Just checking. . .

So, in the wake of what has become known as the Holidaze around here, I granted myself some quiet time.  It took a good two weeks for the 2011 train to slow down.  The weather didn’t cooperate, pretending for the first five weeks of 2012 to be March.  But by the third week in January, resigned to 60 degree daytimes and therefore no mesmerizing fires into which to stare, no quietly drifting snows to help blank out all the unecessaries, I got quieter anyway.  The calendar cleared for a week, the partner willing to bring home groceries at the end of the day, the car firmly parked, I began to more deeply exhale.

It didn’t take long for me to realize I wasn’t alone.  I was being followed.  From the moment I woke until I drifted off at night, I had company. He was male, definitely.  He had a tight little mouth, was about my height, my weight, my shoe size, short hair and glasses.  Always with him he had a clipboard, always.  On it were a series of forms that he seemed to consulting.  Periodically, he would mark things off and when  page was finished, that one would get tucked under the others, edges perfectly aligned and a new form poised for completion.

I never got a good look at the categories, or the questions, but from what he kept saying to me, perhaps we can guess.  He wanted to know, rather constantly:

1. Are you sure this is a good use of your time?
2. Are you sure this is the most efficient way to do this?
3. Other people are going to jobs they absolutely hate, right now, how do you justify this laziness?
4. Is there not something more productive you could be doing right now?
5. What are you going to have to say for yourself at the end of this day?
6. Etcetera.
7. Etcetera

Hmmm.  Once I realized he was there, and that I had employed him, I was able to at least get him to turn down the volume a bit by the end of that week.  I tried to fire him but he insisted that wasn’t the way it worked, that the only way he could leave would be for me to realize something that I hadn’t yet acknowledged.

Hmmm.  What I’d like is not have him be in charge.  He’s worked a long time, deserves a retirement.   I’d like to have the freedom to move through these gifts of coming days without what feels like such harsh measurement.  I’ve asked him to move to the sidelines, allow me more room to maneuver, more space to breathe.  Right now, he’s willing to be flexible.  But I know him, if I get too busy, he gets more insistent.

We’ll see.  Wish me luck.

Winter. . .?

It is pretend winter in North Carolina.  We have worked outside in shirt sleeves for the last several days, clearing out the asparagus patch, pruning fruit trees, getting the big garden ready for greenhouse construction.  The old maple with its gnarled bark is budding out, now, in the last breaths of January, a herald of Spring.  There are daffodils blooming down next to the creek.

We all keep waiting, mittens and earmuffs by the door.  Where is the snow? The ice?  The chance to have to stay home?  

I have built fires anyway, even though the nights barely dip below freezing.  Because you are supposed to be able to build fires in December and January, and go in there after dinner and read and pet the dog with your feet.  It is one of my favorite parts of living this far north.  

But evidently the heat is blooming.  The USDA just redid their maps, and we are officially 7b instead of just 7, and there are parts of our land that are definitely 8’s, maybe southern slopes that would even be warmer.  For those of you who don’t plant, those numbers simply signify the number of nights per year that the temperature drops below freezing.

It means a lot more than whether you need your gloves on for a late run to the grocery.  Plants choose where they thrive based on temperature ranges and they don’t pick up and move easily.  Our local agricultural extension agent has already predicted gloom for the fruit growers around here as it takes a certain number of freezing nights to set both foliage and flower for fruit trees and we ain’t had ‘em.  For those of us who don’t sell peaches or plums to send our kids to college, its no big deal.  For those who do, if this is a trend, it could be a life changer.

In my family psychology, if this is a trend, the blame can be laid squarely at the feet of Al Gore.  In my family, you simply don’t talk about problems.  If you do, they exist.  If you don’t, they don’t.  That Al Gore insisted on bringing it up, over and over, well clearly, this is what you get, daffodils in January which we are using as code for what is happening to the polar bears which is too heartbreaking to discuss.

Daffodils in January is code for a lot of big fat unpleasantness.  Suddenly we are the mercy of erratic, intense weather patterns.  The rain seems to simply stop for big areas of the world, and deluge somewhere else.  The thermostat got stuck in Texas last summer and fall, only resetting when the sun itself moved its gaze to the Southern Hemisphere.  

I’m trying to enjoy the unusual pleasure of January sun on my skin, of being able to get a head start on clearing out the gardens, on getting ready for Spring.  I’m trying to pretend its early March, which is what these mid-sixty degree days would tell me.  I’m trying not to listen to my inner Debbie Downer who keeps whispering, if it is this warm now, what is it going to be in July?

Perhaps a positive part of this is that we are being reminded of Nature’s power, in no uncertain terms.  We can do what we can now, driving less, racing to develop more sustainable technologies, conserving energy, recycling, but Nature is already responding to our decades of wanton abuse.  It is on. 

We are being brought to our knees.  Once again, which is where we started, we humans, on our knees in reverential respect to the Rain Gods, the Thunder Gods, the Sun Gods.  All powerful, unpredictable.  Nature, the ultimate Decider.  

So maybe the beauty of those daffodils, the startling yellow, the deep green, the first shoots of the daylilies coming back, maybe if I just settle into the awe, maybe that’s the place from which to watch what is unfolding, whatever it is. 

2041

Imagine thirty years from now, when I am 91, or not.  It will be 2041, whether I am here to witness it, or not.  We will know more about Global Warming by then.  We will be several generations smarter.  I hope to still be going to the gym, in geriatric workout clothes. I don’t know if they make a granny panty thong; perhaps they will by then, so my panty line doesn’t show under my yoga pants. Perhaps you will be able to see the little lumps of muscles under all that skin which should be about as far South as its going.

Perhaps I’ll be competing in the You’ve Got to Be Kidding Division of some sport or other.  I don’t know why I would since I’m already far from those days when I relished setting myself against someone else(s) and pushing myself to beat them.  But if I do, in 2041, perhaps it will be something unimaginable now, like flying the furthest by meditation alone, or ripening the tomato with the greatest concentration in the shortest time.

Or healing.  Maybe all of us will have the power to heal all manner of things, transform all manner of matter into its better, more complete self. Maybe that is what we’ll be doing in 2041.

I entered this reverie this morning simply by listing all I would like to have done before guests arrive in two days time.  I started thinking of the time line while making the second-day list for the plumber.  He’ll be back this morning with more faucets and renewed determination to make the hot water heat work in the guest house.

I started imagining this list as stretching far into the future, sitting on the shoulder of all the lists, or at least all my lists, stretching backwards.  I think I came into this world with a list;  suckle, poop, pee, nap, suckle poop pee, nap. I probably didn’t put on that list wide-open-wonder-at-this-world-I-have-landed-in, just as I don’t now.

Yesterday was one of those days.

The sky!  God, the sky, opening and closing in pure technicolor. One moment nothing but a gray backdrop, the next, an arc of primary colors against a dark background, a brilliant sun on the other side.  Then!  Slashes of brilliant crimson crossed through with black. It seemed impossible this color.  Two women employees took pictures just outside the doors at Lowe’s, pulled outdoors by the spectacle.  Then!  Moments later, it had all disappeared, as though it never happened.

That was not on my list.  The faucet was.  Which turned out to be the wrong one.

Again.

Instead of going on the list, again, John, the one of us who knows about faucets, went back to the store last night and got the right one. Maybe.

Did you see the sky? I had said to him earlier.  No, he said, puzzled. It was all gray when I looked, all gray.

This was just before he pointed out that I had gotten the wrong faucet.  And out of my mouth came I don’t give a s- - -.

Smart man that he is, he took a step backwards. I’m not sure what I just stepped in, said John.

I didn’t either.  I was making dinner I was too tired to make, after a day which on the surface of it didn’t look very stressful.  Who knew that one’s good nature could drown in a list, even when flooding that list was a rainbow and moments of tearful astonishment?

Days and days and days of working the list, accommodating accommodating, accommodating, as each item seemed to require more of me than I anticipated.  And everything on it seemed to have a mousetrap at the end, something that just refused to be easily resolved.  Over and over.  I was growing weary and I didn’t even know it.  It was time for a movie about a dog with a happy ending. And some breathing.

It is all working out, maybe.  The plumber is coming back today, maybe, and maybe one of the faucets will work, the one we got, or the one he’s bringing.  The house guests will come, maybe, and will have hot water in the new shower, maybe or maybe not.

I do know this.  There will be a whole other set of astonishments today.  Like right now, the stubble of emerging trees against the dawn sky.   Maybe or maybe not I’ll notice.  Maybe or maybe not more things will get crossed off The List.  But if I’m here in 2041, I’ll hope for more astonishments than accomplishments.

I think I’ll put that on my list. . .

Bah Humbug Lite

I’m not sure how it got to be December already. But November seemed particularly greedy, gobbling up the days getting ready for Thanksgiving, then afterwards a few more days getting bed linens washed and my head rearranged. There was travel and there were medical tests (all normal, thank you), both of which tend to take up more than their space on the calendar.

Travel reaches out on both sides, before and after.  Before, with all the tiny bottles that have to be fetched. Afterwards with the dissipation of I'm-still-somewhere-else while trying to get through the piles of all that got postponed so you could leave, plus all that blew up under the door while you were gone.  

Medical tests take up a different kind of room.  Anxiety is a mental narcissist, how dare you pay attention to anything else. Days can go by in a scratchy blur.  Then the tests.  Time suspended.  Then the results and a new place to stand.

A deep outbreath.  It is December.

The first of the month, for a few days, ordinary life can reassert its importance.  Until you turn on the radio, or try to shop for something innocent, like cotton balls.  Then you realize: it has already begun.

Pa rum pa pum pum.


But the Thanksgiving guests have just left.  I don’t even have the sheets back on the beds. 
It doesn’t matter.  It is December. . .

Even if you put your foot down and give goats instead of cologne, Christmas has its own momentum.  Even if you put up a few subtle white lights instead of a yard full of electrified plastic, Christmas takes over.  Money leaks out of your wallet.  There is an irresistible urge to have and to go to parties and eat tiny food.  Even to break out platters of tiny food for gatherings of people you see every day, those people redecorated in red hats with furry balls on the end.  

If you are a believer, now is the time to get disgusted at all the crass commercialism, Jesus is the reason for the season.  And if you are a nonbeliever. . .well Christmas takes over anyway.

Here's a secret: we kind of enjoy being overrun, no matter how many donations we make to worthy causes, no matter how many oranges we put in stockings.  Despite the train wreck we make of the notion of abundance, there is something liberating about the whole hog scattershot that the season seems to endorse.  Spend!  Eat! Put a bow on the dog!

As much as we complain, and declare ourselves above it all, there is something in us that unlocks at this time of the year that doesn’t have permission any other time.  We arrive at the shores of the New Year spent, exhausted, buffeted by the repeated waves of holiday demands. Budgets and diets blown.
Making nice with relatives we don’t normally see, those members of the family whose job it is to help us realize we're doing pretty well by comparison, pretty well indeed.

And then there are those opportunities to intersect with lives we didn’t know existed, people with whom we share ancestry we know not when, maybe as far back as when humans were invented, people whose potentially whacky personalities we don’t have to be exposed to, people who just desperately need us to help them to have a meal, or to make a living with that goat.

Yes, its crazy, these holidays.  Norman Rockwell expectations; Debbie Downer reality: boredom, fatigue, too much dessert, too little exercise, too much Uncle So and So, too little sleep.  But maybe down the middle is something that stretches us a little on both ends.  Maybe when we slowly come back to the center, which is what January is for, our vision is a little wider, our heart, if also our pants, just a little big bigger.

October. . .

There is a fullness happening.  Is it just my new vitamins taking hold?  Or is it the October light - the way it envelops you in its arms and dances you around the room? May I have this dance? 

Is it both?  Is it more? Is it something else entirely?

We have prevailed against the relentless heat, through no skill of our own. The slow tipping of the globe stepped in, refereed.  Just in the nick of time, those bullying temperatures were sent packing, and are now searing off a more Southern part of the world.

The windows are open during the day now; we can breathe the sweet air.  Outside can now breathe us, in and out. The light breathes us, in and out. 

Maybe that is what I was feeling yesterday, as I dug my trowel through the dark soil, adding compost to the cold frames, preparing to sprinkle in the tiny seeds of autumn:  kale and chicory, deer-tongue lettuce, mache and claytonia, arugula and spinach.  Lifting my head from its fragrance - there is no perfume like that of healthy ground - the light greeted me, delighted. As did secret potatoes, those that evaded my searching hands when I harvested from these same boxes in late Spring.  

Survivor tomatoes, their flavor concentrated by an over- abundance of sun and lack of rain, their skins toughened, their color a deeper, richer red, these came back to the kitchen too, along with a couple of rogue red peppers, undiscovered and past their prime, their skins wrinkled as an old woman’s.  They too will have an special intensity.  I thanked them all for hanging on, for waiting for me.  

It all waits for me, generous as a lover: the light, the birdsong, the soil. . .it all waits for me to lift my head ever so slightly, to just notice, may I have this dance? 

Good Morning. . .

It feels as though there is some juice for writing this morning.  The well has been dry: so many changes.  Perhaps you too are a creature of habit;  someone who settles comfortably into a time to go to bed, a time to rise, a breakfast.  Scaffolding.  Touchstones of predictability.  Then along comes a wave, of houseguests, of illness, of travel, of construction, of loved ones dangling on a precipice, and the scaffolding breaks, too much pressure, too much torque.

Lost sleep, unconscious eating, lack of exercise, arched emotions.  This goes on too long and the laundry piles up, along with their sisters, the dishes.  Bills arrive and don’t get into the right pile and then fester, fomenting trouble, unseen, in the dark.

Ah, the dark.  The quiet.  The winter.  The silence.

I am remembering an organic chemistry class.  Making aspirin.  Watching tiny particles emerge out of a liquid when we added a catalyst.  Is this what happens?  Form emerging from the source?  All of these events, bodies, thoughts, emotions, bills, laundry, dishes. . .they all emerge from the one source and we are, no I am captivated.  I am seduced.  I am spinning spinning spinning as my attention is captured by this no this no this.

This morning, for the first time in a long time, I am up at my early hour, without an immediate task.  There are not houseguests for whom I want to make a special breakfast; there are not workpeople arriving in a matter of hours who need decisions made now. There are dishes to be done, there is laundry in the dryer, wrinkling.  There are bills that have wandered. But somehow, because it is so dark, because no one else wants this time, I can feel space opening.  There is room to breathe more deeply.  An anchor begins to form.

It sounds so odd to say that I thirst for space, for darkness, for unfettered time as if for water while crossing a desert.  But it is true. It is more than odd, it can be irritating in a world where each moment is personally commercialized as a tweet. The expectation is that one’s moment is branded and broadcasted.  And it could be rightfully said that a blog is just a longer version of the same thing.  Perhaps.

The point of this one, to the extent that I know, is to use the blunt instrument of words to tease out connection.  To have and share a felt connection.  With what?  Life, Source, Ground of Being. dare we say God? No, as the word is too frightening, too misused, bantered about by desperate politicians claiming to be on the right team, God as their coach, and only their coach in a competitive game.

Way down deep, here, in the dark, the silence, there is no competition, no game.  One can rest here. I can rest here.  And when I can show up, I can send postcards out, like this one, into the daytime world.  And I can read them, as reminders, when once again, in the heat of the sun, it is all swirling, dust motes in the light.

Chickens. . .

Outside this window, the chickens sit silent in a big cooler, covered in ice fetched from the bin outside Cheeseman's store.  When I went in to pay yesterday afternoon, on the way to Mary's farm, Tony had been "fryin' all day," the young cashier told me, when I said how good it smelled in there.  "Tony is a good fryer," said her taller, thinner, clearly pregnant friend, also behind the worn wooden counter, a curiously absent look in her eyes.

Yesterday morning, those chickens were out in the sunshine running and pecking for food, unaware that this was The Day.  The day that by afternoon would find them upside down in the cone in the temporary tent, their heads chopped off, then feet, then swirled around in the plucker before their insides left them and they were plunged into a cool bath.

I get a stab of remorse when my hand trowel accidentally cuts through an earthworm, prematurely ending a little earthworm career.  But I know if chickens born to be food can lead a charmed life, these chickens did.  Their feed was specially ground for them, organic, no GMOs.  They hung out on the Chicken Riviera, North Carolina branch, in their moveable house, granted all manner of tasty morsels in the fields the beef cows had just helped fertilize.

Mary is nearly eighty.  She and her daughter Sarah have run their 350-acre farm for decades with the kind of pure intentions that are finally catching on.  They believe in raw milk, Jesus Christ and the government minding its own damn business.  When her late husband took to drink long ago, five-foot-two-inch Mary climbed up into the cab of a big rig and started driving for hire.  She saved the farm and here they are.

Sarah was married, once, but that didn't work out too well either, so when her house on the fifty acres across the road burned down, she moved in with Mama, temporarily at first, then time just moved on.  She supplements the farm income with an administrative job. "I come home from work, and I go to work," Sarah said yesterday, putting more chickens on the scale, smiling a little bit, Mary sitting on the stool.

Besides the chickens for eggs and meat and the beef cows, there are Jerseys for milking and occasionally pigs in the woods rooting around for acorns. Everything pays its way, has to.  That's when those of us privileged enough to be on the list get the call.  The chickens were up to eating 85 pounds a food a day, Sarah said, "be here Saturday between 3 and 5."

Everything but the chickens ends up in the little market building, equipped with second-hand refrigerators and freezers, hand-made signs taped to the fronts as to what's where, and exclamatory warnings about not fully closing the doors. It's all run by the honor system, with a ticket book and a cashbox, wide open.

Money has never disappeared, as far as I know, although being fans of the Old Testament, neither Mary nor Sarah has much faith in man or beast.  Jesus's job, in the family theology, is neither to help us realize how fabulous we are and how deserving of gold faucets, nor to help us realize the inner light that is an inherent part of each of our fellow creatures.  No, Jesus came here, under duress, against his better judgment, and suffered disproportionately, just so each of us could have the tiniest chance of dragging ourselves out of the Devil-ridden gutter.

I can't really explain how the honor system fits in here, except that when I show up each season to pick up those plump birds, beautiful in a Dead Chicken kind of way, I feel privileged to be a small part of it all.  The amount of work, the dedication is nothing short of astounding.  Over the years, sitting on their porch with watery coffee and egg-and-cream rich cake, I've heard the stories:  rain and cold and darkness and obstinate cows; emergency vet visits, broken fencing and water mains.

It seems impossible, but the big news is that they've just installed air conditioning in the house, an old cabin.  The first time.  Ever.  Here in the Piedmont, where 100-plus degree and high humidity summer days are just another in a long list of just-the-way-it-is.  Probably only because Jane had a stroke this past year and is "not worth nuthin' " she told me, when I called her in May to wish her Happy Birthday, the first I'd heard of the stroke.  Last year, with her surprise chocolate birthday cake already packed, I got a call canceling my visit because I was taking too long and she needed to bush hog the back field before it started to rain.

That I can write a check to help support these two women feels like dues. That I get chickens too - well that's just good fortune.