Shingles--I did not think one could get them if you hadn't had chicken pox. My mistake. Per the doctor I saw, exposure is enough for the virus to live in your body and that I did have for sure as my brother had them twice, the second time as an adult and a severe case. Moral of story--get that shot!! Oh well. I was able to get diagnosed fast and on the anti-viral meds so I am feeling better already after starting to sense something was wrong on Sunday.
The main connection here is that being under the weather had me reading a lot more than usual. I normally read a bit in bed after the news before I get super-sleepy but when I could not concentrate on any projects or feel like doing much, I could lose myself --and my discomfort--in a book. One I chose was Richard Bach's (Jonathan Livingston Seagull etc.) title One. It was recommended to me by a dear friend who is very spiritual and into the Celtic ways and although Bach is not, some of his ideas meld well. This book for sure! Bach is a very strong "peacenik" (and I do not mean that in any derogatory manner as I grow more-so with age despite or maybe because of being a patriot) and a vegetarian (which I am definitely not though if I killed something to eat as I did when younger I thanked its spirit and the Great Spirit for its life and service to me and mine as food) but he certainly can write a powerful book and get one to thinking.
In One he and his soul-mate spouse take a strange journey with the seaplane they are flying to attend a conference. Of course Bach is a long-term pilot and I have always wanted to learn to fly and do have some friends who did so that aspect of much of his work also appeals. Anyway they find themselves in Other places--I use the Other for other here to indicate a real otherness and not simply other countries or even other planets etc.--and meeting Other versions of themselves and in some cases trying to influence them in a positive way. So meld time travel with Journey of Souls and a few other ideas and you have One. I finished it and breathed out a sigh of, "Wow, what a wonderful journey!" But could not stop there...
Today as I got ready to take Ginger for a walk--we had missed two days with my feeling so bad--I thought about patterns and doorways to that Other. One does not need a seaplane, I think, but each of us could find the proper vehicle to make such a journey since it is mental/metaphysical/spiritual and not a regular trip at all. I have long thought that the Celtic knotwork patterns are a representation of life(lives?) with all the twists and turns and coming back to the same place at a different time or the same time at a different place, all those non-coincidences and serendipity things we experience etc. So what if one walks--in mind and meditation --a labyrinth of a Celtic pattern just to see where it takes you? Or maybe just take a step or two 'sideways to the sun', which was a phrase the old Celts used for widdershins with an intent to get across that invisible wall to Lord Dunsany's "beyond the fields we know" where magic and faerie and Otherness is found??
Patterns fascinate me and I am often exploring them in one way or another. Why? Where? Who? What? When? Not the old journalistic five w's but a different and incredible new array of questions, most of the answers for which are probably not within reach in the here and now but somewhere and somewhen--I do intend to know and trust that I shall.
Good grief to the shingles!! Thank goodness you're on the mend so quickly. A dear friend suffered them nearly two years, another about six months. Be well soon!
ReplyDeleteFascinating post, as always. I would LOVE to visit such an Other Place, as you surely know. :) Will be getting this book now....