The Meteor

I have been working on Archaios again, after a long break. I just got so caught up in family duties and in my teaching obligations that the stress was killing any sort of mental space I had. And so I printed out everything I had—it has already been through six drafts—and put it in a folder. It has been sitting there for a few weeks.

In the end, I think this worked out for the best. Yesterday, I feel The Work calling to me again. I think it was because I am currently in the middle of grading all the final papers. I do like my students’ work, but grading 150 final essays is burdensome. I don’t have a lot of time to do it and so I end up just grading for endless hours each day.

And I think the mundane nature of the task—putting a letter grade on a piece of work—well, it is not something I am really made for. It isn’t why God put me on this earth. And so I started feeling rather melancholy from the grind.

And I opened that folder with The Bjornlinga Saga in it and I began to chant it out loud, to sing it as a skald would to a hall of warriors. I wanted to hear my words, to feel the rhythm of them, to feel them vibrate in my bones.

Let me tell you a story…

When I was five years old I had a dream. There was a meteor headed for earth and I could see it up in the sky, day after day. It was slowly getting closer. It glowed and shimmered with white frost. My dad was there and he told me everyone was leaving on spaceships to escape the earth. We were standing in a vast field and there was a crowd of people there, millions of people and jutting up from the ground were these rockets, and people were slowly getting on them. One by one I could see them taking off, flying into space. Then there was only one rocket left and my dad said it was the one we would get on. And then…

My dad was gone.

I was alone.

I watched the rocket fly off and then I was the last person on the planet, and I stood there watching the meteor approach. Alone.

I had that dream constantly as a child.

That meteor is with me still.

And so The Work continues.