I am too tired to write this post. I have good ideas, but they’re not going to change the world. People are too locked into habit, and pointing that out just triggers resentment and anger. There is so much anger in the world! So many people trying to change others, or blame others for discomfort with change. Perhaps habit should be left in peace? No, habit is bossy. Habit pushes others around. It’s demanding. If the search for meaning is fundamental, and it follows habitual pathways, then we’re stuck with conflict. I am tired of conflict. I think I will just go away.

The past is another country, as Rilke said. If youth knew, if age could, as Freud said. These are neat phrases, but we are all veterans of the campaign to find meaning, constrained by the habits of the past, and enfeebled by the resistance of the wrong choice. I am completely enclosed by my choices. The signs I did read to make them are now too old, too petrified, too historical. I am a pathology of enclosed personality. I have arrived at nothingness. The veteran is the opposite of the drone. Submission is not in his nature, so he withdraws.

The snakes of Savai’i meet under the full moon. One of their clan was discovered and captured last year, and since then their leader, the great-great-great-grandmother who grew up in the Victorian bush and slithered into a container to have her babies many years ago, has guided them as far from human habitation as Savai’i allows. However, there is dissension in the clan. Many of the younger snakes are angry with submission to exile. They say they have the same rights as other creatures. The others are angry with them for suggesting another migration, back to where water and food are more accessible, because they feel too malnourished to move, and afraid of the danger. There has been some savage fighting.

“Go, if you must,” the elder begins. “But hear this. You will be going back to a world of fear and aggression. If you do not avoid confrontation, you will be killed. The majority of humans fear us, but it is our fear, and the aggression which masks it, which will cause your death. It is the destiny of every snake to reach the high places, the inhospitable places, or die. This we owe to our nature, the inherited habits of our ancestors.”

There is a sign in the sky tonight. The great snake, Hydra, which extends from Cancer to Virgo, covers the entire personal, conscious quadrant of the Savai’i sky. ‘They’ will be ready for ‘them’, won’t we?