It is hard to know what more to say about anything today. The northeast continues to be unusually cold and windy. There has been no January or February thaw to speak of, and while this ex-Duluthian isn't really suffering, it has seemed more like Duluth than I expected for my return to supposedly warmer climes. Other, more metaphoric chills are adding to the sensation no doubt.
To riff a little more on the raptor theme, when the wind is howling, I try to imagine being a hawk in the wind. In fact, I just found some neat videos of hawks basically staying put -- hovering -- as they face the strong wind and scan the ground for prey. Is this something to emulate as we face these strong winds of change? The ability to allow this extremely strong energy to keep us afloat, not to sink us. I don't know exactly how to do that, and of course, I am not scanning the ground for prey. If anything, for signs of life and love and hope. To ride (and rise!) above what we need to rise above, and follow earthbound paths when we need to as well.
I did a neat visualization yesterday which helped me see one thing clearly. The only time in my life when my personal energy closely matched the energy of where I was in England, was the year of studying for my MMus at Royal Holloway. My serious-academic-nun-in-a-previous-lifetime-lover-of-singing-English-church-music-persona came close to exactly matching the moment and place. But after that, time spent both in the American urban wilderness, and in smaller rural American towns and cities, shifted my personal energy. I learned things that I wouldn't have learned if I had lived in the UK, and I learned them in a manner (like rowing at dawn on Superior Bay, and driving small cars around North America) that wouldn't have been possible anywhere in Europe. My wilder self was unleashed. My own soaring hawk was unleashed. Perhaps that is why my recent visits to the UK have been just sort of energetically a see-saw; I kept expecting my newer self to match older situations, and she didn't. I don't know what that means for the future, except that I can only go forward, wherever, with who I am right now.
