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Saturday, September 13, 2014

Light Rain, Dark Green



This farm has a calming effect on me. As I've probably mentioned before, it's divided by a stand of hemlock that climb a steep hill.  They are not a wall, but a depth of green into which your eyes can fall, into which your eyes search for the source of forest sounds that weigh on your curiosity.  Eventually, you succumb.  You drop the spade, leave the weeding half done.  The dog looks up from her spot on the ground and her thoughts read, 'he's going?  I hadn't suspected that.'

I've been thinking a lot about death.  Funny how I've been detached from such an impactful inevitability for so long.  I want to matter more while I'm alive.  I want to trip over the thing I'm supposed to do before I die.  I think that if this happens something might be different, that I'll be able to let go more easily, that dying won't hurt so much.  I guess I haven't really thought about why I need to matter more while I'm alive.  Maybe I just need attention.

I am a snowball of defects.  I am an engine that backfires the same chugs, the same stalls over and over again. The only virtue of my imperfection is that I have been leveled by it so frequently that I am left with a level field upon which to think, act and explore my life.  I'm at such a depth, my frequent falls from grace don't even skin my knees.

I had a  meeting recently with a man who possesses drive, brains and a breadth of interest. He boasted that as part of a recruiting protocol that was undertaken by a firm interested in hiring him, more than 20 thousand dollars was spent on the interview process.  And I asked, "What were they trying to determine?  Clearly you are qualified for the position."  And he returned a question, "Well don't you think that they should be careful?  What do you think that they should be looking for?"  And I responded, "I think that they should be looking for someone who they can talk to, when, after they're done, they have better, clearer ideas than when they started."  I think he thought I was belittling the recruiting process of this company that hired him and now that I reflect upon it, I was.  How is it that you measure an individual?

I want to be selfish, indulgent, lauded, beautiful, dominant, rich, gifted and strong and I think I am capable of pushing others out of my way in order to get there, blinded as I am by own ignorance and lack of virtue.  What an appropriate landscape for this discovery:  yellowing fields rolling to the bottom of a ravine where there's a patch of level earth big enough for a polo match.  With the wise hemlock sentinels above me not just masking, but making a darkness from which there are  drums, hoots and shrieks.  What a happy idiot I am tumbling about like a toddler on a mat.  Watch me drop to my knees, not to pray, but to scoop dirt with my hands, to dig potatoes with my fingers, to fall before  licentious fantasy.

 The bottom of the earth is not all fire.  In my hell there is dark green and light rain.