bibliomancy for a balsamic moon

"..in short, I am calling for a return to memory as more than mere mental "flotsam" - as more than a mere engrammatic inscription of the left-overs, the rags and tatters, or our lives. Remembering, rather, is soul-making, is its very basis. As such, remembering needs itself to be remembered - just as soul itself needs to be remembered in this soulless time of ours. Moreover, remembering needs a re-recognition, a recognition not accorded to it since the Greeks, who made Mnemosyne one of the original Titans, the Mother of the Muses, and a partner of Hermes himself..." (Edward Casey, from Memory, Time and Soul)


OK, I admit I've been more than just a bit difficult of late. It happens every year, around this time - when I feel the weight of something I'm yet to understand pushing down on my other-times contentment. The cosmos, with Mars and Pluto doing a spaghetti western style showdown somewhere up there, seems to conspire. Outer events show me inner turmoil; other's ideas of me overtake my hard-one psychic autonomy.

But, I tell myself, these are all just stories about how things are with me, and one of my new year's resolutions is to whine less, to spend more time in gratitude and to show others the best of me.

Right now the moon is dark, waning toward the new moon, and real astrological new year, on Tuesday. So its time to throw out the junk and clear space for the new.

In taking stock I'm noticing that memories keep surfacing, some of which are not the kind I want to keep - delving into them seems akin to listening to gossip - it just makes me feel like a bitch. But, like eating the cheese you know will make you bloated and sluggish, that cheese is going to be eaten, all of it, and regrets can come later. So I let those fiendish memories surface from their deep places and try very, very hard, not to get caught in them. I try to find ways of clearing them out and 'letting them go', and like mould they keep coming back.

There's a bit of wisdom that says its impossible to 'let go' of thoughts and memories - that they will let go of their own accord when they're ready.

So, I wonder, what is the value of 'throwing out the trash' both metaphorically and literally?

Maybe there's something important about it, after all? Maybe we need those dark, mould filled caves-of-memories? Would the world - the Earth - be a better place without them? It seems to me with all the 'space clearing we do - all the throwing out of the trash - we've just been moving things around.

There are no accidents - I can almost hear my friend Robyn laughing right now and telling me 'Dan, you're the only one here' - my last post was about the ego (I've come to think of as Mother Bone Maker) and how She 'makes' or brings into form the wisps of thought that are our stories, our ideas. This bibliomancy brings another element in - that memory, far from keeping us living in the past, makes us more of who we are now.

So, rather than 'throwing out the junk' I think I'll revision it, have another look and see what it really is.

Who knows, maybe the answer to the weightiness I've been feeling is in there, in that cave, necessary and divine.