New Moon Eclipse

A new moon eclipse carries the punch of I don’t know how many new moons. It is a time of new beginnings and fresh starts, a time to wish upon a star, pull out the spiral note book, hop on the bike and ride out to the Fonti di Clitunno to cast intentions. It’s a time to look around oneself and take stock: What is right here in my new moon moment that is pulsing with promise, incipient with happening, trying to burst into being, destiny lying in wait?

First joy of my new moon is Marisa leaning out the kitchen window, Marisa standing at the window to greet me and the dogs as we leave the house at six, standing there on a brand new hip, just created for her on Monday. Marvel of marvels she is already walking around on it, making the coffee at six, responding to the squeal of eager Evangelina as she races manically to the gate, tugging ZuZu tumbling along with her, given they are yoked together with the coupler hooked to the leash buckled around my waist. “What happened to rehab?” I call out to her and she shrugs, claiming she does better rehab on herself moving among the things she loves, entrusting her body to well-established routines. Staying in good spirits is everything when trying to heal.

Second joy of my new moon is Daniela appearing in Piazza Campello at the same moment I appear, the Grace of a private moment before others arrive, all our dogs facendo la festa (making a party) rather than barking as they once did, evidence that Dog Obedience is still paying off even if we skipped our lesson yesterday because of the heat and Giulia visiting from Naples. How wondrous the dogs no longer tira or snap at each other and seem instead to love keeping step with each other, the walking calibrated so finally Daniela and I can stay shoulder to shoulder if not arm-in-arm without even one of our seven fuzzy darlings underfoot, Sesamo only mildly curious about Desiree’s culo (she’s in heat); Zuzu nipping only Usque once; not one hysterical barking conniption, even when Giulia joins us with her three smooth-haired dachshunds, la piccola only four months old and adored by Irma who hands me back Desiree’s leash so she can give la piccola coccole (little cuddles). Ten dogs doing giri della Rocca with four women, their hearts a-swell. “It is time for a new family portrait,” Daniela reminds me. “Tomorrow after I put Giulia on the train, bring the good camera, ask that man you know who takes such good photos to capture us—let’s fix the moment, make an icon of it, hold onto this as the surest thing we know, her new moon being in the 6th house of relationships, mine being in the 12th house of spirit, intuition, mystery.

After three hours of walking, I return home to find Marisa outside in the garden pruning the geraniums, a chair set up on the front porch with a pillow in it should she need to sit down, but after all that time in a bed in a hospital, who needs to sit, especially with the garden begging for love and her attention. Why go to a rehab facility when she can be in her garden and get someone to come to the house and make sure she’s moving her parts right? Of course she’s moving her parts right, just look at her—moving! Now she’s eager to teach me all she knows about geraniums, which parts to pinch off so the plant won’t lose its limf…and I think how much I love the word limf in Italian, a word I first read and couldn’t translate in the theological writings of the Hermit of Monteluco when speaking of the stuff of spirit that gets passed on from soul to soul, as we love each other, and as we move from being to being throughout our incarnations. How crucial it is, to keep watch over the limf, to make sure it is not squandered or damaged or misdirected. Do Americans even think of limf? I don’t think it’s quite the same as chi or prana, but maybe close. Something tells me limf is thicker, like the shimmering sap I see in the place where Marisa has pinched off a stem, a kind of silver blood that runs through all of us, sustains us—limf. My new moon, my new chapter, is all about limf, I make up my mind as I make my way up the stairs to the house I’m ready to put in order, but only after I have pruned the geraniums and, while pruning them, the tomatoes and anything else whose limf needs my attention.

Taking care of the limf, I realize, has something to do with moving slowly, offering Reiki to the dogs as I groom them, practicing our new Dog Obedience trick: Terra. It takes infinite patience to hold a dog with your eyes for a full half hour of “terra”—“Terra” being “on the ground”, the dog lying on its belly, its head on its paws. My new moon is about the kind of discipline required to hold a dog, and then another dog, and then another dog in my gaze, each for a half-hour so that the discipline is not so much a matter of teaching them how to behave but more the discipline of meditation that slows my own limf down to pure communion with the animal who stops time with me in this way.

How grateful I am that my new moon eclipse issues a beginning like silver limf from this particular moment, this love, this joy. this tender unharriedness. I do entrust myself to all the well-being I am fortunate enough to know on this day and vow to the eclipsing moon that I will help carry the goodness forward.