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2007-02-11 - 8:02 p.m.

My birthday last Tuesday really was pretty good. It was a bit strange in that it was the first birthday I had ever had in which no parents were left alive, so no happy phone calls from them to their "first born", no cute birthday cards made by my mother with my face cleverly Photoshopped into some cartoon-drawing or scene representing some achievement, milestone, or something totemic of my past year. My friend Kate took me out to dinner and the weather was spring-like enough for us to eat outside (although now it is chilly again). She asked me to share my dream for this upcoming year, and as I was doing so, tears started to well up and then fall from her eyes, with her explaining that she was feeling the presence of my mother so strongly. I remarked that the last time we were there in that restaurant, at that very table, in fact, outside, was at the beginning of the Christmas season two years ago (Mom's last Christmas), in which Kate had gotten the sudden desire after our meal to run across the parking lot to Barnes & Noble and buy a book as a Christmas gift for my mother. My mother had been very touched by that gesture (I forget what book Kate bought for her, but I do remember that Mom loved it) and phoned Kate on Christmas day, which Kate was thrilled over. The two had never met, although Kate had long longed to meet her, but that phone call did give her a personal connection. Mom afterwards made Kate a thank-you card, which Kate showed me she had cut out and pasted inside her address book under Mom's name, address, and phone number. Very sweet.

It was interesting for me to speak forthrightly about my hopes for this upcoming year and Kate is such an understanding listener, excellent in her rapport. She imparted to me some very valuable words of wisdom (and an accompanying image), the gist of which was that you can't discover your path, because it doesn't exist, but that you make it yourself, it unfurls just in front you as you venture forth. Well, I had heard of that concept before (and had also easily forgotten it), and Joseph Campbell certainly had said as much when he said that when you genuinely undertake a journeying from the heart, doors open where there never were any doors before. But Kate's description of the path that you create for yourself unfurling forth at your feet was absolutely right-on for me, because I had only just the day before finally hung on my office walls my three framed examples of aboriginal art, and about which I tirelessly had explained to several visitors who had come to see my "art gallery". Aboriginal art is all "Dreamtime" art depicting the pathway of a particular creator being that has emerged up onto the screen of the Earth and has brought into existence the vital "songline" of that particular species across the continent, bringing into existence all the things that it needs and that it will do. So there are paintings that are "Kangaroo Dreaming" or "Emu Dreaming" or "Bush Bean Dreaming" or "Honey Ant Dreaming", and even things like "Tornado Dreaming" or "Milky Way Dreaming". What about my Dreaming, or your Dreaming? That too, is a songline, and that too, is something that the creator makes from within us, singing forth our existence from our heart as we valiantly step forth. Life is a dream, and a movement, and the Earth arranges itself to our need. This year, I need to remember that.

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