I’m supposed to be packing now. Molly’s here, downstairs reading. I should be down with her. I should be paying bills. I should do some serious thinking in order to get this journaling kicked in the proverbial pants. In 36 hours I’ll be leaving Vermont, hoping that I have everything essential with me: the proper professional clothes for Mexico, the essential books I’ll need for teaching inspiration (this has been a difficult choice), some materials I’ve pre-prepared that I may never use. I have to deal with getting medicines straight when I get back to California. I have family matters to attend to first. I’ll be saying goodbye, once again, to my daughters, this time for even longer than the first. I’m torn between wanting to run home to them and wanting to stay in Vermont for another year, I so relish the seasons and the extra classes SIT offers and some of the people here.
I am more confused than ever about who I am and what I want to do. Being in the thick of studies is good for me because even though I have no life — I go to school, I come home and work while eating a frozen dinner, I go to bed — these last few days with classes over have been emotionally difficult. I wonder why I’m doing all this. I wonder if I’ll do anything with this education. I fear the void. I fear my emotional past, suffering as I still am with significant post-traumatic stress from events not even a year ago.
This is just drivel. It’s an excuse to post this picture. It’s a woodcut I found by accident. It was done by Camille Flammarion in 1888. I love it. It’s very Tarot-y and Fool-like. Going off onto this next leg of my journey, I feel a little like this.
More info about the image
From http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Universum.jpg; Flat Earth:
“…widely circulated woodcut of a man poking his head through the firmament of a flat Earth to view the mechanics of the spheres… The woodcut illustrates the statement in the text that a medieval missionary claimed that ‘he reached the horizon where the earth and the heavens met,’ an anecdote that may be traced back to Voltaire.”
(The religious “Urbi et orbi” caption didn’t exist in the original.)