I posted last week about being confined in my version of Shakespeare’s “pauser reason” which I explained is a detached observer stance in life. One of my readers responded with a stunningly insightful response, “Is it a pause or is it a querencia?”
Well, I had to Wikipedia the term “querencia” but what I found out really gave me “pause.” It is a Spanish term for the “haunt of an animal, a favorite spot, the area of a bull-ring where the bull makes its stand.” The cartoon image immediately came to my mind of the beleaguered bull hunkered down, digging in at the heels, angry as hell, ready to wreak havoc on the taunting matador.”
“What an image!” I thought. I knew that my “observer stance” served an ego function but I had not seen this dimension of it. I had not seen it as that extreme of a defensive stance one which included very definite aggressive intentions. I could see the “bull” in me ready to wreak havoc on the matador “out there” who has been taunting me all of these years! So once again I receivedanother lesson in the Auden wisdom, “We wage the war we are.”
(See “Inthegazeoftheother” blog here in wordpress for the source of the feedback re “querencia.”)
literary lew 
Indeed, the Copenhagen Interpretations as demonstrated by the double slit experiment shows that observation is the key to manifestation in the physical universe.
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The header picture is good. About querencia, I am now a days in querencia in professional capacity. Looking for challenge keeping away from routine matters. Last year, a friend rightly remarked: When Lion get old, it waits for the prey to come to it, rather than to go out for the hunt.
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I like your friend’s observation about the lion. And glad you liked the pix. It is a shot of the spring time country side in NW Ireland that I captured back in 2001.
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Richard Rohr yesterday, “You are an instance in both the agony and the ecstasy of God that is happening inside of you, and all you can do is say yes to it.”
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I’m behind on RR. But I’ll read that.
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