Yesterday we got a phone call from a long time friend to tell Robin and I that she had been diagnosed with Cancer of the Pancreas and the Liver. There is no reprieve from this. For much of last night I was thinking about how I would react to such a diagnosis myself. It was this time last year, almost to the day, that Robin herself was diagnosed with breast Cancer. What is happening to me is that I am starting to break through the illusion that my own death is somehow avoidable. Is this not the illusion of our time and culture? If my death is a certainty - don't laugh until you have checked in for yourself as to how you feel - then are most of my worries in life secondary?
In tribal times, death was seen as an integral part of our lives and was connected to the ongoing process of birth, death and renewal. As I write, the leaves are just coming out on our property after 6 months of "death". Tribal spirituality, places great emphasis not on the resurrection of the body but on the permanence of the spirit. The spirit is surely the energetic remnant of each person as incorporated into the place and into the group memory of the tribe. So your reputation in life would have an impact on your spirit as it is recalled by your descendants. This type of belief needs no leap of faith but is confirmed by observing nature itself. Does not my father live on in our stories? Is it only his genes and some of his looks that I share - what about my mannerisms and my world view that not only I have but also my son and my daughter?
Maybe also, not having the strong link to property, tribal people did not "see" life as something that they owned and as such had to be defended as we do. My friend can at best expect a year. In this knowledge how do we then live? In our culture, we can spend the year fighting the inevitable. Or we can choose to live more deeply and to savour every aspect of life. We can worry about leaving our daughter and husband. Or we can think more about ourselves.
Jean's picture informs me. Alone, we can walk bravely to our end. There is a remarkable dignity to the woman as she climbs the dune. She is in charge of herself and she strides out to the edge of the dune. She is not passive. She is prepared - she even has her handbag. How we accept our end gives us power and gives those who love us the strength to accept our leaving the corporal world for the world of the spirit. The world of dreams where we continue to interact with those who have left the day world. The world of dreams where it is possible to transcend corporal time and to walk in eternity.
We moderns hardly dream any more - we are too sleep deprived. Tribal people place enormous value on dream time and the dream world. Why should the world of dreams not be "real" after all we spend 1/3 of our life there. Those of us who live by creating "know" that that hour before rising is often the golden hour when we are floating between the two worlds when ideas, and visions of what we can do in the corporal world cross the barrier of the dream world into our conscious mind.
8:59:42 AM 
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The Wolf - A friend, Paul Hickey, once told me that he thought that all human art was an attempt to reproduce what nature does all by itself. As I get to see more of Jean Boulay's work, I am starting to understand what Paul meant. 
