So what do you do when the Sun conjuncts Chiron and you live in Silver City? You go to a blessing ceremony for the Gila - pronounced HEALA, of course - River as part of the annual Gila River Festival or Celebration or whatever it's called and prove to yourself just how unhealed you are by being totally unable to participate in any of the consequent rituals and ancient Sufi dances (okay, only ONE of those but still) - it's a long long way from 1674 First Avenue between 87th and 88th streets.
I did manage to hold on to the Golden Eagle feather when it got passed around and desperately try to think of a prayer to say, and when the earth was being blessed with water gathered from assorted oceans and rivers and lakes and seas I could recite that invocation along with the others, but when the Buddhist priest made his way around with the pine cone and little bowl of yet more water from I-couldn't-hear-where to anoint the willing I made sure to be in the outer circle, I passed on wading in the river to say hello and thank you and as for the Sufi dance when we were supposed to bob around chanting "Flow Free, Gila River" - well, it will take another decade or two out here before that becomes even a remote possibility.
On a slightly more down-to-earth level, I did write down on a piece of paper - commitment, you know - that I would write two lines of dialog a day, first thing in the morning after coffee and reading the Daily Mail and checking the stock market, so that that when the absurdly named 2015 Southwest Festival of the Written Word rolls around next year I could, if I felt as though I wanted to, participate at whatever level I felt comfortable at and introduce myself as a playwright to anyone who asked without feeling like a complete fraud.
That, I believe, is called making a goal and having a plan, and does come loosely under the healing umbrella. And is much much easier than participating in an ancient Sufi dance.
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