DEEPLY AWAKE – CONFLICT

On Christmas Eve, my ex-husband, Jerry, picked Sam and I up at our house and drove out to my dad's. It was a quiet night, our small clan broken off into little splinters, talking, telling jokes, each of us shirking off our issues and our worries to come together and exchange gifts, kindnesses, remembrances.

We each got very nice stuff, though it was shockingly sparse all-around this year, and then it was time to go home.

I sat in the little truck cab flip-seat behind Sam. Closer to home, I felt myself becoming a little overwhelmed, a little overcome. So I put my arms in front of me and draped them on my son's chest, and I put my head down on the headrest that was right in front of me due to how small my seating space was. I rested my head, felt my hands holding Sam's chest, turned my head, and looked at the way my son's head was resting on the car window, fast asleep as he was.

Why is my position so important? Well, it's not. I guess I wanted you to know that while crammed into a child's jump seat, in a car alternately freezing and like a furnace, I had a revelation.

DEEPLY AWAKE – FINAL WORDS

I am writing this as a letter to myself. I have meditatively gathered up many of my fragments, called many parts of myself home, and feel oddly consolidated.

I have been puzzling on the meaning of the solstice now since the 12-12-12, and although I may not be that much closer to knowing what will happen, I want to record my letter, a letter I intend to wake up and read tomorrow morning.

As I prepare to do this, I am aware that it will be a bigger/different portion of myself doing the typing. I'm ok with that, hope you are too.

December 21, 2012,

Dearest Friend Kathy,

Another cold December morning.

But it is unlike any other December morning in the history of man.

And do you know why that is?

DEEPLY AWAKE – READY

I want to write a few words, and I promise to be brief, because I have places to go and things to do this afternoon.

I had a miserable 12, 12, as you already know. And from the reading I did today, I really don't think I was the only one. Someone replied to my “Yesterday” blog that it was the perfect description of a birth. And, holy smokes, this is more than accurate. Abundantly accurate. Spooky, really.

I have said that I see these days between the 12-12 and the solstice as walking in a darkened hallway, lit up in a nether-worldly way, where the very stones glow in some odd fashion, etchings and drawings on the stone walls, real South American and sort of Egyptian, an initiatory walk, a journey. And each day brings us closer. But, to what?

That was my question.

And, really, after feeling a sort of suspension of attachment to the 12-12, when all was said and done, I was beginning to not expect anything at all, at all, on the 21^st.

I think I may have misjudged this.

WHEN? WHERE?

We looked at each other, shock and awe reflecting from the other.

“I just can't believe,” Lily sighed, “how deep we are into something so multidimensional. It's sort of taking my breath away, really.”

“I am curious,” I asked, hoping not to offend, “how one goes about packing for a vacation like this.”

What a vacation we had already had! Both in our flannels just minutes after Sabrina and Eddie took off, we decided to get to sleep by coming up with the perfect vacation scenarios. We'd each do one we'd always imagined taking alone, and then we'd imagine one taken together, and we did that for, gosh, maybe eight rounds.

Remember, we are each travelers, by soul, so it was really hard to stop, actually. The best vacations we had ever dreamed up were the ones we would have gone on whether we were alone or with someone, so those were the ones we decided, in the end, to concentrate on.

It was hard to narrow down the field. Here is our attempt to solidify a dream vacation.

TAKE A TRIP WITH ME

RAPID CITY

Rapid City is a beautiful place, full of historic buildings, and there is a grandeur, a feeling of impossibility on the streets of that odd little town. Anyone who has seen the sculpture of Crazy Horse changes somehow, sees things with a different inner perspective, begins to think crazy wild things can happen.

We rolled into town at high noon, and we both commented on that. We imagined ourselves gunslingers, having a high noon show down, a contest of of reflexes and bitterness. We imagined this for a little while, then came back into more physical awareness, each commenting on the garb of the other in our shared hallucination.

Duel already taken care of, we decided to find a rinky dink cafe in which to enjoy an old fashioned BLT and some slightly luke and inexplicably metallic tasting coffee. LuLu's Fine Cafe was the ticket.

Sitting in the bay area of the restaurant afforded all the action of a street side table with none of the mist which was clinging to everyone who entered the little place. The city was still in the grips of fog, a chilled and grey day in South Dakota. Lily complained about how her knees still ache in this weather, and I told her yet again how it is only in grey cloudy weather that I feel good, but that yes, I do get achy too, want some Motrin? Some Milk Thistle tea?

“Her office is just a half a block away,” Lily announced from the map she had called up on her phone. “Let's just eat and walk over there.”