For The Sky There Are No Fences
The bright light of the setting sun is pouring in through the open back door, burning in in fact; the scorch of that light is ricocheting off all the walls and dispersing throughout the house, the last burst of warmth for the day before the heat breaks and the soft whispers of the cooler evening air breeze in - at least that’s my hope. It’s summer, make no mistake, and the hot sun seems hell bent on making sure I know it.
Ellie is here too, always. She is laying on her side in the middle of the floor in the living room; the chill of the ground is her salvation on hot summer days. Her little back legs are crossed one over the other like a pair of scissors; a little black piglet laying in an invisible glassy pool of cool mud. There is a tower fan standing tall before her, a skyscraper of icy air against her small black, furry body; when she lays on her side like this the cool air from the fan swoops down upon her exposed belly. A simple pleasure to be sure.
I’m still hauled up indoors for the most part, on what feels like day 500 of quarantine. Even with no place to go there are still one million things I could (should) do, ways to be productive and hustle and try to get shit done. It’s amazing really how deep rooted within us the expectation to produce, to do more, to be better runs - or runs within me at least. Part of my own creative efforts these past few months has been in an attempt to exorcise the frothy mouthed demon of striving to do more that lives along the darker streets of my mind. Soft, delicate rituals and creativity are my fiery spikes, the light that I brave those dark streets with. I draw a hard line between us with smoke and flames; between the person I am at my core and the person that I have learned to be through being taught and told from the outside.
The best I can do is light the path, and march that damn demon back into its cave and command it to stay the hell out of my way.
Listen buddy, it’s fine if you want to sit back and watch me live my life, but under no circumstances do you get to do, push, bully, or control me; not now not ever. Got it?
Good.
If comparison is the thief of joy, then expectation is the son of a gun who lours competition into becoming the thief. Even after months of hunkering down and sheltering in place, the pull towards expectation and productivity is still such a strong magnetic current, an invisible force to be reckoned with, as though it’s in the air we breathe. As change goes on and on and on, I can feel the urge to do something, to be someone, to rise above the toughness, to push through, to do something totally amazing. Don’t you? But, instead of hammering away at all the productive, self advancing things I should be doing, and more or less feel destined to do, eventually, I’ve decided to do what I absolutely must do right now in this moment; sit her and be still and let the end of this day leave its mark on the soul of my imagination.
And so here I am, watching the sun go down for at least another sip or two of tea. I’m drinking an herbal tea blend, herbs harvested and flavors profiled my by my sister, Ilah. It is a lovely tea with soft flavors of lemongrass, like a warm summers day dancing across my taste buds, the aromatics flutter though my nose and titillate my imagination; it smells like a thriving pasture of tall switch grass, a pasture where the gate is always left open as an initiation to roam further out into the open wildflower filled space, out in the wild, beyond the gate of one’s own knowing. Tea is a powerful ritual. The taste of this tea is lovely and dreamy, but I must admit, I chose the tea for its name not its taste this evening. Wild Fields. I recon, if I cannot have a wild field around me, the next best thing must be to have it within me.
The tea, the sunset, the heat of the air, the snoring little piglet dog on the ground, this writing, it is all a ritual bringing me to stillness, halting me in my tracks. It can be a real struggle to stay creative and centered and inspired and effective and optimistic during a time when our country, and the world, are howling with contradictions; safety and violence; life and death; change and stagnancy; health and wealth; personal opinion and factual science; privilege and injustice; peace and destruction; mask and no mask; the list goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on.
Every morning it seems as though each of us has to wake up, figure out who we are, and consciously choose what kind of person we are going to be today in this world? Which part of our being will rise to the surface for this day? Which ideas, priorities, behaviors, contradictions, dichotomies will we chose to see, embody, honor, uphold?
It all can become very overwhelming most days, and on the harder days damn near impossible without beginning the day with a bottomless mug of strong strong coffee ,and ending the day with a pot of Wild Fields tea and silence.
But the truth is, we have always been making the choice of the kind of person we want to be each morning of our lives, albeit unconsciously and haphazardly most of the time. We are only able to see our choices more clearly now because the browbeating inertia of our personal lives, that momentum we have become so dependent on, has slowed to a screeching halt. It is the clarity that comes with no longer rushing that is giving so many of us a sense of overwhelm, confusion, and disbelief. The whole world - whether you care about public health or not- has slowed down and taken the leaded foot off the gas pedal. Through our now slower paced lifestyle we are able to finally to see clearly the very real effects of the choices we have made and continue to make, the way they effect our self, others, and the world at large.
As Rumi writes so beautifully true, “You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop”.
Everywhere I go, the grocery store, the farmers market, dog walks, trail runs, gas stations, I hear people discussing how crazy and uncertain, and chaotic, and inhospitable, and violent the world has become;“When will this end”, “When will life go back to normal” they say. As if all the problems in society and humanity has only now shown up and bubbled over. Consider this; What if the world hasn’t become any different than its always been in some way, shape, or form? What if you aren’t so different then you’ve always been? What if all the craziness, and chaos, and uncertainty you feel now has been there all along? What if life and death and justice and progress were never as simple as we were making them out to be?
What if we are just paying attention now? Seeing more clearly what has been going on all along; seeing in real time the effects of our past, and present; the choices, the actions, the subsequent inaction, and all the very real consequences that seem to follow around human beings like a shadow.
Slowing down is the birthplace of conscious attention, and conscious attention - pay attention- is the root of understanding, both personally and socially.
I, you, we, wake up every day with very real choices to make; the choices about the kind of person we want to be; the beliefs and values we will hold inside ourselves and uphold through the course of the day; the level of clarity we will either be overwhelmed by or charged up from. These daily life choices are the personal advantages, the blessings, and the responsibilities of being human in a society driven world.
When I look out at the setting sun right now I see an opportunity to be still and present. To see the world as it is, not the over lay of other peoples opinions of how it once was or wasn’t, nor how they think it aught to be now. Nobody, not the news broadcasters, the police department, the city council, nor the damn President of the United States gets to choose for you what you will value and believe and respect and fight for; not today, not tomorrow, not ever. These choices are all on you. You get to choose the kind of person you are to yourself, the values you hold and the beliefs you carry; you get to choose the behavior you bring to the world and the actions you take in order to support and sustain your values.
Through your state of mind, introspection, self-reflection, moments in stillness, attentiveness, and clarity, you get to see who you are more clearly and through that clarity you get choices to make; to feel the ocean of the world contained within the drop of your own life, or to distract yourself from it. And in turn, you choose whether or not you will bring the drop of who you are to the wild fields and the open waters and of the big world.