"What if Six Turned Out to be Nine?" J. Hendrix

A few days back, on Memorial Day, I kind of hit an emotional "bottom." I was low energy, and the world seemed a little overwhelming. I tuned out the news, unplugged from all the rolling and tumbling. It's strange, since then, I've found an odd calmness and peace. ("I'm the one who'll die when it's my time to die, so I'll live the way I want to." - J. Hendrix). This attention to death, to endings, to the shadow thoughts, to the darkside of the moon, seems to me to be a necessary strength. I think the darkness and tragedy of our lives makes the light and happiness that much more precious and soulful.

It's the Jungian idea of light and shadow, the strange duality of exitence. To be happy and shallow, to be in a place where everything is always sunny and easy, is a sham paradise. Instead, we live in an incredible world of hard realities. Reality is a great teacher. To find the beauty, the light, and the goodness in the "real," all wrapped up with the pain, heartache, loss, acts of cruelty and the "evil," men do, yes, that is the strange alchemy of a life.