Crash, boom, bang.

That's the psychic sound of me losing all of my FireFox settings and bookmarks. A year's worth of resources, business advice, websites, recipes, links, and various sundry herbal compilations (not to mention maps, directions, comics, and blogs)... gone.

The initial horror and "oh my god, I have to fix this" wide-eyed, breathe-in-through-the-nose-and-hold-it emergency response has faded to a deep-exhalation, "this is sort of freeing" understanding.

So I don't have all those carefully organized organizations and individuals and recipes at the tips of my fingers anymore. So what? So I find them again. Or I find new ones. Or - and this ties in with the whole "pack my life into car or cabin" downsizing motif I seem to be working with these days - I do without. (Though in all honesty I will mourn those recipes). Still.

I left the job I loved more than any other. I did without.
I lost the relationship I loved for years. I did without.
I even gave up the giant, honkin', super-comfy California king memory foam mattress and shiny black headboard, and (speaking of black) the black mold-filled apartment that I'd also filled with friends and photos and at one point, about 500 pounds of apples, and you know what? I did without.

And in each case, in each instance of separation and letting go, I wound up better for it.

I stopped counseling those hard-up, hard-lived teenagers who hid their fears beneath violence and bravado, and found my way to a gentler, younger group of learners, fresh and eager and ready to smother me in hugs whenever I appeared.
I said goodbye to saving loved ones from themselves, and lo-and-behold, the universe presented me with a man who needs no saving; a man I would trust to save me, but who recognizes that I am my own savior and the hero of my own journey, and who is equally in balance and in joy. 
And as for the bed.... well, a bed's a bed. And if I sleep a little less deeply on the hard earth or the wooden loft, at least I wake up that much closer to my Maker, to the myriad other creatures of shared existence, to the sounds and the clean air and the breaking dawn that lights my ready-to-traverse path.

So. Maybe I'm hiding my technical ineptitude behind lots of hippie, frou-frou, New-Age bullshit, and this is all an elaborate form of tree-hugging, minimalist denial. Or maybe those bookmarks just aren't worth fighting to find. Either way, they're gone... and once again, I'm fine, and moving on.

The Journey 

-by Mary Oliver-

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.

South Burlington, VT

I love the view from the office windows, particularly the one to the right of the computer: perfectly framed by the wooden trim, a stately locust holds its own amidst a gloriously swaying and bobbing yard of wild flowers. Wild grape, thistle (the one open bloom closest to the building is absolutely magenta right now), goldenrod and yellow wild indigo, the ocher seed-spike of a curly dock, at least 5 different kinds of tall grasses, and of course the creamy open blossoms and witchy, tumble-weed heads of Queen Anne's Lace, which all the children know as wild carrot, and vigorously uprooted to show to me every time we went on nature walks at the beginning of summer. And I mean every, single time.
"Look, wild carrot!" (rip!).
"Hey, wild carrot!" (rip!).
"Here, smell - wild carrot!" (rip!).
Did we actually cook any of this wild carrot, even once, this whole summer? Nope. Too busy harvesting St. John's Wort and plantain and cooking up mint tea and clover fritters and steamed day lily buds with butter.
Luckily, all of this wanton admiration has done nothing but enhance the Queen Anne's Lace population, disturbing the ground and leaving room for new plants to take hold. (I didn't tell them this, of course. If I had, I think they'd have torn out every taproot they could grab, in the hopes of an even better harvest. If there're two things kids excel at, its over-the-top optimism and vigorous destruction).

Right now, the five o'clock sunlight is shining through the grape leaves and illuminating everything that isn't bathed in sighing, tender shadow. Every so often, milkweed seeds float by with a silly, up-and-down motion, and when the wind gusts, everybody else dances and scuttles around like boats at the end of their moorings or dogs on a leash, testing the strength of their tethers.
They remind me of adolescents; literally rooted in summer's bounty, yet so attuned to the season's upcoming change that they can't help but test their limits with every breeze.
Soak it up now, kiddos!

The Lover of Earth Cannot Help Herself, by Mary Oliver

In summer,
through the fields
of wild mustard,
then goldenrod,
I walk brushing
the wicks
of their bodies
and the bright hair
of their heads-
and in fact
I lie down
that the little weightless
pieces of gold
may float over me,
shining in the air,
falling in my hair,
touching my face-
ah, sweet-smelling,
glossy and
colorful world,
I say,
even as I begin
to feel
my left eye then the right eye
begin to burn
and twitch
and grow very large-
even as I begin
to weep,
to sneeze
in this irrepressible
seizure
of summerlove.

(Hmm, Mary Oliver, maybe if you don't lie down in the ragweed...) I empathize though, really, I do.

Peonies and Poems

And then the day came when the risk it took to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” -Anais Nin