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Journey to Dubh The land of the Northeast Wind |
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Journey to Dubh The land of the Northeast Wind |
December 31, 2001
On this last day of the year it seemed appropriate to journey to the land that I say holds the greatest share of my mind. I am trying to work out exactly what I want to do next with either my career or my life and it seems this might be an appropriate place to visit in search of an answer.
Locking my fingers into the sign for Dubh, I immediately found myself in a large conference room. When I first began journeying this was the place where I most often met with any wisdom figures who would care to talk to me. I really wasn't arrogant enough to summon them to my conference room; it was simply a place I could find and that they could be sure of finding me. I've never found the other world to be a place of rigid ceremony. Good manners, an honest heart, a willingness to learn are really the qualities that seem to matter.
The conference room has a wall of windows that looks out across the city onto a tree covered range of mountains. The images are indistinct but most of the inhabitants of Dubh like knowing that there are trees and mountains just a short distance away. I open the window and dig into my pocket for a packet of bird seed I always carry. In the land of Dubh, windows always open and there are always ledges to leave presents and offerings to the others we share our world with. The conference room is on the eighth floor (along with my office) and the building is in a mix of green space and other tall buildings.
Closing the window I walk out of the conference room and into a small reception area. Molly sits behind her desk over seeing a 12 office suite. She serves as one of the many hosts of Dubh for those of us who don't need lab space.
"Welcome back, Freya. I was beginning to think you'd gotten lost on your travels out there."
"Haven't sub-let my office have you?" I ask only semi-jokingly. Things change even in the otherworld and they change quite often in Dubh.
"Nonsense." Molly pushed her chair back and came around her desk. Taking me by the elbow she began leading me toward my office. "I've got lemonade in the cool case and a carafe of tea made the way you like it on the credenza. I've got something to do for another office holder, but I can come be a sounding board if you need me a little later. Your walking shoes are in the closet so you can take a break and go outside in 2 or 3 hours." She opened my office door and I saw a large room lined with book shelves on two sides, and a large picture window along the exterior wall my desk faced the toward the door at an angle and there was a couch, a recliner and a small table and 4 chairs."
"This can't be my office. It's too clean" I chide Molly.
"You'll have it messed up in no time if you'll just get to work." Taking a hanger off the back of the door she held out her hand for my jacket.
I looked down to see what I was wearing; medium tone electric blue culottes and the print short quilted jacket over a electric blue cotton blouse and soft leather boots. Two blue sapphire rings on my fingers, and my "electronic brain" attached to the wide belt I'm wearing. No swirly court dresses here. No knives or swords. I hand her my jacket. "Molly, may I ask you something?"
"Of course" She hangs the jacket up behind the door and walks toward my desk, hinting to me without words that I should get settled in.
"What if I don't chose to stay? What if I decide to move to Kithnglas or Ban or Nglas or Bui?. What if I want to be something different?" I decide to stand behind my chair rather than sit down, since sitting down would imply a commitment I'm not sure I want to make.
"You've been down the road to Bui (the land of mental healers) before.. You studied hard and learned a lot and chose not to stay. You won't revisit that decision. It's time has come and gone. Kithnglas and Nglas both hold parts of your life, skills you need, and lessons you've learned but your work is here. Not necessarily your whole life. And that is the mistake you've made in past," she added, you're always losing balance, by being too focused on one thing."
"So what about the writing, the teaching? I've been so many things and now I have a choice and I don't know what to envision next."
"Shall I schedule some time for you to talk to LV? They're wonder workers over there in Cron. You know better than to believe the death of one's teacher means that she's passed beyond helping you. You would have gone to her for guidance in the past."
Even in the other world action is required. Pulling out my chair I sat down at my desk, reached out and opened the drawer. Right on the top is a piece of paper that contains just three words; Creativity, Synthesis, Education. "I guess this is the place to start, isn't it. After all it isn't everyone who has her life's purpose boiled down to three words."
Molly heads toward the office door, leaving me to ponder my list. Our interchange had been the normal multilevel dialogue that happens in real life but is so often unrecognized in all it's ramifications. Molly had shown me that no matter how much my personal life was in disarray or mired in indecision in the real world, I could chose stability here. That I would always have an office with everything neatly filed. That she would always be there to help and that Evangeline would do the same for me in the home I had claimed in Nglas. There was also the unspoken promise that the more I valued their stability and order the more those things would bleed over from the otherworld into the "real" world. What an interesting perspective to have on otherworld journeys. Not only are they a way of working out situations that seem clouded in the real world but life there can positively impact life here, if I will only chose to let it.