“There are days, and there are days. On our west facing mountain, the morning dawns crisply, embers still glowing in the wood stove, dying out, yet radiating for hours the warmth of combustion, to meet the soft, pummeling heat of summer, mid-day. This is a time of over-lap. Stepping out into the bright sunlight, I’m almost convinced it’s a hot one. But it’s not. Matthew shows up to drop off vegetables, after his swim, and shivering in a hoodie, he’s fighting a chill at 5 pm. The apples that were green, are now blushing, a charming red cheekiness mottling their skin, unabashed. The feeling of blood rising, filling each pore with promise, is something I’ll miss. I seem to have moved past the hope, past the romance, to a very stable place of acceptance. No one fills me but for where I have already filled myself. The players are still playing, still pitching me, in some perverse game I’m no longer a part of. I do love this coarse fabric of life. Even when, it is, disappointing. I kick at the overgrown tangle of clover, bleeding into my paths, desperate for attention, demanding to be cut. I might have time. Or I might be somewhere over the mountain, loving up a patch of cobra-like foxglove, wending curled stems between false Solomon’s Seal, or a patch of gaudy bee balm. I might be at the counter of a bakery, ordering something homemade for the breakfast no one else has thought to send me, Rural Free Delivery or otherwise. But I digress, from reality. One of my closest associates in crime has just arrived to move two heavy French doors, that none of the rest of us can carry. In the midst of catching up on news, I wave a $20 bill, signaling payment. It’s unclear, sometimes, in this wonderful “I do for you, you do for me” economy we live in. He scoffs at my gesture, & disappears, to fetch something from his truck. I kid you not. He leaves me with two freshly baked Lavender scones. Put that in your pipe. I told him, truthfully. “I haven’t eaten all day”. Why was that? Well, I do things the hard way, not by choice but by instinct. Shouldn’t difficulty lead to smoother roads? If you blow up your life in the most logical ways on the front end, can’t destruction clear a clean slate, I mean, to truly live? Don’t tell me it’s just a backwards projection or retro-causality. I’m not so smart to think of that. The present moment is my most potent bargaining chip. Here is what I am. I feel soft clover, brushing my ankles, reminding me to weed whack the path to the yurt. I startle, at the braying slap of blue jays jargoning, using “my” trees, probably attacking more vulnerable birds. My almost feral cat Carl pierces the air with his meow at the killing a tiny finch. Awful, yet, familiar. This whole life, awful, yet familiar. Painfully real, and raw, and breath-taking and awe-inspiring, on a good day. It’s been a good day, I guess. I sit cognizant, my heart, beating, roaming, aching, & grounding me because it’s the only organ I have, tasked with the power to set things straight. I advise taking your heart more seriously, and depending on it. To catapult you to the stars, should such drastic measures become necessary. If and when life on earth unravels & falters, and proves itself at last, to be irrevocably & deeply unwound.”
