One Hundred Acre Woods

One of the most difficult tasks that I face in my life is the seperation between seeing each thing for what it is and connecting each experience to something that I have already seen. Are the changing colours in Southern Spain reminecent of Autumn in Michigan? Or are the yellow leaves, the river’s wind, the ploughman’s land, the dry grass, just, well, Spain? And is the beauty in dawn lovely because it is lovely, or because it strikes some memory? I’m not sure if either understading is better or worse, or if it is the misigenation between past and present that makes our life experience so stark and interconnected. And do these things melt to become our future? Is it our experiences that shape our understanding, or our eyes that create the present? And what if we didn’t have eyes? If we just heard and felt. Would our connection to certain things continue to be through touch and smell. Would we say that such and such feels like Winter, or such and such smells like raspberry jam? Or would everything be everything. Is everything, everything? Or is each thing a part of the whole? And what is the whole? Is it life? God, life is such a huge thing, filled with so many little intricacies. I love those delicate pieces, the blue and purples in our skin, the seasons in our structure.

And then I look around me, to the front, to my sides, above, behind, everywhere. I see curtains and wood, plaster, woven rugs, yellow sheets, books, skipping stones, walnuts, lampshades. But most of all, I see the white spots on my fingernails, the cut on my left hand. I see my life in my body. When the evening time is cool, my feet are covered by wool. It reminds me of Dexter, this little farm that I love to get chili peppers from after the first frost, pumpkins in October. The man who works there has calloused fingers and steady strides. He is, in a way, his land. His acres are his legs and his hands the soil. To tell you the truth, I love that we see everything in everything. That our life can be the ocean, the sea – Can be lake michigan and the dunes. And that at eventide, or midnight, throughout every second of our life in this body, that we are always relating one thing to another. And although nothing can possibly be the same, it is amazing that home expands to rural Andalucia, to salt water.

Sometimes when I wander I think about One Hundred Acre Woods. But I think that in life, sometimes we are Eeyore, and other times we are Pooh. And that both are okay, and are part of the balance, and that after all, honey reminds me of everything, everything, the whole universe – five years old on soft wheat bread, afternoons with ella campbell, six o’clock lavender tea, dried out winter sage, apples with abby, burt lake, second time toasted angelo’s bread, and on and on.

For now, I wake up in the morning and make my coffee. We work, we sweat,

I think that it is while travelling, while our bodies are so displaced, that we are able to connect the historical to the momentary.

So here’s to, well, home.