At last Friday is here. Retired, five or so years are in the rear view mirror, I only have a memory of deadlines, of moral and financial and administrative accountability with co-workers and customers. That was my life. All is change, and everything, no exceptions has its season.

All is now, – a flow of humankind, transmission of generations beyond the reach of memory to our present situation.

And what is this season where I now find myself along with you? As the 17th century poet John Donne eloquently expressed:

No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.

What is our season at present?

Maybe Ranier Maria Rilke portrays our location with his poem The Panther. The poem describes a caged panther. What sense arises within when you read these words?

The Panther

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly—. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.

Here’s a tune, – you can hold onto the melody, to reflect upon the lyrics. Billy Idol’s Dancing With Myself.