“She texted me, let a little time go by, then busted me, around mid-day, walking into my yard to find me still dreamily snipping things with my scissors. To be fair, I was the one who’d said I’d love to hang out and do some work for her or go biking. It’s just that hand grass clipping, for me, blocks out everything else in my psyche. I do it compulsively. Let’s talk about what’s weird about this, and what I’d call out plainly as survival. So much of my life resonates with patterns & maneuvers, like trainings meant to build character, as opposed to showering anyone with comfort. And so not the hum of couples who do everything together, that one is reminded of “execution” as the iChing has labeled certain types of exclusion and exile. The same energy that ensures it’s not a hardship to wake up to a fairly flat truck tire, any more than it is finding four dead moles on the welcome mat, kicking off the day. Or when the money you thought you had, mysteriously isn’t. Oh, well, there is much more in the cards for everyone, at any given moment. Today we’ve ridden two electric bikes down a difficult stretch of gravel road, gone up past the funky, narrow bridge, ditched our bikes, hiked a short trail thru fireweed, then clambered down a very steep bank, to stand at the old dam site on slippery, tumbled rocks. A slower flow spells leeches, a faster, certain death but exactly now at the beginning of summer, mountain water at high velocity will excite the air to madness. Here, with us or within us, is the mother of all sound. Maybe I use these immersions, to carry on. She does, I know she does. Dearest to the heart of the seers, who won’t reject what they see to whitewash or placate or get along. The white water smashes objects into traps, like a barkless tree, so altered by the battering it’s smooth as a baby. In dark, indigo jeans, I walk in, up to my thighs, holding my handrail, and lean into it, pose my camera onto the steady horizontal trunk, as nothing stops getting wetter. She, simultaneously, has gone for a dunking in the dangerous, unstoppable pools, above the clatch, & it all works together. I remember so well what I’ve lost here, what hasn’t been found. And tell her the story, of how a golden ring so defiled, might take centuries to cleanse. One on this side of the mountain, one dedicated to the other. It takes two directions, at least, to tango. For in my mind, my simple, grass cutting mind, I am letting a sacred thing gone wild, go back to the wild, for correction. The best, most solid cures, are not manufactured in labs, nor in the hubris of men. No, the true elixirs are sent repeatedly back to the earth like parables, to captivate anyone open in spirit and unassuming in style. Parsing carefully between the dross of infiltrated humanity, & those content to remain snipping softly at the edges of their own, miraculous yard.”
