January 10
I have felt a breed of indolence creeping about within me, my quiet fire subdued the last few weeks. Weathering the holidays was no simple chore; the island saw record snowfall & an enduring cold snap. Back & forth between two homes, tending to the farm & the garden, trying to hold our feet firm on the floor. & now it is rain that falls, relentless, wind-thrashed across the point. The swells come from all sides, tide-low, cresting ever in swales, a kind of energy to the water that sends a formidable warning. There are times I look across at Blakely or Guermes & think of the crossing enthusiastically, the dip of the oars in the water, the supple play of current. Then there are times when I see the buoy stationed at ten feet deep off the pebbled beach, whipping & yanking violently in a series of contortions that gives a shudder, a sort of exaggerated pantomime of struggle.
Patient moments, moments of sudden panic, toil & wonder, abiding joy & a slow pensive saturnalia. What this island makes us do, our quiet hours all before us bare & just so. One does not, can not avoid one’s life in a place like this, tucked down at the bottom of a forest of fir, ocean on two sides, thick copses on the others. & I think this is the point of it, in the end, that just as the novelty of our lives here lent us a kind of shock of the new, a child’s capacity for simple awe, our quotidian lives demand the same scrutiny & the same care, even if that ongoing act of autotelic taxonomy isn’t always ready to greet us with easy meaning. It’s difficult in one regard & entirely easy in another—but its difficulty is yet generative, & that is what I welcome. I have found that eschewing personal resourcefulness in the face of plain dailiness is half of the problem for me. It is so incredibly easy to lose accountability, to embrace distraction rather than fumbling with a present rich with fallow meaning. I have not answered my days, & for that I will need to make amends.
But even as we encounter & wade through the difficult, there remains blessing in the gentle breeze. Stef found work with a classical music label by the ferry landing. We continue to meet people slowly & encourage the friendships we’ve already established. We are able, now, to build a foundation from which we can take a better measure of the place, gauge the likelihood of our staying even through summer. We have worked with no small tenacity to position ourselves where we have in terms of our careers; perhaps our coming here was reckless with regards to that work. I think, though, a lesson in balance, in priorities, in values was our primary target, without our knowing it. Our perspectives, our sieves, our compasses retooled.
& so I go about my tasks. Trim back the plum tree. Ditch the geraniums taken by the cold. Service the tractor engine. Put a new chain on the saw. Trench out a drain for the shed. & in between, I go about my lessons. Watch the eagles in their unwavering hunt. Regard the tortured, skeletal boughs of the locust grove spare against the sunset. Note the tide.
I am slowly enriched this way.
Patient moments, moments of sudden panic, toil & wonder, abiding joy & a slow pensive saturnalia. What this island makes us do, our quiet hours all before us bare & just so. One does not, can not avoid one’s life in a place like this, tucked down at the bottom of a forest of fir, ocean on two sides, thick copses on the others. & I think this is the point of it, in the end, that just as the novelty of our lives here lent us a kind of shock of the new, a child’s capacity for simple awe, our quotidian lives demand the same scrutiny & the same care, even if that ongoing act of autotelic taxonomy isn’t always ready to greet us with easy meaning. It’s difficult in one regard & entirely easy in another—but its difficulty is yet generative, & that is what I welcome. I have found that eschewing personal resourcefulness in the face of plain dailiness is half of the problem for me. It is so incredibly easy to lose accountability, to embrace distraction rather than fumbling with a present rich with fallow meaning. I have not answered my days, & for that I will need to make amends.
But even as we encounter & wade through the difficult, there remains blessing in the gentle breeze. Stef found work with a classical music label by the ferry landing. We continue to meet people slowly & encourage the friendships we’ve already established. We are able, now, to build a foundation from which we can take a better measure of the place, gauge the likelihood of our staying even through summer. We have worked with no small tenacity to position ourselves where we have in terms of our careers; perhaps our coming here was reckless with regards to that work. I think, though, a lesson in balance, in priorities, in values was our primary target, without our knowing it. Our perspectives, our sieves, our compasses retooled.
& so I go about my tasks. Trim back the plum tree. Ditch the geraniums taken by the cold. Service the tractor engine. Put a new chain on the saw. Trench out a drain for the shed. & in between, I go about my lessons. Watch the eagles in their unwavering hunt. Regard the tortured, skeletal boughs of the locust grove spare against the sunset. Note the tide.
I am slowly enriched this way.
Comments