Fire On Babylon

It happens sometimes. Sometimes isn't true - it happens a lot. I get to the end of the spring, end of the term, end of teaching my regular schedule for the year, and there is my birthday. It often happens around or even during a major program - for two years, happened before major Shamanic training weekends, then during or after closing programs for Shambhala Training. Because I don't talk about it much, and especially in the pre-Facebook era, folks wouldn't know until the day of when I would be sad and no one would know. How awful is that. And yet, to tell folks my birthday is on the way sets me up for more attention than I typically want on that day.

That day. A day I was made - or made to be out in the world. I love myself, and the idea of celebrating me isn't an issue. No problems there. The issue is one of origin. A Mother's Day/Father's Day issue. My birthday is my annual Child's Day and I am no longer anyone's child.

The year has piled up. Emails fill my box, unpacked suitcases and disrupted novels and books of poetry. This is my new year, my real new year. It's a painful one, a time of total rebirth, of being thrown into the fire. I am not a summer person, and I have noticed the poignancy of spring in a new way this year - I do not look forward to loud stereos and too much sun. Caught in this in-between place of then and tomorrow called now, I find in the center a sense of nothing-ness, which often feels like space but today feels echoey and empty and nauseating.

Which is ok. Writing about it helps me to realize that. It's ok. Not going to change, necessarily, but I can be ok with it. Do the bare minimum work I need to do. Visit with a friend who won't mind if I cry, if I am barely there and will walk around in the spring with me to give fresh air to my feelings. Let the cats smother me. Let my students cradle me. Gentle gentle fire on babylon.