Dear friend,
I’ve popped next door to look in on the kittens. Their food bowls are full, and water bowls topped up. Our neighbors have a cat feeder they can control from their phones.
It’s company that I’m really bringing. Souza is out someplace, working on her coordination. Nature has gifted her an improbably long body with an even more remarkable volume of tail.
Her early attempts at walking the fence between our gardens caused in us an uncomfortable blend of comedy and pity as we watched her teetering first efforts through our kitchen window.
She’s like a creature off the front page of Vogue, shakily giving the wobbly, wet, wooden garden fence a go, with its climbing vines and fishing wire.
Her massive tail flops from side to side, pulling her back end out of balance.
She’s concentrating, though, getting better with each passing day.
It’s lovely to watch growth.
Maisie is much more cuddly.
I’ve stayed a fair bit longer than planned because she just needs cuddles. About 15 minutes of focused, unbroken attention will fill up most people’s tanks. I’d like to stay longer, but we’re heading into the Winter Solstice, and there are preparations being made. It seems Maisie has had enough. She wanders off into the hall. I take my chance to leave, but she’s ahead of me, sitting on the rug, barring my way and looking up at me imploringly.
As I go to step over her, apologizing, she scampers off into the kitchen.
“I can’t plan my day around a kitten,” I’m thinking.
But then again, it might be exactly the right thing to do.
On Friday, we’d bought our friends’ two kids matching lamps that project a sunset at night to help you relax. When I got home, I noticed that the box had a warning in small print: under Californian State law, the makers were obliged to inform us their lamps contain substances known to cause cancer and reproductive harm.
Maisie could not be expected to know any of this, so I left her waiting for her sister and went home to prepare for the shops. I like getting people gifts, searching around for something that will make them smile. I find I have to surrender to it.
There’s a lot of other people doing the same thing.
It takes as long as it takes.
The queues are long in all the big shops. Sometimes they’re so long it’s not worth bothering. Either way, what are you going to do about it?
At the counter, I recognize one of my ex-students who used to work at the corner chemist but left due to a fallout with the management. She’s shocked by the cancer warning. We stand chatting about her sister and how happy she feels now she’s out of a work situation that had become toxic for her.
It’s nice to know people.
Way too easy to become isolated.
Each from one another.
Or isolated from ourselves.
We’re doing a deep clean on the house to welcome in the new energy as we pass through the Winter Solstice. When I get back from the shops, I wash down the colonial blinds, walls, and woodwork in our front room.
The light through the windows glows with life.
I’m listening to Marie-Louise von Franz talk about following your own star, and how challenging that can be for a person.
To follow your own star is to live uniquely your own life.
Not the life that society or the times foist on us.
Not a life of conformity.
A natural, one-of-a-kind life.
She says earlier cultures than ours believed there was a star in the heavens for every soul on earth. Your own star is your guiding light, calling you forth into the adventure of your life.
Follow your own star and pay attention to this very moment. Notice how it is unfolding; go with it. Don’t worry about the others and what they are doing and thinking. You can’t be them, and what’s right for them might not be good for you.
A dream I had once woke me up. A voice said to start a company and call it StarQuest Media.
It’s coming to mind to change the name of the blog next year to StarQuest Media.
Maybe the Lost & Found Dept will come back, but a new name and a new year seem like it could be fun to see where that goes.
It fits with following your own star.
It’s the shortest day in the Northern Hemisphere and the longest in the Southern.
Thinking about it helps me feel connected to all of us up here in the dark, and all the people in the light. As we make our journey deeper into winter, at the same time the light grows imperceptibly stronger.
It’s a comforting feeling, knowing we are all connected.
Conflicted as we are.
Hurtling around the sun.
On this beautiful planet.
Till tomorrow,
Love,
Mikey