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Years later
Sep. 18th, 2018 09:36 amI've had my house for more than a year. I've overwintered (more snow than usual, they said) and my land has provided (a hundred ducks, geese, chickens, and quail; soon there will be a harvest of about half of them; my garden got frosted and so I have a couple 5-gallon buckets of potatoes, some carrots, some beets, and some cabbage/brussels sprout greens for sauerkraut mostly) and I have evacuated for fire, and now it's frost again. The wheel turns, always, whether I write about it or not.
I am in relationship with my land. My dogs are in relationship with my land and with me; they are protectors and friends. When I got Thea I thought of her as the protector spirit of my land, as Avallu is my own protector. She's been spayed, is growing up a little, is playful and serious. I aspire to that easily. Avallu is more fierce; he's aggressive to potential harms, and absolutely fearless in asking for affection. I'm more afraid to aspire to that.
The pigs did such a good job on my garden. It was rich and grew well. I got it in late, so it didn't produce much before frost, but if I'd had time to harvest the green tomatoes in the couple days between returning from fire evacuation and frost (!!) I would have had a bounty to ripen slowly. My poor trees, that came up here via Vancouver and suffered because of it, mostly thrived in their nursery bed. I can move them shortly, or in spring, and I expect they'll do well if the birds don't eat them.
My birds are bountiful and multiplied. They're growing into themselves now, and I'm beginning to be able to separate them out for my breeding program. They are all beautiful entities and I love them. Harvest will be sad. There will need to be a big fire, and staring into it. I love the personalities and grace of the geese, the colours and the social quirks and the soft sounds of the muscovies, and the jewel colours of true ducks. I even like the quail, though they require management to avoid them hurting each other, much like chickens do. My chickens - second generation of mine - are feral and the roosters face off with their hackles raised, I'd say like velociraptors but this is where they got velociraptors from. Many of them sleep in the burning pile at night, out in the open.
Work is like a constant abrasion at my sense of self, at my ability, and at my time and energy. It's a long hard project and I'm not sure whether I'm accomplishing anything. Some days are good. Most are not. It gives me flexibility and tries to be supportive, but the environment is not good.
My relationships are - well, that's not so easy. My relationship with Josh has settled into a comfortable, strong, supportive backdrop that I can reach for when I need it. That's good. It's not a place of rest, though.
As for everything else? Maybe they're dying and being reborn. Maybe sometimes an anchor is just a weight. At every turn my relationship with tucker is demanding of me to enforce boundaries, to push back, to draw brighter lines, to think and puzzle and jiggle things, to try so hard to make it work. I'm tired, and I want a place to rest.
I don't think I can rest, with other people. Maybe that's what I can never accept.
I say sorry more than I used to, and for less cause. I apologise for my feelings, especially when I'm sad or lonely. I don't walk as tall. I think of too many things at once, and I don't focus on what's before me and what I want to do.
I have the form of my life where I wanted it, but the heart of everything is missing. My heart is missing. During evacuation I found it again, briefly: I spent a night when I couldn't sleep lying there constructing a ritual, burying myself in the soil of my land and lying there overnight through dark and rain and birds coming to talk to me. It was cold, but because it was constructed in my mind it was not hypothermic. I lay in my grave in my land that night and found my heart in it.
That heart brought me through the return, it drove me to push myself back home with the weight of a hundred lives, it drove me to put things back in order and to reach with great force for what I needed from those around me.
That ritual is fading now. I'm home. Things would be back to normal, but. I've never had a normal here. I don't know how to connect to my meanings, in part because I don't know what my meanings are. I don't know what I want. I need to spend time in the dark, to spend time inside myself, looking for what will drive or pull me through this next while.
I've made the form of my life but I'm still looking for the heart of it.
Here we are, years later, my first post on dreamwidth as opposed to livejournal. We can call it a breakpoint or a turning point. Maybe we can call it the beginning of a return.
I am in relationship with my land. My dogs are in relationship with my land and with me; they are protectors and friends. When I got Thea I thought of her as the protector spirit of my land, as Avallu is my own protector. She's been spayed, is growing up a little, is playful and serious. I aspire to that easily. Avallu is more fierce; he's aggressive to potential harms, and absolutely fearless in asking for affection. I'm more afraid to aspire to that.
The pigs did such a good job on my garden. It was rich and grew well. I got it in late, so it didn't produce much before frost, but if I'd had time to harvest the green tomatoes in the couple days between returning from fire evacuation and frost (!!) I would have had a bounty to ripen slowly. My poor trees, that came up here via Vancouver and suffered because of it, mostly thrived in their nursery bed. I can move them shortly, or in spring, and I expect they'll do well if the birds don't eat them.
My birds are bountiful and multiplied. They're growing into themselves now, and I'm beginning to be able to separate them out for my breeding program. They are all beautiful entities and I love them. Harvest will be sad. There will need to be a big fire, and staring into it. I love the personalities and grace of the geese, the colours and the social quirks and the soft sounds of the muscovies, and the jewel colours of true ducks. I even like the quail, though they require management to avoid them hurting each other, much like chickens do. My chickens - second generation of mine - are feral and the roosters face off with their hackles raised, I'd say like velociraptors but this is where they got velociraptors from. Many of them sleep in the burning pile at night, out in the open.
Work is like a constant abrasion at my sense of self, at my ability, and at my time and energy. It's a long hard project and I'm not sure whether I'm accomplishing anything. Some days are good. Most are not. It gives me flexibility and tries to be supportive, but the environment is not good.
My relationships are - well, that's not so easy. My relationship with Josh has settled into a comfortable, strong, supportive backdrop that I can reach for when I need it. That's good. It's not a place of rest, though.
As for everything else? Maybe they're dying and being reborn. Maybe sometimes an anchor is just a weight. At every turn my relationship with tucker is demanding of me to enforce boundaries, to push back, to draw brighter lines, to think and puzzle and jiggle things, to try so hard to make it work. I'm tired, and I want a place to rest.
I don't think I can rest, with other people. Maybe that's what I can never accept.
I say sorry more than I used to, and for less cause. I apologise for my feelings, especially when I'm sad or lonely. I don't walk as tall. I think of too many things at once, and I don't focus on what's before me and what I want to do.
I have the form of my life where I wanted it, but the heart of everything is missing. My heart is missing. During evacuation I found it again, briefly: I spent a night when I couldn't sleep lying there constructing a ritual, burying myself in the soil of my land and lying there overnight through dark and rain and birds coming to talk to me. It was cold, but because it was constructed in my mind it was not hypothermic. I lay in my grave in my land that night and found my heart in it.
That heart brought me through the return, it drove me to push myself back home with the weight of a hundred lives, it drove me to put things back in order and to reach with great force for what I needed from those around me.
That ritual is fading now. I'm home. Things would be back to normal, but. I've never had a normal here. I don't know how to connect to my meanings, in part because I don't know what my meanings are. I don't know what I want. I need to spend time in the dark, to spend time inside myself, looking for what will drive or pull me through this next while.
I've made the form of my life but I'm still looking for the heart of it.
Here we are, years later, my first post on dreamwidth as opposed to livejournal. We can call it a breakpoint or a turning point. Maybe we can call it the beginning of a return.
