(no subject)
i remember i had a journal once, a little red journal the size of a regular book, with white pages without lines and every part of me written down in it. when i went hiking with my sister one day in eugene we came back from the summit to find the car broken into, our bags stolen, and my journal never to be seen again. i mention this because as i sit here trying to think of what i could possibly write, what i want to write, i hear in my mind a phrase i wrote in that journal which goes something like this: "my life is a forcefield of running dichotomies". i can't think of a more beautiful way to describe the backs and forths of my experience of living. at the time that i wrote it i imagine i was suffering from fairly severe depression, compounded with all sorts of confusion, and highlighted by bits of unbelievable happiness. i would spend time with my friend lasey on the farm where she rented her house and sit on her back porch looking up at the coburg hills, at mt. tom, and wish wish wish for a house of my own at the foot of a more-than-a-hill, where i would wake up at 5 in the morning because of the cows mooing in the yard so loud i couldn't sleep, where i could make a pot of tea and sit in my living room and read or have conversations with friends or just stare off into the landscape out my window and breathe. then i'd get into my rumbly '77 datsun 810 wagon, nicknamed hijacker for secret reasons, and roll back into the city, my apartment on east 18th and oak street with a view of the other apartments and a background noise something like cars running and honking and muffling the peace of the air that was just trying to breathe like me. and now it's funny. here i am. sitting in my house overlooking the landscape, forgetting that i never hear ambulances or car horns or homeless people screaming profanities. forgetting the absence of these things because all i hear are dogs incessantly barking, an occasional neighbor walking through the village, and the sound of the windstorm that hasn't let up since yesterday morning when it started. the windmills on the hills were completely still (rhyme not intended, but nice) while the valley shook with the booming thunder of nature's invisible force. this morning, coke cans and garbage bags and shards of roof tiles lining the streets and still the rattling of windows continues, the poor cat nearly blowing through the doorway when i opened the blinds this morning and let her in. it's november 25th and it's warm enough outside to walk around in jeans and a tee shirt. my heart is aching for cold weather and mittens, for hats and scarves and layers of clothes. but still it's like a different air here and the change is running through me and i am happy. my life is a forcefield of running dichotomies but now they feel less severe. spain takes care of you, darby says; if it does something bad to you it redeems itself with something else. this has always been true for me for life itself and being here i've seen that it happens more gently in spain, more delicately and more profoundly. it's not as though one day you hit your toe on the table and the next day you find ten dollars...no, it's more than that. it's like one day you can't imagine how anything could feel less like home, how your heart could feel any emptier or more sad, and the next day you feel the presence of god (of something) while standing at the crest of mt tajonar watching the wind move trees in colors so bright and hearing motion that you can't explain, not believing the blue of the sky and wondering when you'll wake up from the dream that this miracle must be. and yes, today i feel awake and alive and i credit myself for taking care of my body and i credit the hills, the sun, the ceaseless wind for taking care of my soul. i credit friends for taking care of my heart and i credit the never-failing universe for taking care of everything else. i have fallen under the spell of this land, of this place, like darwin falling under the spell of moorea, and my experience grows bigger, more open, every moment, every breath. the dichotomies themselves have changed. i am no longer a slave to wondering why i feel so negative all of the time when there are such beautiful things around me...my contradictions come in sizes and shapes of happiness, of awe, of complete faith in the all-knowing who- or whatever, specked here and there with moments of sadness, of getting stuck in memories, remembrance... and then i find myself picked up by the exuberance of sheer life, swept into gratitude by some unknown, unbeatable force. and i hear the wind and i think how delicate our hearts are that they can be moved by such a see-through thing. i watch the trees move and i remember how it feels to be bent and broken, and yet remain ever grateful for this wind.