Thursday, January 01, 2009

we are stardust people

I just reprised Joseph Gallo's New Year's post from last year on mystic-lit, and I encourage everyone to head over there right now and read it.

It's one of my favorite blog posts of all time, and that's saying something, considering how many blog posts I've read, and written, and think about writing.

This year as I read it, part of the Eleanor Lerman poem Joseph quoted stood out. In an odd but clear way, it tells the story of my second novel ms, the idea that what we experience and see and think of as distance and separateness is only there because we think it is, or expect it to be.

Everything affects everything else, and although we can't see it, or know it, exactly, when we even think something, imagine it fully in our minds, we impact someone someplace else. And that energy goes on and on, connecting us in a long chain of events we might never know.

I tried to capture some of that in my book, how, among loved ones especially, the connections are strong, and what seem like coincidences are not co-incidents at all, but sequences that got started years before, rippling outward in ways we don't really know how to track.

My hope is that the book will get born between hard covers soon, but either way, it's out there, having its own impact on things, setting off dozens of sequences, the same way we all do, every single moment. I like that idea, and I'm taking it with me into the New Year, as I get the third one ready to sail forth.

If you're reading here for the horsey content, imagine this applied to horsekeeping. And riding. Horses don't draw lines the same way humans do, and that, I believe, is their magic.

May the new year be full of magic for us all.

And this is true: You are a stardust person.
Muons are passing through you as you read this.
Cosmic rays are building you up and breaking you down.
Seas are evaporating, gases are freezing into planets,
planets are spinning off into the void.

Hold out your hand and watch the pions dance,
watch your nuclei exchanging forces with the universe,
watch the miracles ebb and flow as endless joy
folds into endless silence and everything is
everywhere all at once and it goes on and on.


-from Eleanor Lerman's poem Our Post-Soviet History Unfolds

(photo credit to Matthew)

8 comments:

Grey Horse Matters said...

Great post. May we all have the magic in life you wished for us and may we all shine as stardust persons in our own lives and have a rippling effect on all we come into contact with.

billie said...

Thank you, Arlene! Happy New Year!

Victoria Cummings said...

Billie - I can definitely feel the magic - thanks! Happy New Year - May 2009 bring a published book to your hand!

billie said...

Thanks, Victoria - you too!

Rising Rainbow said...

Beautiful post, Billie, I hope you have a very happy New Year!

billie said...

And you too, MiKael - thank you!

Laughing Orca Ranch said...

I've felt this was for a long time, ever since I went to hear Maya Angelou speak at UNM for my 40th birthday. Her speech was centered around rainbows, but the concept was the same.

I wish you much success with your book, Billie.

Happy New Year,
~Lisa
New Mexico

billie said...

Thank you, Lisa. That sounds like a wonderful talk by Maya Angelou!