One of my earliest childhood memories is of the smell of geraniums. It is one of my favorite smells on the planet. To rub a geranium leaf between my fingers, releasing the scent, I can instantly be transported beyond my immediate physical environs.

 

The first time I ever smelled geraniums was on my grandfather's balcony in Heidelberg, Germany. I was around four years old. My grandparents lived in the old part of Heidelberg; the part of the city that was spared bombing during World War II because of its antiquity. They lived on the third floor of an old six-story apartment building. The streets were narrow and cobblestone and some of the buildings were far older than anything in America.

 

I don't remember their apartment but I sure remember the smell of the geraniums on the balcony. My grandfather was a gardener and had a garden outside the city but the balcony was his only way of having some garden at his home. My memory was of going out onto the balcony just after it had rained. I remember smelling the wet air with its smell of thousand year old bricks....and then I stuck my nose into the geranium plants. The scent was forever imprinted on my soul memory.

 

Because of the cold freezing temperatures I've been taking my potted geraniums inside at night and then putting them back out on the porch the next morning. This has afforded me several opportunities to inhale their special magical scent. Soon I will have to bring them in for good--that is, until next spring.

 

It wasn't cold this afternoon, though; in fact it was quite warm. Though autumn lingered in the air, it was as warm as Summer. Shawnee took me for a nice long walk today. Each day, the walk seems to get a little longer. We're now covering about three times as much distance as we were doing a month ago. It's like she's got me in training or something.

 

That gets me to thinking about Bill Clinton who had quadruple bypass surgery this morning. I think about all the fried chicken he ate during his life but I also think about what the spook Sabe said about him; that he had the opportunity to accept the mantle of the Christ archetype while he was at the height of his power and that he could have used the power of that mantle to affect great change in the world. But he chose not to accept the mantle. If he had accepted it he probably would have died some time ago. After all, an untimely and very public death is part of the archetype. Jesus, Abraham Lincoln, John Kennedy, John Lennon; they all tapped into the archetype and all suffered an "offing" in the prime of their life. Clinton didn't accept the mantle because he didn't want to die.

 

Curiously, hearing this endeared me to Clinton just a bit. I could understand. Those old archetypes can be very effective but, to me, the challenge would seem to be to go beyond those archetypes. Now that his heart is "repaired" Clinton may very well live to a hundred. He will still be able to affect change (if his heart is still in it) for a long time. While it may seem that he had acted out of fear in not accepting the mantle of the archetype, that fear steered him to new and different possibilities.

 

So anyway, in an effort to build up my body's supply of omega oils in preparation for the approaching alpine winter, I've been eating a lot of fish lately. Fish and coleslaw: Anti-freeze and Drano. And Shawnee has been keeping my circulation going with her long walks. It's a cheaper form of bypass.

 

The heart, after all, is the organ we use to sing with. The more we open our hearts, the better we can sing, and the better we can sing, the more fragrant is the smell of the geraniums.