This morning I felt very calm, but there was part of the quiet that felt like a veil of sadness. I lay in bed for a long time and just let the thoughts and images in my head play out. I listened to them, and watched them, sometimes rewinding certain images to see them again.
I don't know why sadness is here today, I thought.
And then I got up and went out to the barns and got on with it. The rhythms of morning feeding include sounds and moving images. The horse chews his hay and the donkeys in the background chew more slowly–and together it is almost like a musical beat The sheep chew faster and the llama observes in-between bites of her breakfast. The pig snores. The leaves are getting crispier and I could here them all around. The air and sky are darker this morning, but in a beautiful Payne's Gray way, and their weight feels lighter to me with the cooler air.
I wasn't in a hurry. More and more, I find I am not in a hurry. It seemed in the old farm, I was more hurried. What exactly is different here that makes this so? I don't know. I sense I am here to do something, and I am formulating and pondering it all-what animals I'd like to help and how; what community I want to form and not form; why was I pulled here.
Why?
And then I had stumbled on a blog when I saw it in my stat count. And there was a video about the poet W.S.Merwin. I was mesmerized and I also found it akin to what I am going through. Actually, I am not going through anything, I am right in the middle of something and it is not about getting to the end of anything, it is simply...something.
I heard something in the video that struck me, and resonated with how I can now describe to you what this something I am in feels like. It is all about being comfortable with the not knowing. I don't know so many things right now, but they are all here-hidden in coming days, perhaps waiting for me to take a walk in the woods to hear an answer through the rustling trees. I know The Wood has many things for me. It has a very significant presence when I am in the barns. I can't say it is scary, but it feels powerful, strong, perhaps a protector of something, a large natural room of mystery. And maybe I won't ever know all of it.
At a certain stage of his life, Merwin recognized a need to live someplace that was immersed in history-as in really old history of many centuries ago and he found it in France. I felt this too when we were still in Oregon–a physical need to be here in Maine, not New York [where I've lived both city and upstate], not Vermont [which I love and thought about], but Maine.
So that's it. I'm in the not knowing. I don't know what I'm doing but I'm going to just keep on doing it all, one hour at a time. I'm listening. I have sadness for many reasons but it's my sadness, it is just part of my day right now. It hovers while I stroke the cheek of Calla, or hold Little Sylvia Pettini, or run with Benne. It has an energy and needs to be part of me right now.
