my first born sunflower

on love and difficulty

When you’re a kid and you get a job dog-sitting, or your family takes a visit to the local animal shelter, you’re told not to get attached. You’re told not to get attached to one dog in particular because you can’t keep it, you can’t take it home, or you can’t get a dog yet. Or something like that anyway. Something appeasing. You’re appeased so you don’t cause a scene or whine to your parents for 3 weeks about why you HAVE to have THAT dog. But you’re really being told not to fall in love. You’re told to guard yourself, protect yourself from heartache. Protect yourself from the heartache of lost ice cream cones, stolen toys, no more trips to the amusement park, not having that shiny gold bike, loosing your purple shoes, or that unfulfilled crush in high school. By the time you’re an adult you have a strongly built protective wall around you. You apply for a job, but don’t get too excited or attached to the idea just in case. You find a new apartment, but don’t expect much when you turn in the application just in case that old boss gives you a bad reference. You meet a cute boy/girl and don’t let yourself think past flirtation because it probably won’t work out. And if you get your dog, it’s usually after research into breeds, approval from your landlord, and any other precautions taken.

Of course this isn’t always, and many people still do spontaneous things, and many things probably shouldn’t be done spontaneously. But by the time most people reach adulthood, they’re well trained as to the dangers of the heart. Love makes everything more. Things can happen to something you love and it makes your emotions and attention start swinging on a pendulum of passion. Things can happen to something that you don’t love, and even if you like it a lot you can react objectively. Looking through love, everything you see is more intense, and your whole body can feel what your heart or gut might just hint at.

When I was a kid I never remember minding moving. I don’t remember even once thinking that I wish we didn’t have to move. I don’t remember once wondering why we had to move. By my teens my ability to move myself within 3 days, no help needed, in only my sporty jeep was more than something I was proud of. It was a part of who I was and how I identified myself. But until I was 20 I never loved a place I’d been. I had a brief torrid affair with England, but with the brief kind of passion that can only come from something you know isn’t really real, and more adventure than anything else.

I’ve loved two places since then, one I live in still. But living in this place, this area, this state, makes everything more. My joy is limitless, the beauty is the closest thing to spirit I’ve ever found, but the frustrations are nearly heartbreaking. So as each day throws me on the pendulum of emotion, swinging me this way and that, it’s only through commitment that I center myself. Like any longer love, things are never perfect, especially as they become more and more familiar. But the passion remains. Maybe some days it remains only in frustration or anger. But if I walk through each day intending to be here still, I can move that pendulum back to joy and perfection. While the intensified frustration and anger is sometimes enough to make me flee, for now it’s worth sticking around for the other end of the pendulum swing. For life is so full of questions and unknowns, that when you find the place with the air that when you breath it deep into your lungs gives your body the stillness it needs to look for the answers, it’s worth the stay.

happy fourth

peace.

here and now

There are wild roses run amuck all behind my house. Tiny little white blossoms at the end of thriving thorny bushes and branches. They have made clearing in the back nearly impossible, but they’re also somehow what make it worth it. Their claws are more fierce than the claws of any cat I’ve ever met. Yet once our paths were cleared, and they suddenly blossomed, they looked like the most delicate beauty of nature. They did to the paths and bushes and trees what the fog does to the rocky seaside, somehow making it more peaceful, deep, and silent within sound. But unlike the fog, which can seem to last forever, and often comes back the morning after it left, these roses are fleeting. They blossomed lightly one weekend, the next they were in their full glorious bloom, and now most have turned light brown, begun to whither and disappear back into the thorny bushes.

The most important things, the most striking things, often seem to be the most fleeting or the longest lasting. Maybe because time is the uncontrollable thing that nobody has yet to conquer. Middle things are just normal. Fleeting things are delirious, exciting, like a cold shower on a sweltering day, or like a car race going so fast to be done before you know it. These fleeting things, tulips at the beginning of spring, the first steps of a child, that new car smell, the new year’s countdown, or wild roses in the backyard. We give them importance because of their brevity. I don’t stand with awe in the backyard and look at the strong long stalk, now nearly blossom free, with its strong thick thorns and wonder at its strength and tenacity. It’s always there, it grows consistently. I hardly notice it.

Or we embrace those things that seem to last forever. Old couples celebrating their 70th wedding anniversary, old redwoods in California, the mountains in the Rockies, the rocks by the sea, the cathedrals in England, the cliff-dwellings in the southwest. These are so amazing for their timelessness. As if time somehow doesn’t affect them. As if they’ve lasted so long to be beyond us, beyond the daily grind, beyond even the fleeting beauties of nature.

Maybe we only see these things as markers, reminding of us our lives… living. Maybe seeing the fleeting blossom of the wild rose helps us appreciate the fleeting taste of fresh strawberries, or any of the other brief flavors of life. And maybe seeing things that seem to last forever remind us of the long time-line of our own lives, their histories reminding us of our own. But while the scent of lilacs, new baby or the air before the rain may seem to disappear, every breath still breathes in smells. Every day there is something fleeting to take notice of, some are just less obvious, like the shiny new green thorns on the wild rose bushes before they are their full darkness and strength. And everyday there are things around which seem to last forever, or at least contain deep history within them. Like this street in front of me, that now stands with a streetlight standing tall, but which was once the only road in and out of town, carrying many walkers and buggies. Maybe we don’t see that old couple every day, but what about all the sisters, brothers or friends that have lived in thought together forever. Or what about that pet dog that lives all it knows of forever with complete devotion

I don’t know. Maybe seeing those redwoods just makes us believe in forever, or in true love. Or maybe by believing in both fleeting beauties and things that last forever, we can live fully and appreciate today.