My Mom had always talked about writing a book about her life/career. She (of course) never got around to it. Having worked with my Mom for as long as I did, the burden of much of this "second-hand" data seems to have fallen to me. Unfortunately, much of it is somewhat mythic and vague ... the places, times, specifics, all gone blurry. It really bothers me that even if I were to find some huge block of time to be able to do a history of my Mom's life, I probably could not extract the data. Which means that it's gone. Which means that, for any practical purpose (i.e., we'll leave the "Akashic Records" aside) it didn't exist, it didn't mean anything, and my Mom's incredible adventure might as well have been dreamed up by some couch potato. This is really bugging me.
I have, of late (largely since blowing my knee out last month, which still has me hobbling), been noticing how damned OLD I'm getting. Much of my "professional life" was perceived as "something I need to get through to do the interesting stuff". Sure, I did a LOT of interesting travel "in my youth", but I can hardly tell you where/when of the details. I have this book on pilgrimages that I've been dipping into, and keep coming to the awful realization that it would be quite difficult, physically, for me to go on many of these journeys, given the various lingering effects from stuff like the car crash 10 years ago, etc., have on me. In fact, I had been planning on going on a journey to Ausangate (one of the sacred mountains in Peru, particularly significant to my Q'ero shamanic teachers) five or six years ago, and my state-side teacher suggested that I not go, because he "didn't want to have to carry my dead body back down the mountain". This is bugging me because I have a LOT of places that I still "need" to visit!
Another thing in that "pligrimage/sacred journey" book is these folks talking about these "life changing" experiences from the various places they've been. One of the hardest lessons that I learned in all my "mystical travels" was that "wherever you go, there YOU are", and all these places are just settings for one's on-going inner psychodrama (I seem to recall having a discussion of this with famed Zen master Richard Baker Roshi when we were down at Tulum for the "Harmonic Convergence"). On the positive side, I learned that one can create (using Vajrayana visualization techniques in an Incan Shamanic context ... go figure) pretty much whatever one need for "setting" and even "tools" for ritual work wherever you might be ... however, the realization that none of these places "hit me" with joy/sacredness/revelation/whatever is saddening. Sure, there are places which amaze me (Teotihuacan comes to mind) but they are amazing from a human rather than sacred/divine stance.
It occurs to me that I should probably start work on my book before my mental faculties start having the same sorts of accumulated decay that my physical form has. Without "research" I could only guess as to the decade when I went where and did what. Fortunately, I do have TONS (almost literally ... I just moved them from one end of the apartment to the other in order to make room for the new office!) of photos, and I need to work from those, I guess. I also have journals from my trips to Peru, Mexico, etc. ... I will have to find the files for the ones I have already "decoded" (from my illegible scrawl) and try to wring out the words from those that I never got around to transcribing.
Ah, shit ... the Sun's coming up ... I should try to get another hour or two of sleep ...