December 8
A light, at last. We are hired to care for a six acre garden, flush with rhododendron & rosebush & god knows what, to weed the beds, to amend the rocky soil, to propagate & split stems, to till the compost. I will have a tractor, a chipper, a machine that will split the wood for me. We will live in the basement apartment of a mansion poised above Rosario Strait, 1800 feet of our own private beach beneath, the water swelling & cutting hard half a mile off the shoreline. We move on Wednesday.
We almost tremble at it, the way I imagine a pauper trembles at a crust of bread after its long absence, a kind of framing in which to ask, simply, is this real? What telling of my life involves this chapter? It will, for all of its fundamental surreality, again, prove a wonder, without doubt. That we have been absurdly fortunate along the way is without question. That we have faced enormous difficulty along the way, too, is just as certain. & here, on the other side of the island entire, we finally, for some solid time, lay our heads. As soon as we are settled, as soon as we are routinely involved in our work, as soon as we are, in short, assured of our continuing felicity, then perhaps this ghostly tiredness will rise from my bones like some slow fog & I will find myself vibrant anew. To wake & wake again & know yourself settled, if only momentarily. An embrace
We almost tremble at it, the way I imagine a pauper trembles at a crust of bread after its long absence, a kind of framing in which to ask, simply, is this real? What telling of my life involves this chapter? It will, for all of its fundamental surreality, again, prove a wonder, without doubt. That we have been absurdly fortunate along the way is without question. That we have faced enormous difficulty along the way, too, is just as certain. & here, on the other side of the island entire, we finally, for some solid time, lay our heads. As soon as we are settled, as soon as we are routinely involved in our work, as soon as we are, in short, assured of our continuing felicity, then perhaps this ghostly tiredness will rise from my bones like some slow fog & I will find myself vibrant anew. To wake & wake again & know yourself settled, if only momentarily. An embrace
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