Twelve Days

XII

‘Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.’
—Helen Keller


Twelve days.
Today has been truncated and crowded with howling.
I slept from seven am until noon…woke up mid-vomit (yeah, it is scary) with King Headache stomping around up in my attic. I took my meds and managed to get back to sleep. I woke again at 2:30 to bright afternoon light and Ravens playing in the sky outside my window.
When I pulled my self together, I got to thinking that a day is not defined by the rise and fall of Sun, or by the activities of those around me. Farmers and Bean counters may disagree but a day has little to do with sunlight or the tyranny of hours. Frank Herbert [It should be noted that Frank is my lifelong hero. Often I have to be careful not to accidentally plagiarize him. If ever you notice such, email me and I’ll give him his props.] wrote in Dune, the last thoughts of Leto Atreides:

The day the flesh shapes and the flesh the day shapes.

This sentence, the idea contained in it, has stayed with me from the moment I first read it as a young man. It has helped me through some hard times and has become my personal motto. It is a reminder that life is both gift and responsibility, speaking profoundly to the reality that even as the world is shaping us, we are shaping it.
What form then, do we give this world?
What shape do we allow it to make of us?

Another hero for me is Helen Keller. I doubt that I need to explain why, but beyond the obvious reasons there is a deeper one. I love her because even while she walked a path of hard-earned enlightenment, from her writings I think she accepted and forgave herself for feelings of anger in the void of her darkness…self-pity, resentment at her lot—all the frailty and ugliness that lurk in each and every one of us.

…days like this that my thoughts easily splinter.
King Headache is having his way.
Screw him.
I’m going to play in the snow with Wingnut, my dog friend.
He, above all others, knows how to have a good time.
With him, an eternity can be packed into twelve days.

l

Remember remember the 5th of November,
The Gunpowder, Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot.

—End Transmission—
Dawn McKenzie