Pursuing Calefaction

Things are officially As Real As It Gets–today I set up a life insurance policy for my wife and son. In the whirl of complexity that is our life, in the maddening press of all the things we are perceived as needing or actually need or are able to discern that we don’t need, this is one of the anchors, the failsafe in case the unthinkable happens. It very nearly did this past January in the form of a woman stopping dead in the midst of morning rush-hour traffic, and I am lucky to be alive. So I am not taking chances, not with our future already in such flux.

We are on the verge of being in open water, adrift on the ocean of our lives–to extend the metaphor, currently in dock at a safe harbor to bring our son into the world, so that he can swim with us. Mexico and South Korea are now equally viable candidates for our work, so we research them while I keep us afloat with gardening work. I just took care of the biggest major bill in our short term future, and we are paring down expenses and selling our needless possessions (rather a lot, it turns out). We don’t require much in the way of Things, mostly just the electronic tools to make sense of this modern world. So much ephemera, in the face of everything being ephemera–

“Like a tiny drop of dew, or a bubble floating in a stream; 
Like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, 
Or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream.”
Diamond Sutra, Ch. 32

But how we make our way through this ephemera still matters. We can shape our son to make good choices, to change the world in his way, to better the lives of those around him just as I want to.