Little House

Read.

Occasionally I return to a book, or a series of books that impacted me in the past. For the last few weeks it has been the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. It had been more than 20 years since I had read the 'Little House' series and what I discovered is that more than being sweet stories of an idyllic and forgotten age, they are acute recountings of daily life, survival, and ecology from an era all but erased by the industrial and technological revolutions.

The books describe an alien world in which hard work is inevitable, and the nature of that work is largely determined by season and weather. In winter there is the harvesting of ice, large blocks cut by hand from the lake and hauled home to be stored, packed tight with straw in an outside shed til summer. With the thaw comes sugaring as the sap begins to flow into the trees. In spring and summer, there is plowing and planting and the early harvest. In fall, there is the hunt.

I wonder what it means that we have given up the connection between the rhythm of our daily lives and the rhythm of the world around us, that we no longer take responsibility for providing for our own sustenance in any kind of tangible way. How and why, in less than 150 years, have we changed so much of how we live? Is it servicing us? Or has it just blinded us from our ability to be content and have gratitude for hard earned pleasures?

A fiddle, a rag doll, an evening by the fire. It could be so simple.

Simple Solutions

Algebra.

Being one-third of the way through my 36th year has my thoughts turned to symmetry and divisibility, synthesis and divestment. I am interested in the shedding of excesses, the rounding of the edges of my life. I am aware of being a sum of my own parts, a collection of experiences, patterns, and multiplying events that have guided me on and derailed me from my path. 

More than ever, I am aware of my own operational agency. Truths, remainders and inequalities are the result of my manipulations. 

Today, I choose to subtract and simplify. 

The Stillness Of The Morning

Quiet.

I love the safety of an early morning. Morning moves slowly. In early hours there is time for contemplation, for listening, for the sorting of ones life into manageable tasks. In the morning I am not yet behind, not racing or juggling or fighting traffic and customer service or negotiating relationships. In the morning each thing is presented singularly, in its own time. Now coffee, now dishes, now the sound of the men collecting trash, now the blue jays knocking at the window. There is is time, and hope, and possibility inside the blue light of a morning, a gathering of will. 

There is comfort in a morning. As a child, I was always the first to rise. A good girl, I would quietly crawl from the covers to roam the house, feed the cat, and bring in my fathers paper. When he got up, half-lidded, sniffing for his coffee, interested in the news of the day, gearing up for a long day of work, he would take me by the hand and we would stand together at the picture window to watch the sunrise. From our perch on the hill, looking east, it was as if the whole world was bathed in soft pink sheets of promised light. My fathers hand was warm and soft.

This morning, I watched the sky take on the light from my own little perch on a hill, facing west. I closed my eyes, and felt my hand slip into my fathers. For a moment, my world was simple, love, gratitude, memory. And then, with a breath and a smile, I opened my eyes.

Start the day. 

Unplugged And Happy

Analog.

Ten days is not actually a very long time, but in the age of electronica, taking that much time away from both one's phone and email is regarded by many as self-abuse or some kind of act of aggression towards others.  I think that it is bliss.  Not surprisingly, the world continues to turn without my online participation.  Cat videos and selfies are still posted, dry sarcasm does not fade away, and anyone that really needs to get in touch with me manages to do so.  What is more valuable is the reminder of just how few people really need to get in touch with me.  The internet has a way of amplifying our importance, even if only in our own minds, when really we are still creatures of close-knit families and communities and just because we are able to communicate all the time, in real time, does not mean that we need to or should.  We are not as important and we would like to believe and I take great solace in that knowledge.  Put down your phone, turn off your computer, go outside, whatever it is can wait until later.