![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynGot up this morning. For the third or fourth day in a row I found myself wondering what it is I really want, what my goal in life is supposed to be - what it is I'm meant to be doing. I've always felt that I wanted to help others, do good, etc., but there are times when it's hard to feel like that's what I'm actually doing. Working for the Red Cross is fine, but it's hard to feel that being the Computer Weenie is really helping people...
So I was thinking about this, and about what path my life was supposed to take and all, and what my goals were supposed to be. I mean, I knew what I wanted - to help people, to have a job that makes me enough money to live on, to write and draw and create - but whether I was doing the right thing, taking the right path to get there or not, I didn't know. It was starting to eat at me. Decided to go to Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge rather than church. No offense to organized religion, but there are days when it's way easier to hear the Still, Small Voice in the swamp than it is to hear it in a church building.
I put on a CD that I burned sometime around, mmmh, 14 September or so. The music had gotten through the songs of chaos and immediate response, and was into the wandering-around-lost music that pretty well exemplified what was goin' through my head in September as soon as I had time to think, when I got to the swamp. One other car in the parking lot - all right, I want the Swamp to myself, but one car means very few people, so hopefully we won't meet. Turned off the music. Got out of the car. Walked over to the entrance to the Swamp. It rained several days ago, so the initial entrance was flooded. All right, thought I; perhaps I can get around this and get to the raised bridge in the middle, where I sat and read Dante's _Paradiso_; there's usually puddling and mud on the way, but maybe there's something...
Got past the flood area, found grass on the path, nodded to myself and kept walking. Bright, sunny day in the Swamp. Blue sky. Red-winged blackbirds everywhere. Noises of all kinds of animals and birds and and and - let me tell you, Nature isn't still or quiet, Nature is LOUD. Got to where the puddling and mud normally starts.
Now, if you're like me, and I know I am, you go "D'oh!" Because, see, the good people of the National Park Service took it upon themselves to lay logs every ten meters or so through the muddy area, then get out many pairs of ten-meter-long two-by-fours. These have been nailed side by side to the logs after the format of supports for a boardwalk yet to be. Essentially, what you are looking at is wooden rails - four-inch-wide ones, since the two-by-fours were nailed in pairs with the skinny side to the sky - across very, very widely spaced ties, snaking through the Swamp.
I had come to the Swamp looking for an answer to 'what is my path through life supposed to be?'
Apparently, I have one. I might not notice it until I'm right on top of it, but I have one, and even though it's a hard one and one that any sane person would say 'er, are you sure that constitutes a path', it gets me to where I need to be.
The fact that it was also a path that enabled me to startle no fewer than three thick brown water-dwelling snakes and two leopard frogs - on the way out alone - was not lost on me. Serpents of wisdom more than serpents of danger, as there's no serious poisonous snakes in the Swamp. I got to the bridge and sat down on it to read 'n meditate for a while, settling out a few questions despite the BLIZZARD CALIBER STORM OF GNATS that swirled around the area. (Not mosquitoes. Nobody bit me today.) At the end of it I looked up and sort of wondered if the answer I'd come to was anywhere close to right... wind blew up out of the swamp and the gnats were gone. I'd call that a yes...
I got up then and started back, immediately scaring off TWO of the thick brown snakes and reacquiring the gnat cloud. Made it halfway back along the balance beam before the guy who owned the car showed up... he just wanted to look at the snakes, and the frogs, and the blackbirds, and the goldfinches, and muse about them a bit. I smiled, and we talked and admired the fourth or fifth snake I disturbed on the way back, and then we both headed out of the Swamp. Felt way better afterwards. Saw a biiiiiiig, enthusiastic crow - probably one of my totem animals, if anything - on the way out. Turned on the CD player. The next song was Pink Floyd's "On The Turning Away". Nothin' like a little unlooked-for confirmation of your goals, and of the way you're moving through your life.
Just thought I'd share. I'm reasonably sure that if there's such a thing as the Angel of Zen, that guy was it - and that I've met said Angel before several times that I know of. Sometimes, despite your brain wanting to chase itself in circles, things ultimately manage to fit. That's all I'm sayin'.
Today's pulp survival tip is 65. No talking about overthrowing the evil oppressive monarchical backwards regime until you're out of the monarch's earshot. 65a. Guardsmen, castle servants, and relatives all count as extensions of the monarch's earshot.
So I was thinking about this, and about what path my life was supposed to take and all, and what my goals were supposed to be. I mean, I knew what I wanted - to help people, to have a job that makes me enough money to live on, to write and draw and create - but whether I was doing the right thing, taking the right path to get there or not, I didn't know. It was starting to eat at me. Decided to go to Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge rather than church. No offense to organized religion, but there are days when it's way easier to hear the Still, Small Voice in the swamp than it is to hear it in a church building.
I put on a CD that I burned sometime around, mmmh, 14 September or so. The music had gotten through the songs of chaos and immediate response, and was into the wandering-around-lost music that pretty well exemplified what was goin' through my head in September as soon as I had time to think, when I got to the swamp. One other car in the parking lot - all right, I want the Swamp to myself, but one car means very few people, so hopefully we won't meet. Turned off the music. Got out of the car. Walked over to the entrance to the Swamp. It rained several days ago, so the initial entrance was flooded. All right, thought I; perhaps I can get around this and get to the raised bridge in the middle, where I sat and read Dante's _Paradiso_; there's usually puddling and mud on the way, but maybe there's something...
Got past the flood area, found grass on the path, nodded to myself and kept walking. Bright, sunny day in the Swamp. Blue sky. Red-winged blackbirds everywhere. Noises of all kinds of animals and birds and and and - let me tell you, Nature isn't still or quiet, Nature is LOUD. Got to where the puddling and mud normally starts.
Now, if you're like me, and I know I am, you go "D'oh!" Because, see, the good people of the National Park Service took it upon themselves to lay logs every ten meters or so through the muddy area, then get out many pairs of ten-meter-long two-by-fours. These have been nailed side by side to the logs after the format of supports for a boardwalk yet to be. Essentially, what you are looking at is wooden rails - four-inch-wide ones, since the two-by-fours were nailed in pairs with the skinny side to the sky - across very, very widely spaced ties, snaking through the Swamp.
I had come to the Swamp looking for an answer to 'what is my path through life supposed to be?'
Apparently, I have one. I might not notice it until I'm right on top of it, but I have one, and even though it's a hard one and one that any sane person would say 'er, are you sure that constitutes a path', it gets me to where I need to be.
The fact that it was also a path that enabled me to startle no fewer than three thick brown water-dwelling snakes and two leopard frogs - on the way out alone - was not lost on me. Serpents of wisdom more than serpents of danger, as there's no serious poisonous snakes in the Swamp. I got to the bridge and sat down on it to read 'n meditate for a while, settling out a few questions despite the BLIZZARD CALIBER STORM OF GNATS that swirled around the area. (Not mosquitoes. Nobody bit me today.) At the end of it I looked up and sort of wondered if the answer I'd come to was anywhere close to right... wind blew up out of the swamp and the gnats were gone. I'd call that a yes...
I got up then and started back, immediately scaring off TWO of the thick brown snakes and reacquiring the gnat cloud. Made it halfway back along the balance beam before the guy who owned the car showed up... he just wanted to look at the snakes, and the frogs, and the blackbirds, and the goldfinches, and muse about them a bit. I smiled, and we talked and admired the fourth or fifth snake I disturbed on the way back, and then we both headed out of the Swamp. Felt way better afterwards. Saw a biiiiiiig, enthusiastic crow - probably one of my totem animals, if anything - on the way out. Turned on the CD player. The next song was Pink Floyd's "On The Turning Away". Nothin' like a little unlooked-for confirmation of your goals, and of the way you're moving through your life.
Just thought I'd share. I'm reasonably sure that if there's such a thing as the Angel of Zen, that guy was it - and that I've met said Angel before several times that I know of. Sometimes, despite your brain wanting to chase itself in circles, things ultimately manage to fit. That's all I'm sayin'.
Today's pulp survival tip is 65. No talking about overthrowing the evil oppressive monarchical backwards regime until you're out of the monarch's earshot. 65a. Guardsmen, castle servants, and relatives all count as extensions of the monarch's earshot.
