under the stars

   He was a freewheeler: a man who came to the earth from somewhere and might disappear to some other place. And he is living under the stars.
   He is inspired by the sun and the wind, but never stays long enough with either of them to become scorched by one or blown away by the other. He skips, jumps and wails like a bear. Nobody can explain his crazy moods: his tendency to paint pointed brush strokes in the sand, or his frightening ability to identify what you are most looking for, somewhere out on that beach. He sings the songs that everyone sings, yet somehow the songs never have an ending. And he always leaves something under your doorstep just as he is about to skirt town.
    And who is this man? Maybe he is the living and moving spirit in all of us, that longs for completion while simultaneously knowing that all is indeed quite complete in itself. He is the actual way of all things: to pass in and out of the seasons, to plant corn, harvest corn, and kill corn in sweltering waves of heat and snow. He is the angel and the devil at once. And maybe he is the free floating giddiness one feels when they have reached the highest point of doubt, not knowing quite what the world is, who one is, and how she got into this world.
    Can anybody live with such a person? It's a howler to know, in fact, that too much life can kill us all. That's the reason why humanity invented doors with locks. It's to keep out the sources of anxiety and fear, where wild men can steal away into one's homes and take everything they thought would last or was theirs to keep. And that's the reason why humanity built binding contracts. It's to keep out the grief of a capricious heart; to civilize the world and make sure that things stay long enough to work through the tensions of life. But through and through, everyone is forced to acknowledge the tricky fox within themselves, as well as to account for him.
     In this 'vignette', am I celebrating the wandering trickster? In a sense, yes, but in another sense, I would say that civilization had better not get carried away with the archetype of the trickster. I think it's because impermanence is not something to be idly played around with. For instance, many people might interpret impermanence as an invitation to engage in a free-wheeling lifestyle. But, I think differently: it's a way of seeing that things can be created and re-created in new ways that innovate on existing traditions. It's not that society should be torn down and raised up anew, but that we take what we have learned from the world so far and keep finding new ways to express it and explore it. In this way, harmony is preserved while acknowledging that things are continually changing within that harmony.