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.