Personal Silence And Stewing

I ended yesterday's post with these words: "What I will do ... is something for me to contemplate ... in the counsel of my own heart ... with the light and dark alternately rising and descending ... in personal silence and stewing ..."

I'm right in my element with this thing. Personal silence and stewing is exactly what I like to do if there's an opportunity, and I've got something decent to stew over. And with this whole thing involving the Grange Brotherhood, the good and bad sides, I'm full to the brim with opportunities. It's all a huge wonder.

As for "the light and dark alternately rising and descending," to further quote that very nice paragraph (I give it 5 out of 5 knuckle polishes), the way I picture that is the idea of a man sitting in one spot with the sun rising and the sun setting on him. If that could actually be done, which I don't think it could unless you had a bedpan and a refrigerator right at hand. But apart from the literal light and dark rising and falling, I could take it as the mental/spiritual content of my own agonized heart. A situation in which I go through periods of light and periods of dark as the silence and stewing is very much prolonged.

At one point this morning, I was positively radiant with the light. I had enough good things going on that I could've healed the world. Had I so deigned. But then just moments later I was in such a fit of darkness that I could've crawled around on the floor naked like a crab seeking a drain for a faster descent. A shadow fell across my face. My eyes were darkened, bereft of light and life itself. Something vast and terrible is happening, because I don't usually have my shorts in such a knot, usually being in a fairly good mood.

What is the content of all this stewing, all this perplexity? The awful quandary I'm in concerning the Grange Brotherhood, whose besetting of me along the way, then testing (tormenting) of me at the dance, brought forth numerous issues, mostly of a negative sort.

I hope you can tell I'm worked up about it. So much so, in fact, that anything could happen. The options I presented yesterday, 1) Joining the Brotherhood; 2) Ignoring the Brotherhood; 3) Attacking the Brotherhood, are all still operative. I'm casting about for signs -- flailing wildly -- and I can't help thinking one will be coming very soon. A person can't function with this kind of constant turmoil. I need it to end! But exactly how it's going to end, I do not yet know.

I probably should mention a dream I had, which could have some prophetic bearing on the important matters at hand. I witnessed a titanic struggle of two superhuman forces. One side was a gigantic octopus, with enormous outstretched tentacles, literally with brass knuckles on each one. The air holes or suction cups you always see on tentacles were seething, in constant motion, as though trying to pull in its victim by an inner pressure with its domineering will.

The opponent was a snake-headed man, a head and hood like a cobra, then from the top to the back of his head was a swarm of smaller biting snakes. It's like they lived under small trap doors, the shingles or texture of the snake's head, then popped out when called upon. As the octopus reached out the snakes popped out in defensive posture. And as the bigger snake, the snake head proper, lashed out, also with sheer indomitable will, the octopus recoiled and spun with a backwards retreat, a retreat however that kept it in position to strike at any time. (There was so much hissing I might've hissed the bed. Forgive a desperate old man his joke.)

All in all it was a pleasant enough dream, but I woke up before it resolved itself.