First of all, may I say that there is nothing as silent as Duluth, Minnesota on New Year's morning when it is -20 degrees F. No cars, no birds, no sirens (thankfully!), none of the recently-omnipresent helicopters (heading to the hospitals, oh dear!), virtually no one walking by on the street. I am not close enough to the lake to hear it freezing and crackling, and it was too cold (in my book, anyway) to attempt a walk. So New Year's morning was literally a silent re-boot. Today and tomorrow are scheduled to be warm enough to get out and do some errands, then, later this week, back into the freezer. I still don't quite understand how my life path has so prominently featured a city of such winter extremes, but I'm here, and that's about all I know.
In my last blog, I said that love and truth are the way to get through uncertain, hard times, and you might say they are my deliberate resolution for this year. My re-solution. There has been almost no setting in my life where I was encouraged to love passionately or be completely truthful, and longtime readers of this blog know that virtually every post has been a terrifying leap in those regards. My impulse continues to be to hide what I am passionate about, and to be diplomatic (best interpretation) with what I see to be the truth of situations; for almost seven years, post by post, I've tried to push against these inner and outer restraints just a little bit each time. But "a little bit" isn't enough any more, not in these times.
On New Year's Day, I pulled a card from my "Mystical Shaman Oracle" deck (by Villoldo, Baron-Reid, Lobos; 2018, Hay House): "Upper World." "...Do not fall to the temptation to craft a slightly more improved version of yourself...take the great leap." My inspiration may come from women like Judy Chicago, the 80-year old feminist American artist whose oeuvre is finally the subject of a huge retrospective in San Francisco. She persisted. Her hair is purple. She is passionate. 2022 will feature a bigger leap in the direction of expressing myself more colorfully, openly, passionately, and truthfully. Emerging from winter's hibernation, I will know I am on the right track if friends shake their heads and say, "She's really lost it!" I'll know then that I am finally, truly, self-actualized.
