The operating system on my older Mac suddenly quit on Tuesday. Over the next few days it quit about 20 times, and I watched myself freeze in anxiety each time the screen overwrote my work with a message saying I needed to retart my computer. My browsers, Mail program and Word all took turns capriciously joining in the fun. One browser even sent me to a PayPal site in South Africa! I wondered if I had a virus (Macs are much less prone to them than PCs). This morning I was waiting at the door when my tech opened for business, hoping he could reinstall the OS and that would resolve the issue.
With practiced fingers he explored Mac's settings and said, "I think your hard drive is failing; that happens on computers that are about this age. I can replace it with a refurbished hard drive that will be like a mirror image of your existing drive." He wrote up the work order, I left my machine and went home to rest. Immediately the metaphor for now clarified:
Our operating system ~ the old way of being in the world ~ is failing. But simply reinstalling it won't solve the problem, because the real issue is larger than that: the entire hard drive (culture) needs an overhaul. We can replace what now exists with a "mirror image": we look in the mirror, reverse who and how we've been, and with refurbished awareness, can continue in the same "body" ~ we needn't actually die, but undergo a symbolic death/rebirth. Caroline Casey refers to this as "the ongoing death and resurrection show."
Much more in-depth info on this and related aspects of our creative evolutionary quest in the July What Shines, out next week (when I have my refurbished laptop back!).
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment