Personal
I don’t like beginning with the word “I”…ever. This life is not about me. Usually. Humor me this one day.
I am not a tracker of followers or people who read my blog. Good grief…where is there time for that work? So for all I know you haven’t missed my posts. I am sorry I haven’t followed more closely my favorite bloggers…abject apologies to each of you.
Paralysis set in a year ago. Being one to pour my guts out is not my style.
Typically, I share the things that go on at the farm, my excursions, workshops, the sheep, farm and pups, sometimes even a personal milestone. At this time, for me to move forward and post meaningfully means dumping a bad memory.
I suffered the strangest and most heart-wrenching experience in that spring season. Something
I never wish to duplicate, ever again. I followed my instincts which blew up and apart as no one could imagine. I know this is fodder for “Tell me more” but suffice to say I won’t, in kindness to myself and those affected. What I will say is I fell apart. My intuition and I had a falling out (briefly). I seconded guessed and imagined it was all my inner workings. The work has been incredibly slow and painful. And laughably, at 59 years old, this shouldn’t still occur. Yet it does for us all.
On a walk this late spring, I stood and looked at this oak leaf in an icy puddle on my morning walk understanding it’s place. Sinking, floating, frozen, yet looking to the bright sky of a new season, transforming. That is me. On dry land now.
Personal
I have taken an unintentional disappearance that is clearly needed.
Once I got that clue, the rest has been easy.
Hanging out on the farm, with all my animals friends
has been a good prescription.
Google (Blogger) informed me I had used up all my picture storage and
now I would have to pay to post.
Ya, ya, I said. Perfect excuse not to.
I burrowed deeper.
I prefer focusing on the good things like a gift of firewood
to a dear friend who needed some warmth.
And getting an order of yarns and roving
shipped off to Japan from my great wooly producers.
Overdue writing, updating the
website and
summer workshops is getting checked off.
Long walks to clear last year’s gray ghosts away.
I have new promises for each day.
I don’t want to miss a minute of it hunched over the
computer pecking away, when I could be here.
And here, meeting this flock of sheep.
[I can’t spill the whole bean pot just yet.]
Working with a group of women on growing and
dyeing their own indigo to produce products to sell
to improve their lives. No one is famous there.
It’s beautifully simple.
The seeds have been shipped to be sown.
An adventure is in the works.
I can’t lug my sax there but a recorder may do the trick
or even some percussion.
I will be dancing, giving, sharing, singing,
whatever comes to the fore.
For now, I am here, cloud hidden [unless the sun comes out].
Personal
On this day in 2006, at this very hour, I was standing alone in the far field at the farm.
My memory of that moment is as if it was yesterday.
I felt an eerie silence. An aloneness I couldn’t define.
Never did I imagine
what I would learn by nightfall.
As I stood in the field staring at the hills,
waiting for the sun to come shining
through, an hour or so away in the heart of NH,
my big brother, Jim Walker, was logging alone in the woods
with his horses,
and suffered a massive heart attack.
No one found him until late afternoon.
It was too late.
True, he died doing what he loved the very most with
his beloved horses at his side.
Somehow that consolation falls short.
Jim with Ted and Tony 2006
He was loved by so many people.
He loved so many in return and would give the shirt off his
back for those who he cared for.
me and Jim at 6 and 10 on our farm in Amherst, NH
Jim Walker was a good man, taken too soon.
I am thankful for those who share this day with me each year
who also miss this guy immensely.
So goes October 4th every year.
Personal
loss.
it comes in all shapes and sizes.
no color.
four legs, two legs, skin, feathers, fur, fleece.
care doesn’t shield loss.
love doesn’t guard the inevitable.
kindness doesn’t protect.
spirtuality is my saving grace.
shit happens and still the world is a beautiful place
love, me
