The sun is bright so the house is warm, but the wind is freezing so I feel deceived every time I step outside.
The dogs are asleep at my feet. The cat is asleep in a sunny spot of window ledge.
I just finished a mug of hot chocolate.
I was going to say how many days I've been here, but I actually don't know and am not bothered to check. Quiet forest paradise. My brother and sister-in-law will be back any day, maybe even today, and my little personal version of Walden's Pond will come to a close for now.
And much like the actual Walden's Pond my experience was also at least partially bullshit. I watched a lot of Netflix and still wasted hours, as the kids call it, surfing the internet superhighway. But I still did better than Thoreau and cooked my own meals and did my own laundry (I believe he had his mother do it, but that's irrelevant).
I've got to say I am 100% on board with the cabin in the woods lifestyle. I life how life naturally rotates around the sun. We are up at dawn, we nap when the sun is high and hot, we play and go for a walk in the woods in the cool of the day, we relax under the sunset and pack it in at dark.
This is the first place where I have been in a very long time where the phases of the moon actually affect how bright it is outside at night. How pagan. How sacred. How real.
I feel grounded to my body here. Way too often, I feel like some sort of floating brain. All thought, all abstraction. I forget to eat and drink water and am more than willing to forego my comfort for the sake of another because I am not paying that much attention to my comfort (or discomfort) anyway.
But here I am in my body. I take up space. And because I am alone I feel no guilt or anxiety or self-consciousness about taking up space. I howl and cook and dance and let the sun touch my naked skin.
I do not allow myself to feel these things with people. Or even when I'm near people. I do not know why. No, I do. It's clearly a trauma thing and an anxiety thing and an insecurity thing. hyper-vigilance, always reading and responding to the room, looking out for the early warning signs of anger or distress or emotional volatility. Fear of oversharing or being overshared upon. Perceptions of judgement and shame and annoyance (both real and imaginary).
All of course while bombarded with sensory information about the heat of the room and any unusual smell or sound and how the light is hitting that chair in the corner and what song is on the radio and the way my hair moves under the air conditioner and etc.
Just the thought of all of that makes me tense up.
But out here, alone, it is just the sensory information and my eyes and ears and mouth and hands and feet that get to feel it all and take it all in. No having to split my attention or keep focus. No need to escape out of my body to some deep recess of my brain so I can hide.
How wonderful. It has indeed been truly wonderful.
But like all things, this too must pass.
It will be soon time to return to the world and all the people in it. People I love and look forward to seeing and touching and hearing (and hopefully at least some tasting).
I leave here with the aspiration of creating a place like this for myself. A tiny house in nature. A place to think and write and make art. A resting place for weary travelers who will share my fire and tell me stories. To breathe in and out, the natural rhythms of the world.
It might take me years to get to that place. It seems clear that my lot for now is to travel on. But I have an aspiration. A dream of a place to rest.
In the meantime, wherever I wander, I set my intention on keeping the same embodied awareness, the same sensitivity, the same compassion and patience, that I have learned here.
May you enjoy wherever you are today and however you are doing
10:39 a.m. - 2022-04-15
Recent entries:
Everything and Nothing All at Once - 2022-07-05
Summer Solstice - 2022-06-21
writing about not writing - 2022-06-15
Conflicted - 2022-06-01
She and Tulsa and Me - 2022-05-22
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