My life cycle analogous to the life cycle of lava                                                                     16 Sept 2023

First here are some pictures and a video for you to regain some familiarity with lava, in order to better understand this analogy.

If I were lava and describing my age and life as living molten rock.  I would say I am no longer the intense flame of the white to yellow hues glowing from the center and deep in the seams.  I am not even the fiery orange and yellow orange adjacent to the white and yellow hot.  No, I am a more mature lava moved out from the center and engaged with the cooling elements of life.  I am the orange and darker orange-red with my surfaces going dark, losing their glow.  In some case parts of me is almost black with its heat almost extinguished.  And I am okay with this – the inevitable slowing of life forces the white-hot passionate center still glowing at my center but quieter and less visible.  Soon I will lose all my heat and become solid and a part of the earth at the surface.  My once molten home deep within the mantle of the earth becoming a dimming memory.  And I will rejoice in this life cycle, with all the gratitude and joy of a life lived fully in all my light, heat and passion (because I was lava, and I fully burned.).  Finally, in the end I will be still and a part of this earth.  Our Earth, this precious, magical, and beautiful sphere hurtling through space – earth itself moving out from the center.  All life in a precise, mystical – incomprehensible dance of creation, the infinite – the eternal.  The beginnings and endings forever unfolding. 

ASIDE:  This above was inspired, I think by my coming to terms increasingly with my earthly mortality.  Coming into an acceptance and peace with aging and dying.  I can no longer pretend that I am not aging and slowing.  No longer pulsing red (an old phase from one of my poems).  

It was more immediately inspired this morning by watching the artist Harmen Hoek, and his recent silent hike in Iceland near an active volcano.  For reference, “Silent Hiking & Camping at Iceland’s Active Volcano”, Harmen Hoek channel.