The woods next to the house are full of thorny locust trees and blackberry canes and very aggressive poison ivy vines and more polite passionflower vines. I'm terribly allergic to poison ivy and someone could probably kill me by rolling me down the poison ivy covered hill (please don't - what a horrible way to go). The locust trees are difficult to trim and are growing too close to the house, but I like the privacy screen they provide. Everything is a compromise. Blackberries make delicious cobblers and jelly but picking them requires a bit of blood donation. The passionflowers look like some kind of alien plant - exotic and fancy with a heavy tropical perfume, but they make a an effective tea and tincture that help with sleep. I haven't figured out how to use their fruits.
We live in what can seem like a lively temperate jungle when we get plenty of rain, as we did earlier this summer. Its life can be loud and insistent with all the bugs and birds and other little critters singing their songs of exaltation and desperation. Their time is short so they must be heard. We know summer's winding down when the doves begin their cries.
(Why do we love rhythmic movement? It's so cool that cicadas and other insects can vibrate their bodies to make sounds and communicate. Life is rhythmic movement - heartbeats, brainwaves, breathing. Our voices are vibrations. All energy vibrates throughout the universe. Our eyes tuned to see the wavelengths of what we call visible light, but other creatures can see beyond our limits. We have created machines to extend our vision. We are creators, made in God's image. God is the great conductor of the Universe. We search for Him in synchronicities. Sometimes our vibes match with others and sometimes it's hard to escape that rhythm. Eternity in the human heart. Sometimes I need to move my chi because it gets caught in the eddies, vortices, and currents. Sometimes we are overwhelmed and sometimes we are just watching the outermost fringes of a passing evening storm. Grief is a trickster. Time keeps flowing like a river. Let's move on from this stream of consciousness.)
People nowadays don't exercise their auditory sense. Sure they are constantly listening to music, podcasts, social media, etc., but I'm talking about really listening to the world and hearing the distance. How many people can hear a siren and know where it is going and where it came from without seeing it? It takes practice and spacial awareness. People can't look upon the horizon and know where other towns and communities are located because they have become so dependent on map apps. They don't learn the maps in their brains. I am sad for this technological age and the people who are losing the sensory acuity of a life lived in the real world. We are transitioning away from a pure human existence, too dependent upon our machines and now giving them too much control. AI has no discernment and neither do most people. This is the decline of humanity.
It's a very hot and dry late summer. The leaves are turning and falling early. The passionflower vines are wilted and dying. The locusts have lost nearly all their leaves already. The blackberry canes are brown and brittle but still viciously sharp and ready to take their blood. The jungle is receding. It's so hot that the katydids have gone quiet. I miss their chatter. It's one of my favorite parts of summer evenings. What do they talk about? Katy did, Katy did, Katy did. Maybe I want to too... Like the end of summer, some things pass and we have to lock away feelings and desires, send our roots into the earth, let our leaves go and hope for spring.
This year has been a lot of upheaval and repair. Of course, there has been the shoulder repair and healing, but we also have done major work on this twenty-five year old house. Beginning with new roof and all new windows. Our dwellings contain and absorb our energy, the reverberations of our lives. Big renovations stir up what's settled into the framework and foundation. Banging on the roof to replace to old roofing shook awake the walls and roused old feelings, and then the windows cut out allowed the house to exhale deeply, to expel the stale before the new windows were installed. Our homes do need to breathe.
After having to move everything around so the window guy could do his job, I decided to evaluate every item and decide if it still has place here. I gave a lot away. Over the years I've curated a sort of vintage store in my house, collected things hoping to preserve interesting and useful items. Some for future projects, some just for the joy of having and seeing and sharing. But as the house breathed so did I. I was ready to exhale and release adornments and hoards. This was the future time I'd saved them for. Time to pass along to my kids anything that they might like to have. Why wait until I'm dead? Let them enjoy them now.
Demolition has its own kind of appeal but it takes a lot of effort. I am tired. Sometimes we need to live with the blank spaces for a while, cleared out of ideas, feelings, thoughts. Allow new inspirations after a time of rest and emptiness. The reverberations of all the structural changes and bits of disarray will fine-tune into their next expressions. After the waves of big change then smaller waves and wakes continue to jostle and rearrange ideas and hopes until they settle into place. The blank canvas will show us what it needs. No need to cajole.
Twenty-five years is a long time to live in a house. Will we both still be here in another twenty-five? Will this house hold up for 50 years? Will my life's imprint haunt this place? What would someone else do with these rooms? Would they tear the whole thing down?
Sometimes I am overcome with horrific amazement at the changes brought by age. Somehow the wrinkly knees are the most shocking, probably because they are so easily visible. Mortality looms large on the horizon, yet I don't feel impelled to move or act. (Except the shoulder repair that allowed me to return to full function I am not interested in major physical renovations just for appearances. Cosmetic procedures are unlike house structural renovations that actually extend its useful lifespan.) I sit in stillness. Just observe, perceive, sense. Find the rhythms and ride the waves. If this is the fourth quarter of the game I'm not sure I care anymore about the score. I try not to think too much about the future because it distracts from the the here and now and it can seduce and create delusions and expectations. My heart has been broken enough. I have regrets. Time is running out.
Am I repeating myself? It seems like after living this long I can't always remember what I've already said or if I am repeating what others have said.
Sometimes I feel like the wilted and withered passionflower vines stretched out over the locust trees' limbs, reaching as far as I could until the heat and dryness took its toll. But sometimes I feel prickly and sharp like the blackberry and locust thorns, ready to chastise a careless touch and demand a penance of pain and blood. Sometimes I poison the air against the things that want my blood. Repellents against mosquitos and curses.
Every generation thinks it's the first to suffer, that anxiety and depression are modern developments, but thousands of years ago people wrote of all those same feelings, no less intense than we feel today. I was a very tense child, born tensed up and not knowing how to relax. I didn't know how to release the tension in my body. My muscles were always in resistance, even while stretching. I still have to consciously work to release and relax and breathe. I still catch myself holding my breath too long. Maybe most people are born full of tension. I don't know. Maybe it's because my mom still smoked cigarettes while pregnant and I was born with a nicotine addiction? Not blaming her, not shaming her at all. Just pondering the possibilities.
The Earth seems to be exhaling and releasing tension itself. It is always doing so but sometimes it needs to shake and shudder in greater intensity. We are all part of it and sometimes we get swept away. We mourn for the loss of life. We fear the destruction that is ever approaching. This dynamic planet was set in motion by God who knew it would move as it was designed and that sometimes we would suffer. We chose that option. We chose to add the thorns, poison, and passion to our Garden.
"For no one is cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love."
Lamentations 3:31-32
