Still Life with Peaches and Water Jar (left),
Still Life with a Silver Tray with Prunes, Dried figs, Dates and Glass of Wine (center),
and Still Life with Branch of Peaches,
Fourth Style wall painting from Herculaneum, Italy, c. 62-69 AD
"Nobody knows what might unfold …"

Times come when events commence to Converging. Common near the ending of any effort, multiple threads resolve as if by magic. A sudden flurry of activity sees synchronicity show her usually shy self and pure magic invades. Nobody complains, for we see these events as justifying our earlier efforts. What formerly might have seemed disjointed and arrhythmic finally finds its pace as well as its justification. Little things can spark this sense that the world has started coming together rather than continuing to fall apart. I notice things. Just after the moving van left stuffed full of all of our stuff perfectly squared off into a perfect cubic rectangle, I poured the last bit of my single malt and invited The Muse to join me in a toast. She very quickly concocted a Manhattan, squeezing the last drops out of her Basil Hayden. How could it have been that both bottles exhausted themselves at precisely that minute? We experienced a small Converging. Cheers!

We're heading home later this morning and I 'm up preparing myself for a day of Converging. Yesterday, our last full day in Colorado, our turn for our second Covid-19 vaccination came up, simultaneously closing two huge chapters in our lives. Who orchestrates such Converging? They seem like they simply must be really happening because they wouldn't qualify as believable fiction. More than one otherwise fine novel has been ruined by a final chapter overloaded with unlikely Converging, as if a deadline had come and the author urgently needed to just get that sucker done. The butler not only committed the murder but caused every calamity since page one and nobody saw any of that coming. The book ends and then becomes quickly forgotten, but real life sometimes mirrors those hasty authors, as if trying to cram every gram of goody into the story without exceeding that maximum four hundred page imperative. That's the sort of story we're writing right now. Must be real because it couldn't quite qualify as believable fiction.

Approaches to Converging show little evidence of impending magic. They often seem down-right pedantic, repeated evidence that I can't do anything right and that my efforts will most likely come to nothing. Of course approaching isn't completing, so there's little to use as evidence of any future successes until much nearer an ending. It seems generally true that once one finally learns how do to something, the universe's need for anyone to produce that thing evaporates. For instance, after weeks of packing possessions in preparation for finally SettlingInto, I noticed yesterday that my hard-won expertise suddenly had no market. Everything had been packed. God willing, I might never have reason to ever demonstrate that particular mastery again, though near the end, I'd become a genuine wizard. Converging tends to quickly turn into just this sort of irrelevance. It's tenaciously time-sensitive. Magic today becomes mundane by tomorrow morning, so Converging definitely seems worth seizing whenever it appears.

I'm not trying to provide instructions for how to make Converging happen, other than to caution you to pay attention when you approach an ending, particularly one you've long held as a primary aspiration or even as an obsession. I've learned through practiced inattention the cost of dozing off when endings near. Of course you're exhausted, weary doesn't even start to describe your state, but try to stay awake. A deadline's not encroaching, a Stay Awake Date's approaching, and authentic magic's finally afoot. Notice little things then, for these tend to be connected to ever larger ones. Patterns will emerge to encourage even deeper observing, reflecting, and appreciating. This whole damned world's intrinsically connected and you're finally conscripted into playing the starring role. Nobody knows what might unfold, but it'll seem like magic. After what you've been through, you know deserve it!

©2021 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #SettlingInto, #PureSchmaltz