Having Faith

I want to write. Maybe because this is the day my writing group meets and we are on a hiatus due to Wednesdays being too full of other things, maybe because I see the offseason ahead and plan to do some serious work on my research and book as my house turns 100 on January 10. I have the desire to do the writing, but also the self-awareness to know that my feelings are way too close to the surface right now and it may be better to just hide out and say nothing.

I guess I've said that a time or two in the latest posts. I hesitate and give excuses and don't want to seem too sure of myself. I'm full of misgivings. Part of this is just this season when I would do better if I did not watch any TV and stayed off Facebook and did not read the paper either. I ought to submerge in a good novel. I have been doing a lot of reading, and that feels good, but of course I recognize the escapism. Perhaps more exercise would be better, and if it were not so wet I would spend more time outside in the garden.

My neighbors are seriously talking fence again and this time it seems inevitable. It remains to be seen where and how high this fence will be. No matter how small or transparent it is it will impact my gardens and for the first time in almost 30 years I will be cut off from the open space next to my small yard, which is of course their yard but a space I have been tending and using most of this time. Lots of renters didn't use or care for the space so I would cut the grass, prune the trees, feed the birds, and my gardens extended well beyond my property line and into the easement between us. I don't know if they will put this fence five feet from my shop walls on my side of the easement or if they will put it on their side, giving me seven more feet, but either way there will be a wall there and it will likely remain walled for as long as I live here. I was thinking that would be several more decades, but the yard is seeming so small to me now, and getting smaller.

Development happens, and I keep trying to adjust to it as what I love disappears. That ability to stretch out a little when I go around into the side yard might be gone, as I am reduced to a path threading my way through whatever raspberry and black raspberry bushes will survive the fence and its building. If I get the easement it won't be bad, but if the fence goes in on my side of the easement I will literally have to cry. They will also be getting some little dogs. Nothing I can do about that either.

The theme seems to be about all the things I cannot control. I guess that is my fears surfacing about keeping my own self under control when so many things are happening without my consent or right to consent. I have these squirrels and possums who keep moving into my storage racks. Obviously removing the racks will eliminate the dry spaces for the animals and I could also cut down the ancient apple tree so
they couldn't nest there. I could plant a new tree, maybe one that would give me more fruit. I have convinced myself that the Gravenstein is the oldest tree in the near neighborhood. I think Tillie Van Harken planted it almost a hundred years ago. It is really big. I need to pay someone to shape it a bit as it has gotten out of the reach of my pole pruner. I might buy a new pole pruner to increase my reach instead. I want to be in control of that tree.

Another murder has entered my sphere. I can't deal with it, and completely shut down my empathy when it comes to thinking how impossible it is to cope with these things. Cancer seems like murder as well, and all the environmental catastrophes caused by the greed of people who are thoughtless about the repercussions of their actions. I want to be conscious of my repercussions as well, but everything I buy, do or say seems to be attached to the web of all of the people I know. Doing some good here and there does not seem to be enough. Even the cruelties of aging add to my distress. I certainly see why people turn to religion and immerse so deeply in this fabled birth of a savior. The innocence of a little baby, the compelling stories told about his life, the example of his deep and undying love for us, sinners that we are, thoughtless beings that we are...what a comfort that must be.

Alas, I can't go there. I don't even have so much faith in some benevolent force guiding us as I used to, any at all. The faith I can muster kind of just says "it is what it is." I guess learning to live with this is a worthy goal. Acceptance and moving on and just doing what we can with what we have has to be enough.

I had this feeling the other day, a very strong place inside where I knew what it felt like to be completely alone in a bright, snowy landscape with no sign of other humans, just me, alive and warm in my body in a place of simplicity and survival. There was an exhilaration there and the knowledge that all was right and powerful and nothing mattered in the least. I had a sense of my pure connection with everything there is on this earth and in this universe. I knew exactly how immense this existence was in and outside of me.

I don't know when or where this happened in my past, or even if it did. It's romantic and it's a feeling, not a fact, but I hold on tight to it and the knowledge that I can go there again if I need to. There is a place on a mountain where everything is just and right. It is a place where a person could die or be born, into the greater consciousness that may or may not be a figment of our imaginations. So I hope we get some snow, so I can sneak out into the side yard and behold the neighbor's space and feel it as my own one last time before the fence goes in. I can stand in the middle of my own 60x90 lot and know that it would take a lot to dislodge me from there, the spot I can look up into the universe from and connect sun and earth. Buildings and fences and trees and centuries exist there and don't exist. It's my place to lie upon the earth and open my heart.

It's too wet right now to do that but I can hold onto those times it wasn't, and those times in the future when it will be benevolent and warm again. The fence will give me more privacy, and I will grow to accept it as I have the neighbors themselves. The tree will have to come down at some point as well as the racks and then the squirrels will move to someone else's yard. I can always call them back with more sunflower seeds if I need them.

There are other places where I feel at home on my land: my spot on the Park Blocks, my booth at the Fair, and they aren't really mine, as this property wasn't mine in the past and won't be mine in the future. It's a big thing to accept, that we are temporary on this spot and that we aren't sure what part of us is not, if any. We exist in memory and in the memories of others, and our pure essence may not really exist, except maybe in that long moment when we stood on that snowy mountain, if we ever did. Ah, life. What a trip we are on, what a place we are staying in. I hope that I can be a good guest and continue to follow the house rules, continue to leave it all a little better than I found it. I hope I write things that will honor my memory for a little while after I am gone. Guess that is enough of a reason to put this on Facebook and get on with the work of my day.