It's time to share a short poem by the late, great William Stafford, with my brief commentary afterward. When I Met My Muse By William Stafford

I glanced at her and took my glasses off—they were still singing. They buzzed like a locust on the coffee table and then ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and knew that nails up there took a new grip on whatever they touched. “I am your own way of looking at things,” she said. “When you allow me to live with you, every glance at the world around you will be a sort of salvation.” And I took her hand.

***

It's a wonderful way to speak about vision and sight archetypally, because archetypes are really the lenses through which we perceive and live. The time seems to come in every life when you remove a set of lenses through which you saw the world (perhaps a learned perspective, or someone else's perspective that works for you, or a move from the literal to the archetypal), and replace it with the way you see the world, "your own way of looking at things," your own voice, your own bent on life. It's still archetypal -- it's never not (even "literal" is itself an archetype) -- but you're able to express the archetype in your own way, joined with your own Muse.

Next on deck for my blog is a longer post titled "The Moon, Venus, Goddesses, Belonging, Fitness and Food." Should be up in the next couple of weeks!