Ask Dr. Druid . Day 33
Walking with Sherrard
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My dear friend Sherrard Grey now gallivanting in the FarStars was the one person I could go grokkingly in the woods with. Many folk are pleasant or even riveting to hang out with. But only Sherrard could walk two feet down the sylvan path and with me exclaim again, “Oh look at the scarlet hogwort leaf!”
Most folk quail or dim at constant daffy “Oh, look!” Sherrard could take it. It was a giga-treat to have someone besides The Blue and one’s own Jolly Brain to share the stupendousness with. The stupendous shock and surprise.
With most companions, I recommend only stopping astonished in your tracks periodically. It’s not that one minds being thought mad. Perhaps one even prefers to be thought glad as a hatter. But sharing unbearable joy with unshaman folk can make them cranky. As your eyes get more vivid and poetry, you may find yourself being simply crushed at other folks’ dismal lack of enthusiasm. Fret not – or at least it serves no purpose to fret. Share every 1000th treasure and note the rest for The Blue or whoever your Secret Pal is.
It can be daggone tricky to become more eclectic and more electric and then find your companions as alert as logs. You must navigate this conundrum, this riddle. You ought not be more dull to fit in. Nor may you begin to despise your slumbering fellows who will wake in their own time. Believe me, there will be fellow see-ers along the way & you’ll have a jolly recognition and immersing laugh so deeply true that you will know and re-know that the bizarre narcolepsy of the darling planet Earth is a puzzle that you are solving.
Remember how bloody lucky you are to ever be awake alert stunned. Your gratitude must make you humble or you will just be an alert jerk. Which sucks. You are not are not superior for being alert, for having honed and honeyed attentions–you are l.u.c.k.y. You came across influences and confluences. It’s always your fault you can’t translate your new experiences to your friends or beloved. If you were so daggone smart, you could figure out how to entice them with crumbs like little birds.
You do lead a double (octable?) life. Every single person (wall, old sock) has many things to teach you. You may be grand and fab at what you’re good at, but you ain’t good at what they’re good at. And if you are a real see-ker, you’ll patiently unfold what treasures and tricks each person each wall each old sock has got. And remind yourself to watch out for the hubris of humility too.
I know, gods don’t I know how frustrating it can and will be to not be able to share instantly and straight across your electric mosaic of insights and outsights. Pick your moments. Remember how dim you are about playing the xylophone. Keep your eye on the xylophone when you begin interiorly or horrors! exteriorly to evince contumely. Experienced shamans know their luck. Prideful and preening fledgling shamans are not patient, are not generous and amusing. The puffed-up or faux humble ain’t got it yet. Avoid them pitfalls, friend, so you won’t look back upon yourself in excruciating embarrassment.
The ancient Egyptians assumed that the stargods would weigh your heart after your life and if your heart was not light as a feather, you wouldn’t be honored. Pride and greed make your heart heavy. The stargods actually put your heart in a golden scale with a feather on the pan opposite your heart. This is a daunting adventure in lightening of your heart.
I’ll never forget my several walks in the woods with Sherrard. They gave me courage and delight in the tiny fegg world at just the moment when I thought for sure it would be an utterly lonely adventure, this distilled perception thing. We never saw each other again for 40 years after that. Nor phoned. We mailed each other occasional letters which appeared out of the blue. Knowing a fellow see-er is out there is a lot. If one other person has seen a unicorn, it’s enough.
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Ask Dr. Druid, 66 Days from Lead to Gold, Secrets of Alchemy You Can Use, a druid shaman’s playbook .. Intro; Prologue; Day 1; Days 2 & 3; Day 4; Day 5; Day 6; Day 7; Day 8; Day 9; Day 10; Day 11; Day 12; Day 13; Day 14; day 15 Review 2; Day 16; Day 17; Day 18; Day 19; Day 20; Day 21; Day 22; Day 23; Day 24; Day 25; Day 26; Day 27; Day 28; Day 29; Day 30; Day 31; Day 32; Day 33;
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.. keep your heart bright. beauty is rising.
.for bombadilobo.
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the education-obsessed world begins today with you ..
.. let’s spend the $820,000 per minute Military-Corporate Budget on education instead ..………….<^>…………….
Thanks, pog, for being so honest about the pitfalls of changing from what your friends are used to. And for insisting that one not respond with conceit or isolation.
Not that you mention it I can see that it's part of the discipline to remain generous of spirit when one's riches are knowledge.
You know, one thing I've wanted to do is to read one of Sharrard Gray's mystery stories. It's amazing to me that you never physically visited with one another for forty plus years. I understand how it works and how actual visits may have nothing to do with the level of astonishment and the lightness of heart in a friendship, but it still seems quite remarkable.
temps, the pitfalls of sizzling excitement and inner leaping & bounding like a gazelle can be quite startling — you'd think people would want to share frabjous joy, but they seem more comfy with mutual complaint. I think it's just a bad habit of Society At Large, but it can make you feel quite rebuffed if you aren't prepared with your irony mail. NOT cynicism, always a waste of breath, but irony.
cl, Sherrard inherited quite a lot of family money almost all of which (maybe all) he gave to friends about 40 years ago(1967-ish). He gave Michael Fay (first husband) & me money for a tv set so we could watch football. He lived in a log cabin with his cat and shoveled snow off roofs and mowed grass for many years for food and heat money. I think he did some substitute teaching in the later years.
Neither of us could afford to travel much, having made these rage-honed anti-capitalist stands in various ways (see Bk 3). But the phone thing is surprising. It was like some unspoken pact. I do know he had a phone because I called Directory Assistance in Vermont once just to know.
His mystery stories are plain and delicious; Faberge Egg of precision, but aw shucks and homespun and ethan-frome plain. Masterful in the few brush strokes for characters who you buy into at once. Of course the remote rural Vermont settings and village life with its (murderous) intrigue were so unexpected.
I'm beginning to feel that he's etherically restored — he had some hideous wasting disease in the last years (Lou Gehrig's maybe?) — we didn't talk/write about it much. I know it did get gruesomely vile finally in physical terms. We vowed to meet on an asteroid. So I'm beginning to think of forays to find out where he landed. There are three or four people in a life you *know* you'll meet again (Sherrard, you, Lyd, Lobo). Tho he was not metaphysically adventurous, he wasn't at all against it and applauded all my forays of whatever kind — he is my friend — so I feel like it may be time to find out where he's gone & what he's up to. He feels recovered and ebullient. At last.
Thanks PB for the further enlightenment about Sherrard. Maybe I'll get to visit his asteroid one of these days. Makes me think of 84 Charing Cross Road an epistolary about tow best friends who never meet.
Some friendships are like a souffle — delicate to handle and delicious.