THRESHOLDS

spring gardens, recalibration, shadows

In changing a whole life structure, it is natural to have to get to know the new lay of the land. There is a learning period where a recalibration must occur. Can there be trust that one will be met within what is new? Everything here is gentle: the learning process, the unfolding, the threshold. There is a sense of moving forward, but also returning. There is an allowance of the time that it takes and the shifts that must be accepted. Quietly building. At the work bench slowly unfolding something. Softly strengthening. Gentle lingering connections. No longer in pain, no longer in the old systems, actively building one’s own way.

Leaning forward, but with a subtle glance backward. A threshold spread. A shaping. Everything is much more interesting here. Enlivened. There is a force to it, but a soft force. A meaningful propulsion. A process of forward facing that is not foolish or blind to itself. It has different goals and things in mind. A strange and syncopated new timing. Not a march, but a wander through a new place, unhurried. Thrilling, but not stupid. All of the stupidity seems to be passed by, and what is left is all that is necessary. There is no longer a need for stupidity. In its place is mutuality, exchange, compatibility. There is no longer a need for proving, but instead a need for exploration. Instead quietude. Instead a desire to know oneself. It is the only thing left in me that desires to create.

If I am left with a coffee in the garden, to my own thoughts when I am finally excused from the performative world, I play cribbage on my phone, I read Murakami in the sauna, I mend things back into play. I type sitting crosslegged on my high, wide couch with my little table in front of me. I read about the shadow and how to reclaim it, I read of the underworld and how to traverse it. I read about enlivenment and how to notice it. If I am left with a coffee in the garden, on occasion I garden. I garden until I have in front of me an oasis to sit in with a coffee. Great. It all works out then. There is nothing of import here. Nothing of import to finish or to accomplish. There are some leaves to clean out between a shrub and the garage, if I feel like it, and some lavender to replant. I can clean out the fountain and go to the hardware store to find some paint to repaint the exterior. There is a birdhouse to move to a better spot. When the time comes, I can source out a creeping hydrangea and start a trellis for it. I can have another coffee.

There is always work to do. Passage to be paid, the usual. These things are here with me as well. I have commissions to tend to for a big house. I have to go and measure the walls and sort out the details. I have to pay my phone bill and pick up some things from the tailor and the leather worker. But first, I am just going to sit outside in the half light and absorb the morning. The peonies are shooting up against the shadows. The night jasmine took—of course it did. The lavender survived but just barely. The hydrangea tree in the back is budding and will be the first to pop off. I love egging it on, the little show off. One of the dogs is creeping around the yard looking for trouble that it will likely not find. There is not trouble lurking. Just shadows in the half light.