Not So Liminal
Sep. 25th, 2019 07:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormThreshold is my home.
It's true that I don't always recognise the importance of things in my life until I might lose them. Perhaps this is why like go-and-return relationships; I always know they're important. It's also true that I probably don't have to leave Threshold if I don't want to.
Still, fall is turning here. I finally cleaned the chimney and lit the woodstove a couple days ago. The stove is the warm heart of Threshold. When it's running the indoors becomes a place of its own, alive: not merely the brief refuge from sun and heat it becomes in the summer. The stove beats once or twice per 24 hour period in a slow rhythm of cooler to warmer as I add wood.
The fencing is always only half-done. More winter shelters need to be built. Snow is forecast, or at least frost & precipitation, and I need to get the beans and the green tomatoes in.
I've been spending some time at home lately. Working those very long days at work gave me some leeway to drift away a little bit with banked time. I don't have any all-consuming work projects right now, or even any really engaging ones. I've still been filling the pigsheds with hay for the winter and ashing the chicken house, but I've also been sitting in the fresh hay and letting the piglets suck on my jeans hem and scratching behind their mothers' ears. I've rearranged the basement so I can eat in front of the fire.
And I have found that Threshold is home. Threshold is *my* home. It is the extension of my skin; I am coming to know it with the kind of intimacy that will build and build until my blood and my memories are layered into every inch of her.
Today I am preparing to head down to Washington State to a pagan event. Later this fall I'll need to do the 24-hour round trip to Vancouver again with a trailer to pick up some things. In anticipation of leaving I find... I'll be leaving my skin and my home behind. Today I've taken off work to can the beans, pull in the tomatoes, and clean the chicken sheds. I should pull everything off the ground in case it snows too, so nothing gets caught in the snowblower. All those things that are necessary to do, all those pieces of the rhythm of the year, they are part of Threshold and part of my self and part of my life.
These words aren't much. Looking up from the laptop I see painted drywall and the old second fridge that needs replacement and booze that needs bottling and things to do. I'll step out into those things soon and get swept away, for just a day, into what I think I can call contentment.
These words aren't much. I haven't had a home for over twenty years. I've only had a series of waypoints I needed to leave. I've loved some of them; I love everything. But.
Threshold. My home.
It's true that I don't always recognise the importance of things in my life until I might lose them. Perhaps this is why like go-and-return relationships; I always know they're important. It's also true that I probably don't have to leave Threshold if I don't want to.
Still, fall is turning here. I finally cleaned the chimney and lit the woodstove a couple days ago. The stove is the warm heart of Threshold. When it's running the indoors becomes a place of its own, alive: not merely the brief refuge from sun and heat it becomes in the summer. The stove beats once or twice per 24 hour period in a slow rhythm of cooler to warmer as I add wood.
The fencing is always only half-done. More winter shelters need to be built. Snow is forecast, or at least frost & precipitation, and I need to get the beans and the green tomatoes in.
I've been spending some time at home lately. Working those very long days at work gave me some leeway to drift away a little bit with banked time. I don't have any all-consuming work projects right now, or even any really engaging ones. I've still been filling the pigsheds with hay for the winter and ashing the chicken house, but I've also been sitting in the fresh hay and letting the piglets suck on my jeans hem and scratching behind their mothers' ears. I've rearranged the basement so I can eat in front of the fire.
And I have found that Threshold is home. Threshold is *my* home. It is the extension of my skin; I am coming to know it with the kind of intimacy that will build and build until my blood and my memories are layered into every inch of her.
Today I am preparing to head down to Washington State to a pagan event. Later this fall I'll need to do the 24-hour round trip to Vancouver again with a trailer to pick up some things. In anticipation of leaving I find... I'll be leaving my skin and my home behind. Today I've taken off work to can the beans, pull in the tomatoes, and clean the chicken sheds. I should pull everything off the ground in case it snows too, so nothing gets caught in the snowblower. All those things that are necessary to do, all those pieces of the rhythm of the year, they are part of Threshold and part of my self and part of my life.
These words aren't much. Looking up from the laptop I see painted drywall and the old second fridge that needs replacement and booze that needs bottling and things to do. I'll step out into those things soon and get swept away, for just a day, into what I think I can call contentment.
These words aren't much. I haven't had a home for over twenty years. I've only had a series of waypoints I needed to leave. I've loved some of them; I love everything. But.
Threshold. My home.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-25 11:04 pm (UTC)i used to live for pagan festivals. i coordinated them, i ran rituals at them, i was extremely involved in the minutia of them, they filled me with light and exuberance and deep joy. coming back to my house, wherever i was living, always brought a let-down day or three, a yearning to return to the time-outside-of-time of the festival, the richness of community.
and then we bought Sunflower River. i kept doing those things, but more and more, my center was slowly moving into SR, and before I knew it, i came home from a four-day festival and discovered that coming home was not a let-down. it was even better than being away. now enough years have gone by that i don't run those events; i'm not involved in the festival loop anymore at all; i'm even out of touch with that community, as such. because Sunflower River gives me everything I needed from the festivals, and more. it was a beautiful realization, and remains a beautiful reality. even tho there is always more work to be done.
it sounds like you are coming to a similar relationship with Threshold. i wish you deep joy of it. <3
no subject
Date: 2019-10-12 05:20 pm (UTC)I would like to bring some community into Theshold somehow; until I do I will certainly need to go down there. Some of the land-based resonance is gone, though.
It was an especially interesting festival because, when the wards went up, I lost my connection to Threshold and I didn't have an abiding connection to the coastal ecosystem where the festival was held anymore. I think that's the first time, maybe ever, I haven't carried a land connection with me. Next time I'll need to bring a conduit.
I certainly learned something about what I am without that connection.
no subject
Date: 2019-10-13 03:51 am (UTC)that is really interesting, about the land connection. sounds like it was a fruitful, if not entirely comfortable, experience.
no subject
Date: 2019-10-14 01:01 pm (UTC)This was my most comfortable (autocorrect: misery circle) one yet. The part where I feel like I'm dying and the world is ending only lasted a half hour or so; normally these things are so much harder for me. I think a lot of my emotional depth and ability comes from the land connection.
So interesting to learn these things about myself!