how to speak forgotten language

so much of this blog feels to me like a letter to the people that i love. this entry is playing catch-up, but it is the response i've been wanting to write to you, j.

life just changes so quickly sometimes!

when I first got your email, i was delighted and complacent. my life had just fallen into a funny rhythm on the farm. i was planting things and digging holes and sanding lead paint off of boards (wearing a pair of motorcycling goggles to keep the paint out of my eyes). i was coming home at the end of the day and making crazy cooking projects with a boy. hustling random little jobs to do nothing more than tread water, slowly propelling forward. you know this life.

i guess i was spending every night satisfied or drunk or not alone, and the bliss of those weeks in retrospect reminds me of konstantin levin in anna karenina, what with his "special feeling" that he was afraid of ruining by sharing with others.

well, those weeks are over and the farm is over and i've been living in my brother's house in spartanburg for the past couple of weeks. suddenly, my life is altogether different. i also didn't want to write to you during the bulk of the shuffle because what does a person facing uncertainty in all main areas say? "i just lost my job, my home, and a boy, but i've got other stuff goin' on!" the truth is that, while the uncertainty was exciting and daunting and depressing in turns, i didn't know what to say about it.

for the past few weeks my life has been like a vacation. i miss my farm schedule and so i wake up and run. you know i am a terrible runner. after the run, i come home and do a couple of half-assed yoga poses. you know i get distracted so quickly! i hang out with my brother's kids and when they start to say or do things that i say or do, i am both embarrassed and unbelievably flattered. sometimes i cook very simple things. (variations on the theme of bean salad? anyone?)

now, it seems the pieces are beginning to fall again, tired from fluttering for now.

but the shuffle has made me misplace so many of the other things i wanted to tell you! i wanted to contrast the sparseness of hemingway and the lushness of garcía márquez, i wanted to tell you about the potential for goat cheese-making and flowers, and surely there were other things, too.

and past lives! for some reason, this pattern, which seems so good and effortless and right when you do it, doesn't make sense in my clumsy hands. instead, i find myself thinking of the implications of this silly life i'm living now. a woman who went on one of our delegations to mexico suggested i write a series of vignettes and call them "stories of a nonprofit girl", and the idea quite appeals to me. i feel like so much of this life is so absurd and other people can relate to aspects of it, which is even more absurd, if you think about it.

other than that, i am still committed to my bad cooking projects and worse art projects, though i am somewhat understandably feeling discouraged about my photography for the moment. the other day, i went ramp harvesting and then we made pickled ramps and i think harvesting ramps induced in me one of the happiest feelings i have ever had.

all that, and also, someone who stayed on the farm told me she often writes letters she never even intends to send. in a weird heartachy time i was having a few weeks ago, i wrote one of these to a boy and dang! that shit feels good. has anyone done much of this? am i discovering something super-obvious? i think i might post the one i wrote next post.

so. all this to say, that even with the craziness and uncertainty and big, bad feelings, i am amazed by how many times recently i have had the fleeting assessment that i am happier right now than i have been in years, or maybe ever. the older we get, the more like ourselves we become, and when i can settle and breathe into those dark, tight spaces in myself, especially in scary, horrible moments, the more aware i become of my capacity for tolerance and survival, and damn. it's a relief.