When Waiting Is Filled

Hello, all.

My best friend, fellow Doctor, Commodore and water brother, the Artist, is leaving, or as he puts it, gettin' the hell out of Dodge.

I've been offline for the past few days because I cleaned the entire ParcePad from head to foot (it is cleaner now than it was when I moved in, seriously) and then spent a day and a half with him, hanging out and doing our version of saying good-bye.

I have grokked this, and this is the best thing. He needs to get away, he's going to a safe place, he's taking another friend, he'll even have e-mail, and he'll be back, temporarily at least, in a month. He's been happy since he decided to go, and I am happy for him.

Nonetheless, as I said to him, I don't know what I'm going to do with the Artist gone. No one talks to me like he does. No one even has the frame of reference to try, even the friends I've known longer. We've read the same books, we argue fine points of Heinlein (were doing it even during our hang-out night), we grok together in the closest human approximation. Which means he can never really leave completely, because my nest is his, but nonetheless, I'm a short-timer, and it is hard for me to wait until fullness without any sorrow at all.

Ave, aqua frater, ave atque vale.

In his last meeting with the group (well, not last-forever, because he left in good standing and will probably come back as a speaker even if he never moves back to town and rejoins), I did as Saraswati had instructed me to do...before I found out he was leaving, I had had a larger, more ritualistic and not-really-me celebration planned, one that would have required putting off cleaning the PPad for another week. But since he was coming to stay and has asthma, I had to get the place defurred if I wanted to be able to hang out with him without him wheezing and being miserable.

So I asked Saraswati what to do, and dreamed the perfect guided meditation. Since our meeting was the day after Solstice and in the evening, it didn't really make sense for us to celebrate the solstice qua solstice. But it's an important event in the Wheel of the Year, and I didn't want it neglected either.

In some traditions, the year is divided by solstices, the two halves each with their own champion -- the Oak King, who rules from Winter Solstice in December through Summer Solstice in June, and the Holly King, who rules from Summer to Winter Solstice. At the Solstices, they battle, and the King of the previous half-year is slain (and regenerated in the womb of the Goddess).

So what to do for the day after Solstice?

What else but to carry my people to the bier of the Oak King, and allow them to commune with him before carrying him, with the help of the Holly King, to his funeral pyre? They were urged to give their worries about the past 6 months to the dead King, and to discuss the upcoming months with the Holly King.

This was particularly significant because, since Beltane last (2004), the Artist has been closely identified with the Oak King...which meant he came into the meditation as the dead King, and attended his own wake. Pretty neat, and unexpected...and fitting, for the time. The Oak King always returns when his waiting is filled...and, though the Artist is not tied to the sun and seasons quite as closely as his counterpart, I believe he will, as well, when his own waiting is filled.

So all is well, except the little, non-Martian part of me that cries out with fear at the thought of being with the Artist in spirit only until fullness. But that part of me is being soothed by the rest, despite snarky comments like, "Well, King Arthur is supposed to do that too, and I don't see his ass showing up" from the former.

But I am here, and will remain, for ten minutes or a thousand years, until my brother's time comes. Count on it.