Mid-May

I woke up this morning after a series of dreams brought on by the the overbearing pressure change as we await the first rain of spring. Its May the twenty-fourth and spring has only just begun here in Northern Minnesota. Leaves are popping and the tulip bulbs are blooming. The first of summer's mosquitos has just hatched. The last weeks of my life have melded together in to a swirl of anticipation of warmer weather and green grass. I spent time away from my homestead isolated trying to find my center and find my voice.

How are you doing with all this? I have to ask myself this question daily. I thought that I would be a lot more upset with the upheaval that has happened in my life recently. I am disgruntled at times but for the most part I find myself in a state of gratefulness and in place of unexpected abundance. I have had to stop measuring my wealth in the physical and turn to what is. The trees, the clouds, the kitchen, and the wind.

I hate to admit it but prior to the pandemic I had been thinking and dreaming that it would be nice to return to my mundane roots. I needed recharge and desaturate my senses so that I could feel fully again. I say this because as a collector of experiences I live a very rich and intense life. ( I must pause and state that as I write this my brother is snoring on the couch and my pug is snoring on the floor next to me and I am lost in a symphony of snores) I live in a way that demands that I suck the very marrow from life and by doing so, I feel that I at times fill my life with such grand experiences that I often get lost in a wash of greatness. Now, I am learning how the mundane can inspire just as much, if not even more so than the events of grandeur from my past.

I sit here now drinking a cup of coffee and I wonder what I would be doing if my timeline hadn't altered a few months ago? Would I be heading into a rehearsal for the Texas Shakespeare Festival or would I being biking back from the gym? Would I be eating the same oatmeal and eggs every day, twice a day? I do not know.

What I do know is this: Life has continued in the most beautiful ways. I think the return to normal is a rather devastating statement that could have a horrific impact on how we operate as individuals and as a society. Why would you want to go back? The "Normalcy" you crave was full of so much disfunction, and ill-mannered disregard for the human soul and the soul of our planet. We were poisoning one another, the earth, and ourselves and doing so because that was "normal". We are being challenged to put up the way we lived and we are being asked to re-learn what is important in life and how should we move forward in a way that takes responsibility for our past actions in order to create a future where love is the only through line in our communication with the world and with ourselves. As it appears to me, we have two choices: We can roll with the river and let it take us into a new life, a new way of living, of caring, of being, of existing, or we can desperately try and thrash our way upstream trying to get back to where we were. That seems sad. That is sad. To think one would simply spend life trying to be in a place that has passed and died long ago.

I have been trying to practice the idea of releasing to the wind what does not serve me any longer.

I release what was so that I can enter into what is

Stay Strong. Stay Vigilant.

Keep living { the good life }

Ian