Day 60

limitations

I used to believe that limitations were things set before us to overcome. Now I think that whether or not we overcome them, we can learn so much about ourselves by simply recognizing them and attempting to understand them.

Every winter here is an exercise in confronting, accepting, overcoming or succumbing to limitations set by altitude, climate, road conditions, machinery and our own wills. We watch as a storm buries our road, our cars, piling up in front of the door on the deck we just cleared not hours before. We grab the shovel again, and again, and again. We pray the snowblower starts, the car starts, the plows made it out, etc. There is a constant face off between us and the snow.

So, when spring and summer come, we feel particularly light. We meander out to our cars without concern, we drive wherever we want to and we sink our feet into the mud, into the riverbed, into the pine needles. We practically sing our way through the day – feeling limitless.

Day 59

connected

Do we understand the difference between friend, follower, audience and market? In my opinion there is not much of a distinction anymore. What about between friend, leader, influencer, marketer?

More and more, I think all of these words are just other words for Consumer. We simply consume the tech, the media, the materials, the promises, the emotions, the images, the messages…and we judge, sort, compartmentalize and regurgitate all this data like a sloppy early-tech-era computer. But we are not just Consumers, and we are certainly not designed just to process data for the sake of deciding what to consume. We have always been processors of data, but the data used to include information from our physical world, from the plants and animals we cultivate, eat and admire, to the people we interact with in the real world.

This is why I am so convinced that we need to find ways to inhabit space that does not include “connection” through tech. We can not let connection be a word that only defines our internet-augmented experiences. We have to include nature-augmented experiences and know what being connected there feels like. We have to seek out and invest in real-life-friends who we embrace with our bodies. We might even consider listening to our own bodies, hearts and minds, learning to become followers of our own intuitions.

Its not so much that we need to “disconnect” as it is that we need to connect to more and through more than just our screens.

Once, after drinking a tea made from psilocybin mushrooms, I walked naked ten feet through a foot of snow to press my body against an aspen tree. I still remember the feel of the bark against my belly. In my drugged state I was drawn to that tree like an eight-year old to a pop song, or an adolescent girl to promises of make-up manufacturers. I had to touch that tree, feel it with my whole being. It was a need to connect with my world, augmented and encouraged by shrooms. Of course, I laugh at that experience now; but I also know that it was a moment of connection that impacted me more than anything I have ever seen or experienced using technology.

Day 58

today

Today is June 3 and I was up early, unable to sleep past 6:15. There is nothing special about that, or about the coffee, or the routine that leads me into my day. There is nothing special about my inner thoughts or feelings. Like most days, I am taking a minute in the morning to give myself something more than just the hours of work and chores in front of me. I am giving myself books and a long thirsty look at the pond below me on the neighbor’s ranch.

I am preoccupied with the protests that I know happened last night, wondering if the energy is dying down or still building. I have decided to take a break from social media because…well, because of the cruelty and the assault of language. I love words, and their ability to convey the subtleties of our experience. I love them too for their force and simplicity. However, I believe that words are only as meaningful as the thoughts and emotions that precede them. Lately, I have wondered if the desperation and frustration everyone is experiencing has robbed them of the ability to think before they speak.

I am also thinking about the river depths and whether or not Sand Lake is still closed in by snow, because tomorrow we are going fishing. Yes, while the world rages, I will go fishing. During the great wars, the plagues, the most horrible times on this planet, people have gone fishing.

To drop bait in the water, or to skate a fly across the surface, is to integrate with the water, the fish, the hunger. There is a lot of waiting in fishing, and while I wait, I will try not to overthink, try to let the moment speak and give me some small gift. There are so many kinds of hunger.

Day 57

protest

I am about as far from the protesting and violence as one can be. This morning I sit in my robe on the deck, where sunlight is spreading its fresh scent across the valley. The crows are talking to each other, and the woodpeckers are at work already.

“Solitude has its own special work: a deepening of awareness the world needs. A struggle against alienation. True solitude is deeply aware of the world’s needs. It does not hold the world at arm’s length.” says Thomas Merton. These words spread through me like sunlight. I know they are true, because here I am, alone, yet so acutely aware of the “world’s needs.” For they are present in my own aching heart that is increasingly aware of how close to extinction this beautiful place is. The needs of the whole world are present in every corner, where the tiniest life is attempting to survive.

From downtown Portland, my daughter sent me a video of thousands of people chanting “I can’t breathe.” Over the video she had typed the words “I love you” in white. The juxtaposition of these chanted words, repeating the plea of another black man under another boot, just before he died, against her words—I love you—made me cry.

I am painfully aware of the world’s need for those voices of protest and for those witnesses that feel love in the midst of pain. To close ourselves off from that pain, is to close ourselves off from that love. I would never have understood that, had I not removed myself from the city, come to this place, and allowed myself to feel, to cry, to acknowledge my own suffering and my own complacency and complicity, and to know how ruined this place is. It is an ongoing act of vulnerability that I trust, sometimes very hesitantly, will lead to transformation.

There was a time when I looked at protest as a futile act in the face of so much inhumane power and corruption. As if the only sacred words were “there is nothing new under the sun.” Protest against oppression and violence is the demand that there be something new, and for all my faith, I did not see the possibility of newness. What I have learned in my solitude is that it is in the messy acts of protest that we are able to suffer together, to give a voice to individual and collective pain, to communicate to one another that we are not alone, and to embody and witness in each other, hope and resistance. As always, a space that acknowledges the pain, that allows the emotions to flow, will often be the refuge of anger, righteous and unrighteous, of those who will use the collective protest as a place to meet violence with violence. It is a microcosm of our world. Yet, in the center of our cultural frustration, where the violent uprising and the peaceful protest attempt to co-exist, we are exposed to our collective misery. We are united in our frustration, in our experience of pain. It is not just an act of political solidarity, but also an act of emotional solidarity. And every place where we acknowledge the pain, there is love, there is a, sometimes almost invisible, door to healing.

We are all exposed, in the dark. Some of us are trying to find a way through, together, alone, creating solidarity in our common willingness to acknowledge the pain and manifest the love. Like so many before me, and so many others today, I feel the edges of that door in the dark. In my solitude I am trying to find the courage to open it, to be healed.

Day 56

blessing

May you be kind
   even though you are afraid

May you be patient
   even though you are afraid

May you be gentle,
   even though you are afraid

May your fear be what binds you to others, knowing they too are afraid
   and not the justification for unkindness, impatience and brutality

May you be open,
   even though you are exposed

May you be sheltered,
   even though you are exposed

May you be safe,
   even though you are exposed

May you become comfortable in your exposure, as you are not just exposed to that which can harm you,
   but also to that which can heal you.

Day 55

rain

Tonight, it is pouring; pouring in the way it does in the mountains, suddenly and incessantly, the air cool and moving like silk through the house. Subtle thunder, growling in the distant, letting us know it is close.

The world is not pretty today. It hasn’t been real pretty in my lifetime, and having studied a bit of history, I’m thinking it has never looked much better than it does today. Rain gives the impression of something fresh, something new. A physical metaphor, giving me a little taste of hope.

I hope it rains for hours (though it usually passes quickly up here) and fills the cracks and crevices, floods the plains, gives us reservoirs to drink from for a while.

There are so many ways to care about this world. Owning our part in the bullshit is one of them, working to make things right is another, solidarity, speaking out, but also…when it rains, we can open our mouths and tilt our heads back. It falls on us all.

Day 54

witness

Witness is a word that we easily associate with violence. Most used to describe the person who sees a crime perpetrated and whose experience is used to identify the perpetrator. To witness a crime, however, is also to witness the victim, to experience a human being in deep pain or at the time of their death. To witness a crime, is also to witness hatred, pain, fear or serious mental illness in action. To bear witness to the words that are posted on social media is often to bear witness to language that reveals rage without compassionate, thoughtful engagement. Compassionate and informed thought takes time and patience and education and self-awareness.

In so many areas of our lives I am witnessing our collective and individual vision narrow. We decide who to follow, what to read, what to share and how to engage it. There is a constant rapid editing and splicing and a thousand judgement calls about what and how much we take in, judgement calls made second by second, that dictate our experience. We feel that we are witnessing the world in so much more detail, yet we are seeing the broad strokes and losing the individual lives and experiences that demand nuanced, careful seeing.

If we are to truly bear witness to the ugly truth that is laid bare in acts of violence against the vulnerable, we have to experience more than just the aspect of violence that enrages us. We have to bear witness to the pain and corruption that turns a cop into an offender, that makes an idealistic boy a soldier, that makes a young man an indiscriminate shooter. We have to witness the ideologies and ways of thinking that we all participate in and that create people of violence. Ideologies that insist on turning some of us into some of them and some of them into enemies and enemies into people who we can only imagine dead. We have to witness the tools of violence, the guns, bombs and words, that kill, or that turn people in pain into people of violence. We have to witness the relationships between fear and despair, pain and grief, violence and isolation.

We live in an unjust world where power, as ever, is in the hands of the few. These powerful individuals and the institutions that they inhabit are systematically hurting the poorest and most vulnerable human beings, not to mention our precious environment. This is not news, it is reality, and it must be witnessed. Justice depends on the testimonies of credible witnesses who are willing to see the whole event, the entire reality. We can not be credible witnesses if we are seeing through the filters of self-righteousness and fundamentalism (a phenomenon that is not just restricted to the religious fanatics and right-wing conservatives.)

We cannot be credible witnesses if we are experiencing our world only through hashtags and filters; if we are limiting our experiences to social media and news feeds and not expanding it to the physical reality that our bodies inhabit. Our physical reality is where we are most likely to consciously and unconsciously contribute to the problems; what we consume, how we interact with each other, the work we choose, etc.

We cannot be credible witnesses if we bypass the beauty of this world and of human beings because we are afraid that it will distract us from the real issues rather than deepen our understanding, compassion and energy to work for justice.

We cannot be credible witnesses if we fixate on one aspect of the atrocity. We must be brave enough and vulnerable enough and patient enough to bear witness to ALL the pain and fear and mis-guided intentions, while also witnessing the many beautiful acts of mercy, kindness, compassion and justice that happen every day.

If we witness and testify to all that is; then even as we are condemning the perpetrators, we can be taking responsibility for our complacency and complicity. We can not only condemn the man or women who commits the single act of violence, but also the institution that empowers them, and the system that supports the institution. But to do this effectively we must have clear vision and open hearts, we must allow grief to accompany our rage, we must allow a healthy sense of mercy to accompany our intense desire for justice—so that we do not burn the whole world down in our fury.

Day 53

late

After the most epic sunset, the wind kicked up and we thought there would be a storm. Never happened. Instead the sky went from purple to gray to black and now it is full of stars. There are frogs, going off, all over the meadow below us. The winter run-off has given them the perfect habitat to mate in, at least that’s why we assume they are making all that noise.

The air is cool through the house and as soon as we turn off the television and settle into bed, we will hear the owls, maybe some coyotes tonight. It is late, and when it gets late around here you feel swallowed up. You feel darkness like a blanket, and this time of year the woods make their own music. In the deep winter it is just total silence, all of nature conserving their energy for warmth.

But in the spring and summer, we stretch, we open, we make a little noise. Late into the night we sing.

 

Day 52

cure

One of the most frustrating aspects of parenting is seeing your child uncomfortable or in pain and not having the access, wisdom or ability to cure them. From their birth, they suffer in ways that you can not understand or fix, yet you hold on to this idea that you should be able to fix it and that if you just try a little harder, you will figure it out. Instead of learning to help them cope with their suffering, you instead get stuck in a rut of trying to cure the suffering.

In the last five years, I’ve been deepening my relationship with suffering. I am learning to allow suffering to exist, even attempting to make her my friend. I am hard pressed to come up with any real lesson of value that I didn’t learn through emotional, mental or physical stress and pain. So truly, if not a friend, suffering has been a good teacher.

It is relatively easy for me to stop looking for a cure for my own suffering—I supposed because it has been relatively minor, certainly not fatal, and because I have learned to learn from suffering. The suffering of others, especially those close to me however, is a completely different matter. The intense longing I have to find a cure for my kids, nieces, friends and family—for the depression and anxiety they suffer, for the discomfort of growing up, for the struggle to find their way in the world—it is intense. Yet, I know that suffering is their teacher as well. I suppose the bottom line is that I have not figured out how to learn from the hurt I experience witnessing their pain.

Ultimately, it is the ache for the cure that creates the most suffering for me. It is so difficult to sit with someone in pain and not try and fix it, yet this is where we find the deepest connection with each other. Again, vulnerability is the key; to open ourselves to each other’s suffering and hold each other—it is not a cure, but certainly if we learn to do this, we do not suffer alone.

 

Day 51

fire

Tonight, we built a fire in the ring in front of my house. Yes, I have a fire ring, between two aspen and two pine, just twenty feet from my front door, and yes, it is extremely luxurious to sit in front of it and smell the wood smoke, and eat vegetables that were cooked in foil in this fire.

Recently, I have taken a great interest in how heat affects my food, cooking meat, vegetables, herbs, etc. at different temperatures. Char is one of my favorite flavors and smells. I like dark toast sometimes, with cheese. Bitter, intense.

Fire is also something I associate with warmth and romance, candles. Soft light, shadows in every small curve of the neck, bright reflection in wet eyes. I experience differently the mystery and warmth of sex and love, touching and intimate words, when firelight flickers on the walls and windows.

Fire is dangerous…and so is intimacy.

Day 50

smoking

When my kids were younger, eight or nine, we lived in a shitty apartment in Northeast Portland. I was recently divorced, going to Portland State, fighting with my ex about everything, and trying to figure out how to be single again, while parenting. I was relatively broke, obviously pretty down on myself, and trying to convince my kids that their recently exploded life was not entirely my fault. This was a period of my life when smoking felt really good.

I’ve never had tendencies toward addiction, so I was able to smoke just a few cigarettes at a time, then none for days, then maybe one more here and there. I remember this particular afternoon, standing on my concrete porch that was about five by five and faced a parking lot, taking a long drag from an American Spirit and thinking that the burning sensation in my lungs felt so good. I thought about how self-destruction sometimes feels empowering when you feel like all the pain is being inflicted on you by others. It’s odd, but it made perfect sense at the time.

I think about this when I watch my sister and brothers, my daughter and nieces and some of my friends while they smoke. I think about how we process pain, how we develop habits, how we learn. I think about my grandfathers smoking cigarettes in tanks and trenches during WWII, and my grandmothers maybe taking a drag in a restaurant, missing the husbands they barely knew.

 

Day 49

dirt

When we are spending time at our house, or at the camp that my family gathers at, or just camping in the woods, we get filthy. There are no barriers between us and the dust and dirt. Our hands and ankles, our feet if we are barefoot, smudges on our faces and grit in our hair, we get more earthy the longer we are out here. Soon your skin and nails start to smell like the fine alpine powder that is everywhere. It makes me feel closer to the planet.

I grew up with parents who believed in a shower every day, getting your hair up in ponytails or braids. I wore clean socks and clothes, washed my hands and face. I was raised squeaky clean. I performed pretty-little-girl well I think, but when I got older, I gradually abandoned it. I became more and more comfortable in worn jeans (that were actually worn out by me and not by a factory) and going barefoot outdoors. I went through a solid hippie phase where I wandered around town barefoot with bells on my ankles in gauze skirts and tanks. Even these days I tend to find myself loving the smell and feel of a bit of dirt on my skin.

During this pandemic, the obsession around cleanliness, to protect ourselves from the virus is certainly warranted; but I find the sterility of everything sad. I feel like the obsession with cleanliness sometimes distances us from our habitat. We can, in my opinion, be too clean.

Gradually, I am hoping we find ways to protect ourselves from viruses without sacrificing our connection to dirt. After all, dirt contributes to food, clay for structures, a home for the billions of creatures that help form our eco systems. Ultimately dirt will be our home, so we would do well to stay comfortable with a little under our nails.

Day 48

game

I have a sister that is two years younger than I am. We are close now, but still incredibly different. She has dark hair and wears her heart on her sleeve. I was born with white blond hair and just spent three years in therapy learning how to cry. When we were kids, she loved to play games. She has a fierce competitive spirit. I, do not. What I remember from the various interactions over Candyland or Chutes and Ladders, and later, playing card games, is that I wasn’t eager enough to win, sad enough when I lost or interested enough in playing over and over until I was good at it. I thought she was irrationally attached to something silly; I was the one that was always saying “It’s just a game.” But for her this was an important point of connection and I just wasn’t getting it.

Today, my four siblings and their nine kids and I all played some rousing games. It was so fascinating to watch those of us who inherited the competitive nature work with those of us who were playing “just for the fun of it.” Watching the attitudes, the skills, the “fronting,” and the disappointments manifest in forty-somethings all the way down to six-year-olds was hilarious. The game turns us all into children, directs us all to let go of our need for things to be anything more than the immediate gratifications or devastations of winning and losing.

It has always been difficult for me to understand the value of playing games, but today I understood that the one of the sadder things about my childhood was the fact that I became an adult so young. I didn’t understand how to “play” in a way that simplifies things and gives us an opportunity to practice discipline, fun, comforting each other and most of all pushing each other to “play harder.” Today, I look at those in my family who love the game, and I see new teachers and hope that I can keep learning to let go of my adultishness and give the little girl some room to play.

Day 47

hair

I’m spending this weekend with all of my family except for my two grown children in Oregon. There are twenty-two of us here in the woods. I have two sisters and two brothers and nine nieces and nephews. I have a beautiful family of big smiles and great friendly generous spirits, and between all of us, there is a lot of hair.

Among us there is the silver white shoulder length hair of my mother and my dad’s salt and pepper head and beard. My brother’s hair is shaggy and has tints of red, which is likely how his daughter got the enviable strawberry blond curls she has. The little ones are mostly white blond cut short and up here in the woods they look like wild elves. One of my sisters has long black hair shot through with silver that is epic-ally sexy.

My long thick hair is heavy, but it reminds me of my family. I have carried it through so many cuts and perms and even a few dye jobs. Now it is just simply long and natural, the color gradually being washed out by the gray. I have this idea that someday, when I am old and near death, I will ask a grandchild or great-grandchild to cut the long braid I hope to have. I don’t care what they do with it, but I’d like to have some sort of ceremonious moment where I part with my hair before I part with this life. A prelude, a symbol of leaving. If I am blessed to live deep into old age, I imagine that the lightness I will feel once this heavy hair is gone, will be a lovely prelude to whatever comes next.

Day 46

alignment

I started seeing a chiropractor. Lots of issues with my neck and shoulders have led to this, but most of all, migraines.

He is energetic and confident and snaps me this way and that, and does some muscle testing and talks a lot about vibrations. I like him. This morning I saw him first thing and all day I have felt like a noodle. It is interesting to have your skeleton manipulated and to feel it in your eyeballs. I swear that colors are brighter after he cracks my neck.

It’s got me thinking about other kinds of alignment, and how hard it is to “get an adjustment” when you need it—let’s say mentally or emotionally or physically. I admit that I find alcohol, sex and drugs to be relatively good ways to get my attitude or my spirit aligned. Also, the stuff we consider healthier than those things: yoga, prayer, meditation. Sometimes art, particularly literature and music, help me align my head with reality.

Often though, I think that it is suffering that cracks us into alignment. When we get into postures and patterns that are not healthy for us or others, I think we find ourselves eventually facing some sort of pain that lets us know we’ve got a rib out, so to speak. It is comforting for me to imagine suffering as a way to identify that I am out of whack. It means that I can get to work discovering exactly what needs attention, adjustment or energy.

Maybe it is the increased blood-flow to my brain, but I am feeling optimistic this afternoon. I am seeing the potential for a cultural or social adjustment that brings us more in line with reality. Yes, things are bad, the planet is suffering, people are suffering. Also, we have these amazing structural bones, memories, muscles, ideas, skin and senses. We are strong and capable of surviving a quick jerk of the neck that feels for a split second like the end, but is actually just a harsh snap to alignment.

Day 45

bird

For the first time in my life, I see the shape of a path emerging. It is not very defined yet, more like the trail a deer might make in the tall grass as she moves toward water. That kind of path is easy to miss unless you are moving slow. These last weeks have given me the opportunity to move more slowly as an artist. A lifetime of habits and patterns that revolve around anything other than my desire to write, have pulled me away from this path many times. Discipline is giving me the confidence to step onto this vague path toward the stream.

As I commit to this path, I feel afraid all of the time. Fear is just behind me, always whispering that I don’t know what I am doing, that I could fall, fail, disappoint myself and others. But, I’m getting to old to listen to fear.

All paths have obstacles, all of them intersect with pain. All paths are leading into the unknown, because no matter what the advertising promises you, there are no guarantees. We, like every other living thing, must follow our instincts. We have to listen to our bodies, our desires, our needs; we can know ourselves if we are patient. Time itself offers the gift of wisdom that comes from witnessing the failures and successes of others, and from leaning in to our own desires. Fear is a companion that can save your life, but we sometimes have to ask her to be quiet so we can hear our own selves talk.

Besides the fear, I also am accompanied by the women who came before me and pursued their own passions while learning to integrate their roles as mothers, wives, sisters, friends, daughters. I am also accompanied by the creatures that effortlessly follow their instincts to warmer climates, mating grounds, water.

Also, there is the creative force of life itself, what I call the Divine, that infuses each step I take with meaning and mystery. This is my closest ally, my whisperer, my beloved muse. Like a bird on my shoulder, the Divine stays close. I am learning to move in such a way that she is not disturbed, learning to be guided by the gentle promptings of her ruffling feathers.

Day 44

beginning

Spring is a good time to reflect on beginnings. In the mountains especially, where winter is long and deep, and you spend months in a white hibernation, Spring comes like a shock of pleasure. It is like the burst of sweetness when you bite into an apple, making your teeth hurt. I feel a surge of energy some mornings when I realize I can walk outside in just one layer of clothing. I am welcomed and warmed by the intense high-altitude sun. The green that seems to be suddenly everywhere feels warm against my eyes, the color of this beginning.

I have experienced so many beginnings in my little life. The beginning of memories: My grandfather holding me at his mother’s funeral. His emotion in that moment was so intense that I stored every detail, the dress I was wearing, the feel of his hands on my fair, tiny arms, the sound of his cracking grief-laden voice; I created my first memory, the beginning of a deep space where the most important moments of my life are treasured away. The beginning of adulthood: A great leap across state lines to a place where I knew no one and had nothing more than the couch of a relative stranger and a part-time job. The beginning of motherhood: A beautiful baby boy and who brought with him an immeasurable love. The beginning of my creative life, which happens every time I start an art or craft project, or begin a sentence.

Middle-life brings about a sharp awareness that our projects, our places, our communities, our roles; they close like doors behind us. We begin and begin and begin, but these days I can see that there are endings too; a fact that just makes the apple sweeter.

Day 43

gravity

If you force us, you do it with the patience of a river shaping a canyon. You are insistent steady eternal energy and all our choosing seems to lead to one choice: stand still or surrender. So, I give up.

…yet, I think there must be places in me that don’t move, places that I keep still, places that you must work around. I think we must hold some ground, demand that the river move around us. At the root of beauty is a holy struggle.

The artist is forever working with the tension of this force that wants to pull everything down and away. The artist holds some part of herself and her work close, creating tension, while at the same time letting other parts of her work break loose and take her away.

Gravity is the force that we forget is there, working against or with us, depending on whether we want to fall to our rest or fly, and of course we must do both.

When I am playing with gravity, literally and metaphorically, I feel like a fish in the river. Sometimes I find a bank to rest under, where gravity passes by in a hurry. Sometimes, I get right in there and let the force take me where it pleases, getting a bit banged up here and there. Working my way upstream is the hardest, though also the most rewarding. Finding myself tired, but driven by some innate urge to work through and beyond the most powerful force of nature; for the sake of beauty.

 

Day 42

seen

Imagine you are in the room with the girl who is pulling on her panties and bra, kneeling by her bed in front of the mirror. She looks back at it over a perfect shoulder, camera in hand, feet curled under her bottom, breasts just hidden, just visible in lace. You, off to the side, notice her face adjust once, twice, eight times as she presses the button over and over. You can hear her knees and feet rubbing on the wood floor, as she adjusts and adjusts. When you see the end result, the picture, you don’t recognize her. She looks so self-assured, so electric, Platonic: the ideal girl. She is beautiful, but what you will remember is the way she laughed at you watching her try to capture the essence of herself in that moment. She has been seen, by ten thousand people, as an apple they all want to lick, kiss, cut and devour. She has been seen by you, who want to know her.

Imagine you are there, at the end of a long hike. She is sweaty and breathing hard. You both look out at the perfect vista of twenty or thirty snow-capped peaks. There is a green glow to the foreground of alpine trees below you in the adjacent valley, and beyond the clouds and the blue sky make the mountains look like the shoulders of women draped in chiffon. You take out your phones and take turns standing in front of this beauty. Ten thousand people see and are impressed by your accomplishment, by the view, by the effortless smiles. Also, you see each other, for a short moment, between shots. Pause now for a minute and notice that here, at the edge of the world, surrounded by nature, you have a companion, another person who wanted to see this with you, who stumbled and tripped up here to stand, with you.

There is being seen, and there is being seen. As images, some of us are seen by many, even millions of people. Also, we are seen by those in the room, by our companions, lovers, roommates, work mates. Today, we live in a cloud, an image in front of this mirror, on that mountain top, in the restaurants and bars behind the perfectly plated food and crafted cocktails. But we also still live in these rooms, and at the end of long hikes, and across the table from our dinner dates. We live in two places at once, and an impossible tension has been created; not because we in exist in two places, but because we are straddling the fence between being seen and being known. Yes, to be an image, or words on a page, or a drawing, or to visually share our amazing accomplishments, is to be seen—and that is one thing. But, to be known is to be held by the eyes in the room, to have the sighs and giggles and brush-strokes and pen-strokes be heard. To be known is to be pulled from the frame of that shot you were about to take of your perfect red lips, and to be covered by the blanket and held by the strong arms of the one who loves you.

Day 41

girl

As she walked through the woods, a breeze followed, picking up strands of her hair and moving them one way then another. The pines caught some of them with their long dull needles, hooked and snagged her hair for the birds. An owl slept in a tree to the left, its feathers shifting as she passed. A mouse moved quick to the roots of a bush, instinctively and barely avoiding her boot. She was oblivious to all of this, her mind having rushed on ahead to keep up with what her eyes were after, in the distance, where he walked toward the edge of the trees. She could not, in her present state, distracted as she was, be expected to notice much else besides his shoulders, his wide gait, his large hands brushing back branches here and there before diving back into his jacket pockets. She could not be blamed for missing the way the wood adjusted its branches, parting just a bit for her and then closing back up behind her like curtains. This forest knew her, had been the ground on which she took her first steps, tiny hands pressing against fallen mossy trunks. It recognized her always, and moved with and around her in a sweet familial way. She was just twenty now, and following this man into the trees, she no longer felt wonder at the way the forest stirred at her approach. Nothing distracted her, nothing could break the tension of her anxious anticipation, her hope that this man would inexplicably turn to wait for her.

He reached the water a good five minutes before she broke through the low branches, and as she picked her way out into the stream, hopping from one stone to the next, he was already fishing. She knew well enough to stay quiet, to fall back, settle into a corner and not interrupt him. Four hours later she was still there, sitting with her back to a mossy tree, feet bare and playing with the current just beyond shore. He put his hand out to help her to her feet and they wordlessly returned to the truck, where he opened the door for her as the sun dropped behind the hills.