first quarter moon

Around dust when I was walking around town, I looked up and saw a low moon.  It was so white. I felt I could reach out and touch it.  I stood on the road bridge and stared at it for a while.

I thought about how it was a full moon when I landed in Italy (a blue moon actually) and how it emptied for the 1st two weeks I was here.  I too was emptying out.

The moon is filling us again.  I am filling up with memories and experiences of Italy.

It is in emptying that we allow room for the new, for the unexpected, for growth and not knowing.

I had a dream last night that my sister Kathy (who died of cancer in 2001) was living in a small apt with many things on her bed. (comforters, little blankets, dolls, odds and ends)  I was trying to get her to come out to a women's workshop.  She wanted to stay home.  I was trying to find a way of not putting so many things back on her bed.  Hmm...

As I fill up from this sabbatical, I find what I am putting in is light and easy on the shoulders.  I've put down the tons of rocks and realized they were not mine to carry.

I have no idea what will happen when I get home to VT, but I am still here in the magic time.
I love being alone in this house.  I listen to Italian music. ('No Senora No', good song) I don't have any cares or concerns.  I don't have to BE anything for anyone.  I can dance whenever I feel like it.  I can walk around in my underwear and a shirt.  I can eat dinner at 10pm.  I can clean the kitchen at midnight or not at all.

The cycles of the moon, I will remember this in VT.  The filling up, the fullness, the emptying, the darkness, and then the rebirth.  I guess you can start anywhere on the cycle.

I came here to empty out my responsibilities, roles, illnesses.   I came to fill my dry bones with beauty.  What I didn't know is that I also came to let my soul out the tiny little room I locked it into so long ago.

Now I am filling out, like the moon, with more and more substance and light.

We are all in cycles, some healthy, some not.

The autumn equinox is tomorrow (10:49am EST and 16:49 in Italy).
Balance, equal day and night for a while.  A nice time to be aware of the days shortening and the evenings lengthening.  It reminds me of getting older...I am 47 now, those summer days of youth are gone.  I don't miss a lot of it.  There is something about being older, having lived, lost, grieved, loved, given birth, I prefer this time.  I have a calmer disposition, it's less about ME ME ME.  Yet I care for myself so much more now.

I can still see that moon in my mind's eye.  The growing moon, watching over me.

Ah bella luna, I love you.