Wholly Consumed - Living Mercurially

I've been slacking on the poetry front. I should have known this would be the hardest time of year to keep my promise to post one poem a week. Summer is too hot. My world turns to Mercury and the energy moves like quicksilver through the days. My muse takes refuge, preferring the cool of autumn and the long winter evenings to mull over the images garnered during the heat of summer.  Forgive me for the lapse - I will make it up to you! Whoever you are.  In the mean time, Mercury rules and I can offer this bit of writing to appease my sense of guilt and as a promise that I am not gone - merely dancing very fast and cannot expand into a poem until I catch my breath!

I am a mercury girl; a Virgo. I am a star-driven multi-tasker, over-achiever and go-getter.  I am also a closet introvert.  A fact, which when announced, brings looks of disbelief if not a blatant “Bullshit!”  That’s because Mercury girls are very, very good at doing whatever they do, articulating their ideas and taking control of situations that need an ordered and strong mind.  Not your usual introvert; not the skulking about the video store, not daring to look the clerk in the eye, sort.  We are bold and clear like a bell in a Buddhist monastery ringing across the Himalayas.

When given a chance to do anything – anything at all – I would usually choose to be alone, at least for a little while.  Empty, unplanned time is what I need to allow this strong and ordered mind to ruminate upon its many and varied interests, apply creative problem solving, logic and strategy and to allow intuitive creativity to inform the process.  For me, no time alone yields no poetry nor art, it breeds a systematic undermining of creativity and productivity.  This Mercury girl becomes agitated and depressed, overworked and stressed. 

Better to take a little time to unplug, unload, undo.  I love to dump the contents of my mind out and sort through it like a child digging through her collection of baubles and trinkets picked up at the fair.  And then put them carefully away, preserved and labeled, ready for recall at a moment’s notice.

With a guarantee of solitude and solace I find that I can be as deeply driven as I care to be.  I feel I can achieve anything I set my mind to.  There are no barriers, borders or rules that cannot be overcome.  I can serve forever from that limitless reservoir that feeds and sustains me.

Life consumes me wholly even as I am replenished.  I bring forth new effort and ideas; they are snatched up by an eager Universe and the nexus between Creator and Created pulls yet more from me in a continuing flux of energy.  I am restored from an eternal fount that resides deep in my intuitive self and is tied to my innermost core.  This is the birthplace of inspiration, motivation and action.

I have been consumed many times over, in many incarnations and reinventions.  I am mother.  Wife.  Entrepreneur.  Executive.  Spiritual seeker.  I have found new depths of being by diving beneath the waters of the well of grief to the still quiet place where the first heart beat its first beat.  I have walked in the fire and faced my foes with courage, spoken the truth from deep love and compassion.  I have become a leader and shelterer of those who are attracted to such truths.  I hold space between my outstretched arms for the world to be born and for lovers to dance and for the weary to rest.  It is not easy.  Sometimes I stumble and fall crying into the arms of that vast unknown and I yell “What more can I give?  What more would you have of me?”

I know the answer.  Mercury-girls, like me, are on the fast-track to dissolve into the Source, being consumed by a serviceful life.  Those blessed moments of introversion and stillness allow me to brush away the detritus and fragments that create drag and confusion and lend handholds to attachment and desire.  Attachment is the devil – if there is one.  I must be wary and ever vigilant against the desire to act for my sole benefit.  There is no lasting joy in serving one’s selfish desires.  It is a costly and painful way of living that is abhorrent to Nature.    

And when I turn my gaze toward the hills where the sun sets and solitude awaits, I know I am connected to the highest truth.  One that sustains and keeps all creation.  I will be lived, Mercurially, in the moment and unreserved.