AstroGypsies

This time of year creates a melancholy in me that is hard to shake. Maybe it’s always with me but I’m too busy to notice. The quiet, the death of the year, not quickly, but slowly, as each leaf falls onto the ground and goes from green to red, or yellow, then tan, then brown and black.

Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

I have a hard time shaking my aloneness this time of year. Some years I might be busy, planning a southerly trip, an escape from the cold, an adventure. Not in the cards this year, responsibilities of elderly horses as well as no truck, no trailer, the escape vehicles are sold and gone, it’s a huge empty spot for me out there in the driveway now. Even the cats keep going out to look for the trailer! Gamora was very fond of going into the trailer, her first home, when it went, she’d meow and beg to go sit in the truck. Funny that. We’ll start looking in the Spring for a “new to us” adventure mobile, something self propelled, maybe we can tow the car behind:)

I have always had the aloneness, as far back as I can remember as a child. I would take off on my quarter horse mare Lady and ride for hours, exploring every field and forest unfenced near our small home for a few years in Pinetop, Arizona. My diaries reflected it later, I think it’s always been there, maybe I was born with it. I can be surrounded by people, and be completely and utterly alone. Blessing or curse? Some days no amount of natural beauty or wine can make it go away…maybe more wine;) Ha!

Could it be melancholy?

“Melancholy is beyond sad: as a noun or an adjective, it’s a word for the gloomiest of spirits.

Being melancholy means that you’re overcome in sorrow, wrapped up in sorrowful thoughts. The word started off as a noun for deep sadness, from a rather disgusting source. Back in medieval times, people thought that secretions of the body called “humors” determined their feelings, so a depressed person was thought to have too much of the humor known as melancholy — literally “black bile” secreted from the spleen. Fortunately, we no longer think we’re ruled by our spleens, and that black bile has been replaced by another color of sorrow: the “blues.” Guess I have too much black bile this week;)

Maybe it was a defense mechanism from traveling constantly, from never having the same friends to grow up with, from constant change and moving, one country after the next, one culture after the next, you never feel at home anywhere, for any length of time, yet you crave that, home. Yet it is an illusion for me. Many do have that option, home. I am fortunate to have many wonderful and caring friends spread across the globe, but home? Just not here or there, where we hang our hat? Isn’t that how the saying goes;) What does happiness stem from, the answer to the life, happiness and universe? Could the answer be 42? 🙂 Douglas Adams fans will get it.

So, I’m not very good company the last few days. I’ll get over it, well, sort of, it never quite goes away, it’s a lifelong affliction I believe. Maybe it’s the whole aging bit, I’m worried I won’t get to see some of earth’s treasures before I no longer can. That need to move, explore…while I can. I’m gimping around already. I guess Angel’s Landing is out of the question;) Ha! Maybe as hunter/gatherers we were never meant to stay in one place for too long?

Maybe I simply suffer from: Fernweh– German. Meaning: Being homesick for a place you have never been or a longing for far-off places. This word means an ache to get away and travel to a distant place, a feeling even stronger than wanderlust. Fern “far”, Weh “ pain”. The English language could use a few words like this:)

Maybe I just need to get into contact with the mist fairies to do a tour, Tuatha Dé Danann, an elvish supernatural race from Irish mythology. They travel hidden in the mists…anyone have their cell or email?:)

Saludos amigos.