the 20th Century aging was seen as something to "fight."  

Perhaps my generation is fed up with all of our development being "socially engineered" by modern society. From infancy on into middle age our lives have been molded by "expert" expectations and demands. Our mothers were told that it would damage us emotionally if we were held too much as infants and that our being potty trained by 2 was the sign of both of our successes in life. For god's sake, if a child was still in diapers past 2 there might as well be prison cell put in reserve for that child's future and a crown of shame for the mother. Anyway, my kids were in diapers past two and they've all turned out to be emotionally well-developed and successful in their own ways. Whatever my failures as a mother might be they seem to have overcome them.

I've talked here about the Maiden/Mother/Crone stages of life for women and in my younger inexperience and intellectualized view I kind of thought that the stages would be more distinct without so many conflicting urges, feelings, and adjustments. I thought that once I got this close to the Crone stage that the Maiden might stay in her restful coma for the rest of my life. I did imagine that advanced aging would bring back some of the child-like aspects but I assumed that the Maiden's libido wouldn't be revived. Ha, the universe always finds ways to tell me I'm wrong. Maybe it's all just part of the reverse "puberty" of menopause where the body is adjusting its hormonal levels. The last year I've felt more like a teenager with raging hormones than the old lady who's drying up. I haven't heard any other women talking about that happening to them so I tend to think that it's more of a reaction to a specific stimulus. I question all of this stuff because part of me says I really am too old for all that and that it's pure ridiculous delusion to imagine that I could be seen as anything other than the almost Crone that I am. But maybe I am wrong to think that being a Crone and feeling sexual are mutually exclusive. Maybe that's just the stupid societal conditioning about aging women. (Though there is my personal experience of that part of me being dormant and seemingly dead for quite some time so it seemed natural to assume that was the norm. And no one ever tried to make me think or feel different.)

Approaching Cronehood I had imagined would be much more stable and emotionally secure. But this whole "change of life" thing is hitting me really hard this year. In some ways I've aged a lot in the last six months, but I also feel about 15-20 years younger physically due to weight loss and lifestyle improvements. So there's this dichotomy of feeling like I'm just old and gross and all those other things society tells aging women, and on the flipside there's this energy that feels somewhat urgent and intense, like I need to do things before it really is too late. The biological clock is ticking faster and faster as the days pass.

Sometimes I wish my house could sprout legs like Baba Yaga's Hut so that I could escape the encroaching world or maybe chase after whatever strikes my fancy. But I'm getting tired. I have to conserve my energy and meter it out wisely, without wasting it on pointless fantasies. While I still feel pretty spry for my age most of the time, I am reminded of the cruelty of aging's limitations. The telomeres aren't what they used to be. I shift between feeling hardened by life and feeling worn into a comfortable softness. Am I soft and gentle or just tired and weak? I think I've been hurt enough.