Rabbits and Windows

Yesterday, today, tomorrow--what's it all about? The Tao counsels us (without counseling us) that ego can only exist in the past or the future. In the moment, in the "now," its little dirty birdy feet can find no purchase. 

My experience in general has confirmed this, and it is ever more confirmed on the Property that my husband bought for us six months ago. Before I get into that let me make this PERFECTLY clear: I am a city girl, always have been, and up until very recently I described myself as "indoorsy". I had a rich indoor life--I said it often and it was true. I am an artist and a writer and I love being in bed. I am in bed right now! Anytime I can do something in bed, that is exactly from where I'll be doing it. The outside seemed so overblown. I love nature, I'm not a psychopath, but my experience was limited and I was okay with that.

Richard Addams asserted in his book Watership Down that when people claim to like a natural force, winter for instance, it is only because of their ability to survive it in comfort, observing it from a distance, say, through a window or in short intentional spurts. If your entire existence shifted to the degree that it shifts for a permanent resident of nature (like a rabbit!) you may accept winter, or respect winter, or be-at-one with winter, but you wouldn't be able to claim to LOVE it--it's just not possible when you have no choice in your place in it. People love winter and enjoy winter when they feel powerful enough to keep it at bay.

Winter has always been my favorite season for the many reasons of the privileged human--including the lack of expectation others have for being outside in it. I live in Portland, Oregon, and I have for 21 years. Let me tell you, in a city where it can rain 9 months of the year when the sun comes out--look out! Not only do the pasty emerge and squint their eyes but they demand to know WHAT YOU HAVE DONE TO ENJOY THE WEATHER. Did you go outside? Did you take advantage of the weather? What did you do in the sun? Did you get a chance to get outside in the sun and enjoy it and do things in it and what did you do, tell me, tell me right now!

I hate that shit.

In the winter you don't have to explain ANYTHING. That's the season for me.

Keeping things at bay--that's also something I have enjoyed most of my life. 

But I fell in love with a man raised in the country, who has "people", and who knows things I've only read about or seen in movies. He knows how to harness a team of horses and plow a field (wildly esoteric because almost no one actually does that anymore!) he knows how to grow, mow, bail and store hay, he knows how to dig a well, he know how to cull a herd, he knows how to build a proper gate...well, I could go on and on. It sounds like I married Blank Ingalls, but he's actually an undercover country boy. He courted me like a proper Portlander, taking me to music shows of local bands no one ever heard of, small out of the way hipster restaurants, buying me little gifts from the Portland Saturday Market (he did ask me to go hiking ONCE but I refuse to hike. Ever.  In our house it is now actually referred to as "The H Word".) I had no idea who I was falling in love with until it was too late. 

Too late!

I started this post with the intention of impartially surmising how likely it would be for me to only document Today. Clearly, that is not going to happen. What I can do, though, is be authentic --so that even when I delve into What Was or What Might Be, I approach it with my best self; the person I am today.