Finding Balance

In the seventh grade, a new friend and I seemed to become aware at around the same time of how ironic and paradoxical the universe is, and we reveled in its absurdity, sometimes saying things in a sing-song exaggerated voice like, "Oh, what a cute little puppy; let's kill it" and then laughing uproariously at the utter ridiculousness of such a statement (and you, dear reader, may be thinking at this point----oh, my, these were future serial killers!). Fortunately, we were both merely budding English majors, but, to me, walking the tightrope of paradox continues to be one of the most interesting aspects of negotiating this life we are tasked to figure out how to live (as we simultaneously go about the business of dying).

Some of my favorite paradoxes include:

Everyone is incomparably unique. We are all alike.

Seek and you shall find. Desire is suffering.

Don't hide your light. Don't brag.

Become as a little child. Learn as much as you can.

The kingdom of heaven is within you. 

And the silly seriousness of our animal friends embody a similar feeling. . . 

Mauser (our dear furniture-shredder), napping

Kipper, trying to nap, as his "mom" tries a halloween mask on him

Gratitude

For a perfect pair of blushing pears,

blackberry cordial now steeping in the cabinet, stirred weekly, with anticipation of special occasion sipping in dark December,

agates in the blessing basket, and a fall bounty of squash.

Versions of Home

When my husband lost his job back in August, I dealt with the onslaught of sudden insecurity by diving in, head first. That is, I immediately pictured us getting rid of almost everything and starting anew in a more ideal place, a simpler, smaller, closer-to-nature place where I'd keep bees, a big garden, goats and donkeys, lots of cats and dogs, sheep (for spinning my own wool to knit), a cow, chickens.

Sure. All that in our new, ideal home, with a new ideal ME!

I exaggerate only a little, and----perhaps fortunately----not one person made a serious inquiry about our house here in town while we had it up for sale for six weeks before we decided, almost simultaneously, that we aren't going anywhere right now, that we're happy where we are, that we cannot afford a farm!

Yet as I dove in, I saw myself acting (again) as if life is merely a series of questions answered with confident finality and accompanying problems resolutely solved while ticking them off the checklist (as I brush my hands together afterward and let out a loud sigh of relief: "So glad that's taken care of!").

Home has been a kind of trigger point for me for many years (not to mention the concept of ideal), which has hurt me (nothing is ever perfect) and helped me (by giving me a wall to hit my head against; yes, my head is hard).

Considering what home has meant to me thus far allows me to see my propensity for living in my head, for dreaming my life away. . . for enjoying the thought of something more than its reality. I think that makes me somewhat of a voyeur. I like reading about people who climb mountains and work hard at being exotically independent, yet I seem not to have the energy or will to actually accomplish all of that myself because I also like to feel free and sometimes to travel at a moment's notice (and who would care for all those animals?).

Yes, I was told many times growing up that I like to have my cake and eat it, too. To continue the diving metaphor, just picture me face down in a cake (chocolate, preferably).

The photograph shows an embroidery project I completed while impatiently waiting for my only child to be born when I was 25 (1979) and imagining an ideal home, along with a decades-later mosaic glass version of the same scene, and a little needlework house that my grandmother sewed and gave to me.

Blame

I've been noting lately how much I seem to believe that if I can BLAME a certain entity for what I view as an "unfairness," then my life will somehow be better. But it goes beyond blame and on to punishment. I wanted the person who unfairly fired my husband from his job of 26 years, where he excelled, to suffer.

And what good, really, does any of that do? It is all merely my desperate clenching to a view of reality (that things should be fair [i.e., the good rewarded/the bad punished], and if they are, then I can be happier because [surely] the world is a much better place to be) that is rather black and white and assumes that a world with no suffering is somehow "better."

Yet I can acknowledge that suffering, that "bad things," (in contrast to the "good") can enhance our appreciation for the good. Long days of dreary fog and cold days suddenly punctuated by clear blue skies and mild temperatures certainly cast us outside, looking up and singing praises.

A tendency to such easy categorization may be a trait of the Gatherer in me, the one who loves to pick blackberries, bring them home, and cook up a sticky cobbler. As the many photos and words in this blog attest, I love sifting and sorting through pebbles for agates. Finding the wheat among the chaff----makes one feel, well, "special." I (and no one else) found this!

I do believe that each of us is special and unique, just as I also believe that we are all the same, and it is my simultaneous beliefs in opposites, my propensity to live in paradox, that has caused me to feel rather uncomfortable much of the time, as if something is wrong with me ("Get off that damn fence," I'm told, again and again). This tendency to think that something is wrong causes me to feel depressed. . .

Clenching these ideas to me with their comfortable patterns of familiarity ("comfortable" is good, isn't it?!; "depression" is bad, right?!!) reminds me that I keep THINKING that through my careful reasoning I will somehow come to The Answer (the One that will settle it all!). Hah!

Yet my experience tells me that answerS tend to come from surprising elsewheres, and that I must let go of my desire for blame and punishment and focus instead on my own part in this new reality: I wanted a new life with my husband; I hated his old job as much as he'd come to hate it.

Oh, my. My poor little brain sure likes to spin round and round in those old trenches. But the sun is shining out there, too.

Jon holds a perfect honey crisp apple plucked from our tree (note his guitar-string calluses)