Reflection: Year Four
Four years ago, I was madly packing, getting ready for the biggest move of my life, from my suburban life in Rossmoor (left), where I had always been a square peg, to a life out on this road in the Sierra Nevada foothills, where I knew no one but my realtor, with no real idea about what was in store. Most significant was leaving my daughter behind, which was hard.
I moved in to this house on October 1, 2020. COVID had the entire world tight in its grip, there was no vaccine, and Joe Biden was seeking to unseat Donald Trump.
I found this recently during one of my old notebook-flipping sessions.
February 2019
Five years from now is 2024. The Elections! [I actually wrote, “the Midterm Elections,” but that’s embarrassing so I’m editing it.]
I’ll be retired. I’ll be 66, going on 67. I’ll live in a house that I own outright (I hope) somewhere between Portland and Sacramento. I’ll have 2-3 acres, and a big roomy house. Big kitchen. Big private apartment for me, big private apartment “tiny house” for Vicki, who will be 79-80. Carlos, who will be 71-72. I don’t know if Madeline will be with us. Maybe. Probably not. Maybe someday.
I want to study NO-TILL gardening methods, maybe try it out now. I want at least a half an acre in vegetables, another half in flowers and herbs. I want chickens and bees for sure. A couple of dogs, a couple of outdoor cats. Two yurts. I can do that, on my own, with help.
The thing is — I need Maddy, but the idea of her living with a bunch of old people while she is building her professional life — no matter how much she loves us — is ridiculous.
Fletcher: Write it down, make it happen.
Reading this struck me; it’s remarkable how things have turned out, four years later. Obviously, today’s situation is not precisely what I envisioned, but it’s damn close.
Living it, I know more — like how an acre of no-till cultivation is not feasible on this parcel of land, with these ground squirrels, with this level of commitment, and this body at 67.
Pete’s prey drive has convinced me that two outdoor cats are not in the cards for us.
And I’ve come to see that keeping bees is, on the one hand, fascinating and cool, while also being quite stressful and difficult. The heat of wearing that suit and heavy gloves in the summer. The back strain when moving those boxes. The risk of fire – working with a smoker, surrounded by an acre of tall, dry grass.
But this is the life I wanted, and I’m living it. The notebook entry had this list:
- Stir the pot. Jungian synchronicity. Meaningful events and people converge.
- Writing makes its own meaning.
- Write it down, make it happen. What I want:
- A sweet dog
- A small, beautiful property
- An orchard of fruit trees
- A wrap-around porch
- A fire pit
- An outdoor kitchen with pizza oven
- A yoga/meditation spot
- A greenhouse full of starts
- A workroom for quilting, making cards, binding books, making paper
- Two yurts
- A wonderful, diverse, colorful, nutritious garden
- A bee hive
- A hen house
- A rescue burro
Again, reading this list from 2019 spotlights the good things that have come to pass. Much of what I wanted is right here in my life. Other things have fallen away, and I still want to plant a fruit orchard in the bee yard, but that will require a tall fence to keep the deer out.
Habituation
I recently listened to a podcast discussing habituation, which is how we become numb to our lives—the situations we inhabit that once were dreams, the people we love deeply but somehow end up taking for granted, and all of the objects we pined for, then blindly accept as part of the detritus we’ve accumulated moving through this life. Even if we have recognized and worked to curtail our consumerism, that little squirmy urge for the new shiny thing persists. New windows. New car. A vent over the stove. A carpet shampoo. A massage.
The problem, the Buddha reminds us, is attachment, desire, clinging. Marie Kondo asks, “is this box of crap bringing you joy?” I flip through the pages of Swedish Death Cleaning and look around. Although I had been planning for this move, it all happened pretty fast — sold my house, and bought this one in 6-days, and flew through a 30-day escrow.
Four years in, and the garage is still full of boxes, and weird things are stashed in every corner and nook. Time to examine what I am clinging to, and figure out why.
Clinging: A Clockwork Orange, Naked Lunch, and other titles
How have some of these novels survived the multiple bookshelf cullings over the course of life, and made it all the way to this chapter of my life? I have not read them, and I think we can safely say I will not. In the case of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, this violent little text — “a savage satire,” “a nasty little shocker,” “a terrifying and marvelous book,” repels me even as I pick it up. Why is it here?
The novel was published when I was five years old. By the time I was a young college dropout trying to concoct a hipster life on Long Beach’s Ocean Boulevard, I knew A Clockwork Orange was an important text. Having it on the bookshelf meant something. Displaying that title signaled an open-mindedness, a counter-culture stance, and also a commitment to supporting banned and controversial texts. “I may be a drop-out but I’m not illiterate, irrelevant, or out-of-touch,” it said. “I may be a woman but I can witness a violent rape scene without melting down.”
That was then. I have never read A Clockwork Orange, or have seen the Stanley Kubrick film, so why this still here, out on this country road? I no longer need to signal who I am and what my attitudes are through titles on my shelf. And the knowledge of that rape, which I believe happens early in the story, has kept that book closed and dark for decades.
There are easily a dozen titles chosen out of curiosity then, that hold little appeal today. Naked Lunch by William Burroughs. The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Passoa. Underworld, Don DeLillo. The Broom of the System, David Foster Wallace (I love Wallace, but I’ll never read Broom, I know). These are titles that important readers and teachers have swooned over, and owning them with the intention to read them seemed to be a safeguard against staleness, or mediocrity, or literary habituation, perhaps. Or maybe it’s that squirmy acquisitive itch. Or maybe I’m afraid I’ll forget about reading them if they’re just on a “Want-to-Read” list stashed away on Goodreads.
Speaking of Goodreads, last year, I set a reading challenge to read 40 books, and I read 43. In a way, though, it felt like an assignment, so although I enjoyed +90% of what I read, my motivation was driven by earning that gold star. You’re a good girl. You read them all.
Good lord, I need to escape that craven tug for recognition.
A routine joke within the meditation community: Self-knowledge is not always good news. And ain’t that the truth. Thankfully, a sense of humor helps, and practice brings recognition, acceptance, and surrender.
If you haven’t visited lately, I invite you pop in to the Quilting tab to see what’s going on in my sewing room.