 There are many paths before me. Which one do I take? If you are like me, you are drawn to more than one. Maybe more than several. Maybe you lose count and create a frenetic life, bouncing from one path to another in rapid succession. Even though I buy all the supplies for a project, or map out all the details for a possible business, the project or business never really gets started and, even if something is started, it takes on the characteristic of a ball of yarn the cat unravels while I knit. But in this analogy, I am both the cat and the ball of yarn!
It has taken me a while (a long while) to realize I simply can’t do everything. I have a part-time job as a proofreader, so every moment not working is committed to . . . laundry, shopping, cooking, preparing for clients, maybe even sleeping. And though I tried walking disparate paths, I couldn’t seem to start on one and keep going. Finally, I sat down with myself and prioritized. What do I love to do? What don’t I love to do? What can’t I live without doing? Something I love so much, I could do it all day and never tire of it? Writing! I love writing, from poems, to essays, short stories, to novellas, and fiction and non-fiction books. But! With everything else I have committed to doing, I am unable to focus on, as Seth Godin so wisely encourages: create and ship. I am good at creating, but with everything else vying for my attention, I can’t find time to ship. Until now. Having examined every path open to me, I have closed them all but one: writing! If you are wondering why you get nothing done, although you try hard to do so, I cannot recommend strongly enough making a nice pot of tea, and creating a list or a mind map of everything you want to do. After you have listed everything you can think of, start crossing out the things you would not miss doing. Keep at it. It takes time to discern the small voice inside you that knows your priority mission in this life. Keep listening and crossing out. And when you are down to a few paths, really examine how following these paths might make you feel. When you land on one that fills you with joy, that’s the one to follow. This method worked for me and I know it can work for you.
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 It is quite impossible to hold on to all the pieces of this skewed 3-D jigsaw puzzle with flying color chips each a prismatic reflection of the chaos and cacophony that is Washington and the country and the world. It is a game, all a game. The nanosecond you grasp one piece in your quivering hand, your quavering mind, thinking you see a pattern, a space to fit it in, a toddler rushes into the table, pieces jostled out of place once more. I don’t care for games, Yes, crosswords. Yes, puzzles. But this is every game ever played-- musical chairs, marching to the beat until the music stops and you are the one left standing discomforted and alone. The one with red balls flying at your face thrown by someone you thought you trusted. The one with the tiny figures that move around a board hoarding money and real estate and a jail that never holds anyone but you for an extended time. The etch-o-sketch that creates and then destroys. There are no rules. There is no finale. The band plays on and on-- a calliope one moment, a dirge the next. I wake with fists clenched across my chest, gasping for air. The game never ends. There is no death. An inspiration catches in my throat; a different reality might be endearing. When the game moves on to the next level, The next hopscotch square, we turn our heads and wonder how we got here, and all we can do now is watch and watch and watch. I finally dealt the same fate to the Monopoly game as I did to the Ouija board left sealed in my closet. These remind me of the weird symmetry of not games but warnings of visceral abuse. When I was a child I had a recurring nightmare, or was it a waking vision, of the end of the Earth, destruction everywhere. Coffins spinning out of graves jettisoned with their depleted contents out into the vastness of space, going back from whence we came. The vision was always terrifying-- small child, end of the planet she was tucked in on. I think of the terror, the confusion-- I had never seen a coffin, I had never seen a death, I had never seen a corpse, but there these exploded from or into my brain. Lately, I think these were visions repeated so I would not forget, not forget, not forget. The new cycle begins again with the closing gyre of the last one, the last shudder of an experiment that once again failed. How many times have we been here in this moment? We forget We forget We forget  Once upon a time, in the beginning of time, there were no cars and no streets and no signs, except natural ones on the earth and in the skies. People walked where they wanted to walk and created their own paths and it was good. People knew their spirit-selves, their internal divine spark, as reality and could recognize the spirit-self in others as they went about their daily tasks. They did not need a lot of rules, for this recognition created an environment of openness, trust, kindness, and generosity towards self and others. The individual paths, trod upon by individual spirit-selves, joined together to create an interdependent lattice, a web of connections between people, spirits, and ideas. The lattice transcended time and space and people were content to travel along an illusion of time and space whereon their conduct was determined by need. They rested when tired, ate when hungry, worked towards common goals and visions, worked through respected differences. People were in touch with who and what they were. Then, the paths became paved, and as the earth became encrusted with human-made roads and edifices, people lost the ability to clearly perceive their own true nature, let alone that of their neighbor. They lost connection with the interdependent web, the lattice that is our true home, and lost their way. To find their way and make sure everyone obeyed the rules on the roads of the earth, they erected signs to remind them of the rules that needed to be followed, the hazards that needed to be avoided, and the locations they were looking for. These signs included regulations, warnings, destinations, and services. People saw them as ways to navigate upon the earth, not as guideposts to help them travel with their spirit, with their heart. While pedestrian can mean mundane, banal, run-of-the-mill, everyday, the usual, it is important to remember that a pedestrian is one who is on a path, that you, as a pedestrian, walk upon the earth with other pedestrians. This book will help you reinterpret the signs around you and help you to find your way in life. Please click on link to read a sample of The Pedestrian Manual: https://amzn.to/3sZPvAg  The time before now that is also now spans across space, creating a web of infinite nows. In this now, this one here, I feel Brigid weaving her mantle to warm and bless me as bard, who sings of the now that was our home before now in that other time that was now and we sat beside the Boyne and dipped our fingers into the flowing river and held our fingers to our lips to stain them with the clarity of the poems that are sung at dawn and at dusk and call to her, to you in this guise as a mortal sitting in front of me hands outstretched a flame in each hand offering healing offering warmth. The tear, the singular tear that crawls slowly down your face belies the trust you had in us, the trust of remembering that which was too dear to be forgotten. Brigid, I am trying-- still a little girl in a crone’s body I do not know the answers, I only try to remember the song, the melody beneath the words that string the sounds into pictures and moment, and birds flying across the pure skies and the fish moving sleek bodies through the water and beneath the water and the trees, the trees, the trees, and the cedars outside my window with their sacred spirit beads. There is something coming that was said back then and remembered on the backs of the songs that swirl in ribbons of air around my head. We can change this, we can return to that now that is still this now. We, the poets, can remember, and tell the tales and seek the words to say this is not all that was supposed to be. There was a shininess beneath the dross that spills over at the edges of mankind. Brigid, give us strength and fire to burn away the darkness and herald a new day of rebirth, to postpone the annihilation that breathes like a dragon across the land. Brigid—give us the fire, to forge a sword to bring the light to night to bring the right that is might to stand and fight to save us all.  We are experiencing what I perceive as a spiritual evolution but I recently came across the term “conscious evolution” and it would seem these terms embrace different aspects of the same journey to higher awareness, which, further, is directed toward the fulfillment of our journey to and beyond this place at this time.
Everything that is happening on this planet—from climate change to political upheaval to challenges to the previous, and pernicious, social constructs, to the global pandemic that threatens our physical as well as emotional realities—serves as catalysts toward our evolution of conscious and spiritual awareness. More than ever, I see this planet as fertile ground on which to change the dynamics of our very existence, both on the physical as well as the spiritual planes. As each of us is touched by the incessant and insistent challenges that surround us, as well as live within us, we are being prompted to examine who and what we are and who and what we hope to be. When we see those who are creating burdens rather than uplifting us, we need to accept this as a call for change, acting individually and in community to not accept what is seeking to destroy us and instead finding peaceful ways in which to co-exist as we work toward harmonious conscious and spiritual growth. We can comport ourselves in the manner that we see as a path of sustainable environmental and societal advancement toward a common cause of meeting the negative forces that surround us with the more powerful forces of positive thought and action. As a writer and creative, I see my path, in part, to be one of offering inspiration as well as solace as we tread these difficult times. I believe firmly in the adage that the pen is mightier than the sword, and I think this goes as much for any type of creative endeavor that meets travail with an expression of productive hope and peace to push back those who wish to overwhelm us in order to keep the status quo. I keep being reminded that I am a child of the universe, that we are all children of the universe, here now to learn from each other and grow together toward the higher vibration that is awaiting us, to manifest the awareness of what and who we really are, and to light a path for others to follow.
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