burrowing
escaping the shallows for deeper earth
There’s not just “something tangible” that’s been calling me. It is the tangible itself. I can feel the want of it weighing on my bones. I may write that I can hear it and you may think my words a figure of speech, but I can assure you, those siren songs are lonesome and incessant and they are as real as the sound of my own heartbeat thumping in my ears at night.
It’s been a year, that’s for certain. Book editing, then releasing, then marketing as best I could. The end of relationships. The end of lives. Heartbreak and the tumultuous muddy times of a life folded into the tumultuous muddy times of our times. I have found myself slipping through the cracks as tasks and responsibilities insisted upon their importance. And so, here I am - a little bewildered, a tad untethered, finding my way home in time for Christmas.
I’m craving the real more than ever. The demands of my book release has meant more time on the computer than I’ve ever had. I was overwhelmed by it, but I’m slowly coming to a genuine feeling of gratitude for the understanding that experience has brought to me. It’s like I can clearly not just understand the cost of trading our real lives for these digital facsimiles, but I can feel how it changes us, what it asks of us. I’m craving smells and touch and wind on my face. I’m craving the warmth of human beings and I will take them however they may come. I don’t want the refinement and gloss of anything.
It’s with those sentiments that I headed into November knowing that I needed to figure out whatever I was going to figure out to start intentionally shaping my life instead of being swept along some weird stream I don’t recall choosing to wade in. So, I’ve started to do that again. And it started with a beautiful Chriskindl market with a dear friend.
A few weeks ago I lured said friend to a little corner of our province some five hours away, but what’s five hours when you have good conversation? It goes in the blink of an eye. It wasn’t only a traditional market full of artisan made crafts and wonderful organic and biodynamic food, big beautiful horses pulling us through the night, bonfires and enchanting lights and bells, but there was a symphony. Not any old symphony, but a live symphony of Handel’s Messiah in a barn with the cows.