Search -
The Wishing Year: A House, A Man, My Soul; A Memoir of Fulfilled Desire
The Wishing Year A House A Man My Soul A Memoir of Fulfilled Desire Author:Noelle Oxenhandler From The Wishing Year ?It?s New Year?s Day: bright and cold, with wind moving through the tops of the eucalyptus trees and silver clouds gathering in the distance. Beside me on the table are the remains of last night?s rather quiet celebration: in a glass bowl, four walnut sailboats float on water, their mission accomplished. Bobbing in a small ... more »sea of varying good fortunes, each made its way to one particular rolled-up paper message, tied with a gold ribbon. Mine read: ?This year you will make a remarkable voyage to a place you?ve never been.?? Fortunes, oracles, signs, and omens: don?t they belong to the same family as the wish? They all spring from that great human need to gain some purchase on the future?if not actually to alter its course, then at least to see into its shape, discern its contours, its pattern of light and dark.? Already, in that one small word, so much is gathered: desire, danger, seeking. It seems in itself a kind of omen for the ?remarkable voyage? I?m about to embark on. But let me begin by laying my cards on the table, alongside the glass bowl with its four walnut boats. Like most people I know, I have a long list of wishes for the world around me. However, when it comes to things on the cosmic scale? things as immense and complex as ending war, hunger, poverty, disease, and the destruction of the natural environment?I don?t yet have much faith in the power of wishing. Perhaps such faith will emerge as I move forward, but for now I need to focus on a smaller scale. Using my own life as a petri dish, I?m going to start with the two wishes at the top of my personal list. One is to be spiritually healed. The second is to buy a house. Is it crazy, a kind of blasphemy even, to set these two cards alongside each other, as though they belong to the same deck??« less