Sunday, March 16, 2014

The Storm Came And It Is Fine


Well, the rain did come after the sky became more and more ominous and the birds did roost in the trees, making warnful chatter and they are still doing that. It's strange. Perhaps they are merely complaining. I do not know. I could live to be a thousand and never quite understand the language of birds.
I brought the baby chicks in long before the rain started, dumped my wheelbarrow full of the weeds I'd pulled. Mr. Moon came in from the garage where he was working on his project and we took a sweet, middle of the afternoon nap and the thunder boomed and lightening cracked, but still, I slept, waking to house-shaking, falling right back asleep. The window above my head when I am in bed leads out to the little side-porch and the rain falls on its tin roof with hypnotic and soporific effect and is one more thing I love about this house.

It has been ten years now since we moved here, and the time has gone like a shot. I can't believe that- a decade! and yet, it is as true as true. I was in the last year of my forties when we bought this house. Now I am about to turn sixty. I am still beset with wonder that I get to call these floors, these walls mine, although I know in a house this old that I am merely one of the many caretakers of it in a long, long line of them. It feels no more possible to "own" this house than to "own" the oak trees which are on the property. How can one own a tree which is over two hundred years old? I do not think it can be done. Once, when I was doing LSD, I saw in a vision the tiny sliver of earth which we humans walk on, build on, and think of as our own when below it, the true volume of the eons of the way the planet has formed rests and churns and melts and becomes solid again and it amused me and it continues to amuse me, how we, unless we are seeking something under the surface- oil or gold or silver or...whatever- hardly ever consider that which lays far beneath our feet. Do we think that if we own the dirt on top, we own everything underneath it to the center of the earth? It struck me as foolish as a child's efforts to dig to China; perhaps even more so.

But that has never stopped me from wanting to own pieces of dirt. I just realize the silliness of the deed, of our human preoccupation with that which we are personally involved, ignoring the huge mass of what lies unseen. I just realize how short our time here on this planet is and we can own thousands of acres of this good dirt and yet, when it all comes to an end for each of us, we can call as our own only the small piece of it in which our bodies shall rest and even then, as the eons pass, so too shall our bones that lie in that earth and we shall be able to claim it no more but will, in fact, be part of it.

I am very glad I did those sorts of mind-altering drugs in my younger years. I learned things that I might never in a long life have learned without those experiences. I think I learned a sort of love and compassion and tenderness for the human race that I never would have known. I think I learned how we struggle with our frailties, our fears, our attempts to do what is right, generally. I learned that all is one, we are all connected with every bit of it, and that seemed to me to be the Big Lesson that every psychedelic experience offered- that when I truly felt that, truly knew what it meant- that All IS One- I had peaked in that specific trip. And so it was.
And I have never forgotten.

Well, that's certainly not what I thought I was going to write about this evening. Mr. Moon and I are going to play cards and then I'll heat up some delicious leftovers and we shall eat and we will sleep tonight with the falling of rain on the porch outside our room. Our room for now, at least, in this old beloved house.

The rain falls, the birds have grown silent, it is coming-in darkness. The chickens have left the porch and are in the hen house, gone already to roost, following their own chicken wisdom. I love this place, my home, my little piece of dirt and the rain is a reminder of blessing as it helps to sustain all of that which I love, especially the trees, so old, so majestic.
I do not really own them but have paid to have the honor to worship them up close.
And that is truly good enough for me, now, and an honor I never would have imagined. Like so much in my life. Never dreamed. Never imagined.

The rain sings the song of this good life which for some reason I find myself in and I am most content.

13 comments:

  1. A contented day here too. Rain falling all day. Took a nap and just enjoyed chilling.

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  2. Syd- The older I become, the more I appreciate the rain and the days it provides us for rest.

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  3. You're going to have to quit calling Sunday posts "batshit crazy."

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  4. Here in the drought of TX, there are signs about dry wells, prayers for rain. Reading your last few posts have made me lament-it's like the dust bowl, here. Rain on a tin roof must sound like angel tears-there, church on Sunday.

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  5. If there's one thing I definitely miss about the east coast, it's the kind of storm that you've described, that sound and the patter and everything washed clean. I loved reading this post, lying there in your beautiful old house, the majestic oaks bearing the weight of water --

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  6. Land ownership IS silly, deep down. I mean, who really owns the land? How CAN we own land? Property lines are all imaginary, backed up with money, which is just paper, someone's promise. The land is the land, the trees are the trees, here before us and (hopefully, in the case of the trees) here long after.

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  7. That nap next to your love with the rain pattering outside sounds simply divine.

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  8. if there is meaning in this life you are right there in it, right in the yolk of it, the richest part.

    thank you for showing that it's possible.

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  9. Anonymous- And wouldn't that be nice?

    Ashley- The very first blog post I wrote was about a draught. About how desolate it felt when the rains did not come. I know what you're talking about and that is why I love this rain.

    Elizabeth- "Bearing the weight of water." Yes.

    Steve Reed- Exactly.

    Angella- It was. Truly.

    Jo- Thank you.

    Tearful- Ah. The yolk of it. Perfect.

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  10. This LSD thing is fascinating. A friend of mine just told me that the one time she did it, she realized how she truly, deeply disliked the man she was with, and might still be with, if the LSD hadn't woken her eyes to her own heart. I'm still too scared to do LSD but I've heard more than one person say what you have--that the experiences were heart-opening and long lasting.

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  11. Ms. Vesuvius- I agree. Heart AND mind opening. And in a most powerful and lasting way. For me, at least. I am glad for your friend that the acid helped her see what she needed to see.

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  12. OMG if I took acid...but this post made me crave it, in spite of never having tried it in this lifetime. Wild writing!

    Humans are the only features who think we own things. We are so dumb in our "thinking."

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