Never here. Never now.

It is a modern metaphysical puzzle of sorts: I'm never where or when I am.

At my day job, I start my day dealing with yesterday's paperwork. Towards the end of the day, I work on tomorrow's paperwork. In between, I send emails that put my words into some indeterminate future when the recipient reads them, and I am on the phone, metaphorically placing me where the person at the other end of the phone is. I am never fully in the present.

I live as much in cyberspace as anywhere else and the nature of that - words written one day on one side of the world and read on another on the other side - means I slip around time and space casually. I need Pagan ritual to ground me into the present time and place. Never mind "this is a time that is not a time and a place that is not a place": I need to be right here and right now. I don't create a Circle to set space aside; I want the Circle to centre me right there.

It is typical of me that, as we head to Beltane, I'm writing a Lammas ritual. It is what my group needed of me this quarter, and I was struck with inspiration this past weekend... though I do question the authenticity of inspiration for a harvest festival found when the fruits we will be harvesting is still buds and blooms. By the time the wheel makes its graceful turn to Lammas, hopefully I will be there too.