Note: See yesterday’s post.

Here’s an interesting, detailed essay on astrological returns, each of them a circle that, as it closes, shifts into spiral. Notice that when it comes to the Uranus return, however, there’s no specificity; obviously, the author has not yet lived through this phase! How many of us have? (The granddaddy of today’s humanistic astrologers did. Dane Rudyhar lived to be 90).

https://mysticryst.com/blogs/the-mystic-journal/spiral-time-astrological-return-cycles

More and more, I am appreciating this 84-year first ever (and only) Uranus Return (a five year process for 83-year-old me; I’m in year 2).

Hmmm.

More and more, I feel myself spreading into the pulsing center of a gigantic 84-year cycle, only now beginning to bend out into spiral.

How far will I get along the spiral? Will I “die” at some point during this five-year Uranus Return? Will I, like Dane Rudyhar, wait until Saturn returns for the third time (30 year cycles) at 90? Will I outlast that to go into my 90s, the way my parents did, not leaving this plane until 96, two years apart?

More and more, I also notice how friends in their 40s become extremely uncomfortable whenever I even mention altering my daily patterns to reflect my current age. “Oh no, you’re not . . .” is their automatic response, whenever I bring up this subject.

For example, I no longer hike long remote forest trails alone. A friend in her 40s, with whom I was walking two miles yesterday evening to an event — and she was shocked, kept remarking “You walk fast!” — dismissed this concern: “Oh, just use walking poles.” That’s what she does. (I don’t like them; they interrupt my Sagittarian stride.)

Another example, no longer riding a bicycle. Not because I don’t want to — and yes, biking IS inherently dangerous, but so is walking, and slipping, and almost falling, on black ice, which I’ve been doing this winter, in spades. (Two slips this morning; one of them major.)

But because three years ago, when I went to get on a bicycle again after 12 years, I was utterly surprised to realize that my body had to learn how again. Huh! I had assumed my body would remember. Of course! Wrong. Oops! This process, of learning how all over again, would put me in greater danger of falling. Something that more and more, concerns me — as it should!

Let’s face it: Any physical activity, taken to excess, or in the wrong conditions, or without taking into account the “fitness” of one’s own aging body — or one’s own footwear! — today, for the first time, rather than winter boots, I had on new Hi-Tec running shoes — is or can be dangerous.

Also today, on my way back from 3-mile morning walk, a young man on an electric scooter whizzed by on my left, immediately hit a black-iced curve, and went down, hard, on his hip. Lucky he was young! I stopped, and so did a biker who came along in the other direction, both of us commiserating, asking if he’s okay. Yes.

Interesting, how very comfortable I am speaking of my own aging process; very unlike younger folks.

I loved the idea of getting, or I should say, growing old, even when I was a kid; I would tell adults that I couldn’t wait until I was 65!

Well, I’d say, in hindsight, that the 60s were not all that easy, compared to the 70s, or especially the 80s! What will the 90s bring?

My desire nature was still strong in my 60s. Surprisingly. Menopause had not killed that part of me, though it had weakened it somewhat.

70s? Better.

And now 80s! Whew! Finally, I sense what my kid self was seeking all along, to live in the material world in a detached, centered manner, both appreciating and continuously letting go, of whatever or whomever I encounter. As if I live at at the edge of a gigantic sphere, all of which is deeply familiar to me; I simultaneously gaze upon and move into compassion with the passions that drive younger ones, passions that inevitably yield emotional highs and lows, sometimes in rapid succession, other times agonizingly slow, in both directions.

Simply, agony is no longer a part of my life.

But of course, all that could change, in an instant, should I fall and break a hip or knee.

I can live with that contradiction, that contrast between what is, and what might lie directly on the other side of it; disability, and/or death.

Yes Ann. Become comfortable with that contrast, too. Live in the pulsing center of that one. I dare you.