Manifesto To Myself

The Magician Tarot Card represents manifesting possibilities and beginning new projects.

So, the dust must lie and the dishes sit, now is the time to write.

I clear the house of children and husband and draw myself back to this – a pen, some paper and an internally inquiring mind (for that is how I still write, with much crossing out and scrawling and room for mental movement in all directions).

Your money follows your priorities a very straight forward lady once told me and, observing throughout my life, I tend to agree.  Ever mindful of its finite nature, we’re so carefull of how we spend our money, but what about how we spend our time, a more precious commodity?

We fritter it away as if it will flow on forever, as if there were an unending stream of it in which to live how we wish, to love how we wish, to become who we wish…

As if we had all the slow-moving time in the world to attend to important things – later.

I say we, but I mean me – I have  been guilty of this.  I’ve let life tug me, like a weed in the wind, far away from where I know I should be –

When I was a girl I wanted three things – ten children (I got three); to be a nun (Catholic, I didn’t know of any other, now I think of it as a longing to merge with God, although I don’t believe in God); and to write.  An unusual child!

I would run through the bush whispering prayers to the trees to reveal themselves to me. I would cry out –  to I didn’t know who – to come and commune with me. I felt the strange and the sacred pumping like blood in my veins, everywhere, and wanted to channel it through me (and now onto this page).

But like a child in a fairytale who forgets what they set out for, somehow, I was waylaid. By family and friends and houses and jobs and life’s lures and responsibilities. Lulled into forgetfulness, I hardly remembered how I used to be…

The sacred in the mundane stopped appearing to me.

I put down my pen and paper and attended to grown up things –

But enough.

Now is not the time to dust or wash or vacuum!  Let the dust lie and the dishes sit.

Now is the time to write.