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 Mailing address: bo@bo-hemian.com |
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3 March 1998 -- Desolation, yet with hope
I awake this morning in an unusually bad state of disorientation, and it takes quite some time to shake it and get back to my full sense of things. This is one of the difficulties of sleep; not waking up with full recollection of the causes for joy that one had while going to sleep. I see the grey again outside the window as I light up the stove and get the coffee made. It is warm enough this morning to be getting a wet sleet, instead of the more familiar snow of the last few months.
I go to the rocker by the hearth and sit down with my cup, after throwing some more wood on the fire. I sigh resolutely about the outlook for the day. "Maybe I should get in the truck and see how passable the road is into town," I say to myself. But then I remember what the Cabin has supposedly represented to me these last 7 months. Life in town I have aplenty, when I step back to reality and spend my day hustling about the streets and sidewalks of Northern Virginia.
I spend some time wondering how hard it would be on me if I had to endure much time outside in that rainy sort-of-mess, even with the full preparation of my foul-weather gear that hangs by the wooden door. I spend more time, lasting out the hours of the morning, hearing the constant drumming sound of those big sleet-drops hitting the walls and pounding into the packed snow up on the roof. Ice storm conditions they are, should things get a bit colder.
But then, it comes to an end. The wind that was driving those droplets against the walls also carried away the storm system, and by noon, the sun has reappeared! All is glittering in this new light, from the effects of the sleet freezing up on the snow surface. It has turned to a glaze over all of the clearing, yet I know the tree branches won't hold ice long, since the air is warming. I look anew, out the living room window, and see the shape of the ridge once again, in its dark sort-of-brown silhouette against the brilliant blue sky.
It's March, I remind myself. This is an example of what is certain to come. Once again, the stream will flow amid the greenery of the river bottom's foliage. I sit for some time thereafter on the sofa, thinking back to real life. So many things are in the stages of bare beginnings like this. But what can I do but wait? Just as I could not go outside today and make much of that sun, with all the snow left to melt off, the various improvements in my life are not meant to be known in their fullness at this time. I have lived enough years to know the folly of seeking immediate use of something for which I must simply wait. It just fails on me for lack of development.
Some, I would imagine, might call this procrastination. These are the ones who seize moments and worry about the outcome later. I sadly realize, though, that I need a bit more of this, too, in my mix of outlook if I'm going to carry forward and grow in life. Unlike the seasons, which move on their own accord, I seem to be called to plot my own destiny, on account of free will. This, then becomes a cause for prayer in desperate times. "Please, Lord, help me get me out of this desolation, but according to your own proper time and place".
RB
7 March 1998 -- Striving for simple joys
I have found some spare moments to come up here today, for another visit. Soon I must return to the demands and judgments and reminders of shortfall that make up my real world. It is indeed difficult being human, and needing to provide for the steadily-escalating demands for upkeep inherent in a human body on the threshold of middle age. "Youth is indeed wasted on the young," I also remind myself, as I think of the vast array of worldly delights in my life down the hill that I cannot appreciate as I would have as a child.
Then, I think of that other array of delights, which might still hold my attention, since they are of the heart, and remember the countless times I have pushed them aside as frivolous and of no economic value. The gospel reminds me that where my treasure is, there also will be my heart. Little wonder, then, that my heart wanders now through such an ill-provisioned land. Having not been exposed to those hardships that would teach it endurance, my heart, like my aging physical body, reminds me that it is high time to start into a plan of activity, painful and inconvenient though it may be.
I have been sold too many years on the easy way out, and I now sit in this temporary quiet, realizing how soft and ill-prepared a person can become. I should not really like to perish in the manner of the rich fool, who, though calculating well his places of accumulation for worldly wealth, had still to go to the next world with nothing invested where rust could not tarnish and thieves could not steal. And yet, ducking from the hard details of body, heart, and soul remains as the path of least resistance; the course of events that will spontaneously occur. This indeed is a cause for regret.
What have I become, that I do not seek these more excellent ways? How much of the quandary lies completely at my feet, and how much am I a victim (please pardon the expression)? The climate of the late 1990's, of course, is one that extols the triumph of self-determination and accountability, so I have few places to hide from this charge of neglect. Others, though, living within this same realm, somehow see me as taking too heavy a load upon myself in trying to lift myself free. It is all very confusing.
The very matter of attempting to reconcile such conflict of proper responsibility is something I know I should be avoiding. I should instead go forth and humble myself directly, exposing what is really me to those recognized simple experiences of enrichment, rather than thinking them over and over and over. Yes, I should "just do it". But for the time being, "it" lacks a workable, realistic definition, so I place nothing in "its" place and just sit here awhile longer on the sofa, staring out the front window at this winter that continues on. It is overcast again today, and a harsh, cold wind is blowing. The bolder, battle-tested, "normal" members of our human population might see good athletic possibility, even in that particular outdoor setting, and of course, they would not be coming here alone.
RB
11 March 1998 -- Threads more precious than gold
This day, while I'm back again waiting inside the Cabin until spring finally "comes", I'm trying to sort, straighten, and simplify the incredible collection of individual, concurrent threads that make up my thoughts. All those concerns in city life are really quite the burden for a thought process that shouldn't pick up more than a small few (ideally one) at a time. Maybe it's fear of the unknown, and "how I'll handle it", that makes having a lot of ongoing concerns such a difficult matter. At any time, one of those problems will assert itself from nowhere, demanding that I drop all others.
This, indeed, could drive a person to seek a life of little involvement, few commitments, and correspondingly few social acquaintances. Those who would not calculate each potential misery as carefully; the "happy-go-lucky", simply take on everything out of some impulse that I cannot understand, for I have so thoroughly conditioned myself in caution. But living a life in industrial society and enjoying my share of things, which rarely break a heart or cause one to grieve, nevertheless has piled its share of randomly-attacking woes into the environment surrounding me. It is pain, to be sure, even when it does not cut all the way to the center of one's heart the way another person does when failure occurs.
I stop to take a look back at that word I just wrote: failure. This is how I describe every disheartening situation, such as losing a family member or being spurned by a friend. I see it as the same as having to scrap some no longer-reparable apparatus when the maintenance bills become too high. This could explain my isolation, since there is usually something to gain from every such loss. We are not talking about the same doom to decay that face the works of man, since although we return in the same way to dust, there is the part of spiritual consequence that lives on.
I think about the standard, "normal" human encumbrances of this kind, which perhaps comprise the "yoke" that Jesus would have me take upon me after my time of labor. It seems that when I pick up these threads of concern from where I find them, laying all about, they are heavy indeed and threaten to break me almost immediately. Never mind that to have such cares long term, and take them seriously, means I'll be assuredly brought to grave crisis at some point. And yet, people carry them, sometimes in great bundles, these being formed of spouse, children, parents, and on and on. But the laws of interaction that apply to the threads of the heart must be fundamentally different than the crude ones I know so well from being tied to material objects.
We are obviously talking transcendence, from the lesser to the nobler. I sit awhile longer and think this one over. People of the "normal" inclination must realize, without thinking, something to which I am just awakening: a life in which cares are driven first by love, and concerning someone who can be loved, is really less burdensome than a life such as my own, which is seen more often from a cold, industrial viewpoint. This is the one in which people are seen as factors of production. Only the first of these alternatives can truly be called "a life".
RB
15 March 1998 -- A new season begins to show
I've come to spend awhile on the front porch today, even with the remaining snow and substantial cold, because of the feeling that has begun to arrive. If spring is not already "in the air", it has at least "left the gate" from its point of origin. The sun is brilliant today, and the sky a brighter blue than it was in January. And the breeze--I know from direct experience, now, of the Zephyrus of which Chaucer wrote, even if it is not April proper. The temperatures have been on an upward trend, and spending more time above freezing during the day. The river, now, has started to flow once again, a flow soon to be replaced by the swollen torrent of the spring run-off, of which I am reminded when I look above me to the snow-covered sides of the hollow.
These days, in all my years as a city youth, were always the most promise-filled, for they were replaced soon, and without condition, by the truly balmy days of late April and early May.
Yes, I'm out on the porch, and decide to sweep the remaining snow from the outdoor metal chair and make myself a seat. The sun is still in such a position that I remain in the shade of the porch roof, so I do need to keep my parka well-closed, as long as I am not attending to physical labor. My breath is still very visible, yet I can see the melting snow from the rooftop come dripping down over the simple edge, to mark out the extent of the shingles, in a line extending all around the Cabin. It is no longer so cold as to foster the formation of those icicles I had looked out at from inside.
I would imagine tromping about through the snow to be a very wet experience today. The snow is still about 18 inches deep over most of the clearing. The wind is so typically that of March that I would go out and fly my kite, since I have the clearing, except for how messy the snow would be to deal with. I remember kite-flying from my youth, when I would have to use a thoroughly soggy, mud-splotched flying field. That's how March in the city always remains in my memory--soggy. At least we didn't have to endure many unpaved roads, like the legendary mud-thoroughfares that impeded the growth of the early American motor industry and that have delayed unfortunate armies in eastern Europe for centuries, once they had successfully wintered and knew they had to move again.
The wind starts back up, across the porch. It falls cold upon my face, yet the bright sun and the roof's run-off remind me that these are winds of change to a more livable outdoors. I begin to think over what it will be like to sit for truly long periods, out there in the clearing and up the trails along the ridge. It should be possible before long to build a campfire in the stone ring I laid out last summer. Maybe I'm just living out classic "cabin fever". I'm reminded of the people I always see, who are out sunning themselves in late March / early April. They must just be trying to feel the sun, in any form, for the vertical elevation could hardly be enough for tanning purposes.
RB
19 March 1998 -- Seeking out the basics
Today, as I sit back once again on the slipcovered sofa, my mind has come to rest on the essential value of life itself, over all the small annoyances that have time to sneak up and seem so immensely important, when more dire threats decide to hold off for awhile.
The system of water and sanitation here at the Cabin, to provide the first example that comes to mind, could begin to seem so bothersome and labor-intensive that I would think of shuttering the doors and leaving for town (and indoor plumbing) on that account alone. Although there may be rural-born elders among my readership who would correct me on just how much of a burden life without running water can be, I at least have the stream and the filtration system and the stove for heating. Should the stream dry up and the snow melt away, then what would I do? I'd be carrying up those 5-gallon jugs from town and spending much frantic time, hiking along the hillsides looking for a new source. Then, I would know what carrying water is really all about!
And so goes my real life, back in the fray. The Church says I'm supposed to be sitting there in a constant state of thankfulness for what I still have at age 36 (most notably in terms of health), rather than calling God accursed for withholding those few obsessively craved items I don't have. Yes, I know this is a trite discussion; absence, of course, makes the heart grow fonder. That grass is so green on the other side. This sentiment, however, seems to have an essential flaw, since its complete enactment brings about complacency. Is it not growth, a by-product of heart-felt longing, that causes most of this world to move along?
Maybe what I'm seeing, as certain burned-out former overachievers might tell me, is a need for plain old moderation in all things. Certain of these wise ones have pushed themselves towards goals of unrealistically-perceived significance and lost control. Some may have seen life itself appear in peril, which has not been my true experience to date. How would I attain such wisdom to appreciate simple sufficiency and Lay Off, simply from knowing it could happen to me? It hardly seems that the medical scare stories keep those determined to over-eat from having more than their fill.
Maybe there's no escaping the need for personal peril in order to set us right on our ways. Trial by fire and all; the non-fatal being a source of strength (another now-overused saying). I sit in the living room, staring at the fire, going over this. I am moving, headlong and without internal control, towards certain and harrowing pain, the only question is when. Maybe to have some power of denial is good, then, or I'd just sit here, paralyzed. I think of the stories of Howard Hughes. It must be, as the Teacher says in Ecclesiastes: "A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work."
RB
23 March 1998 -- The real life I did not choose
Another essentially quiet morning it is, as I rustle myself naturally awake in my wooden-box bed under the low, sloping alcove ceiling. This is one of the great benefits of Cabin living; the ability to wake up without the prodding of that quartz alarm. Those four staccato beeps! They are drilled now, deeply into my unconscious, back in real life.
I slowly become aware of the new day, which I see outside the window across the room, and I am heartened to note that the sun will be out, at least for rising purposes, over the ridge. "Waiting for the Sun"--as I recall, those Doors releases have become some sort of staple in the minds of students farther south on Spring Break. Theirs is not a world as quiet as this, but also not as cold. The temperature must be down around 20 F, and I see tracings of frost on the glass. It shall be some time before I can really get out and be in the open again.
I can understand the longing of those who would leave their stuffy enclosures, many of them very old and in need of HVAC renovation, to walk about in the sun and greet one another on truly human terms. That's where I should have been myself, 15 - 20 years ago when I was the age for it. I should have been fully exposed, both to life's joys and its torments; so that I would not develop such insulation as to be as sensitive and fragile as I am today.
Yes, it is easy to sit here in 1998 and lament the life I could have had by now, rather than finding cause to celebrate the one I actually do. I see people today; my peers, in their 30's and turning 40, who have borne life's brunt with unflinching bravery, and I wonder why they did it. Some of them look at me with envy, for I am so unscarred, as of yet, by emotional upset.
It has grown brighter outside the window now, and I wait for the sun to pour in with its new and advancing angle. Though the people in the city are soon changing to Daylight Savings Time, the sun does not care how it is being measured. I can understand at times the fondness for traditional Middle Eastern Solar Time, as in Saudi Arabia. There is left then an unbroken continuity to the motion of the skies. I should like to flow like that past the hardships of living, but it is almost a given that life in Civilization is to be had at the price of repetitive crisis. The crisis can be as small as those insistent beeps of the alarm each morning or as large as losing a love--but that is the deal.
I finally sit up, cast aside the down comforter and locate my fleecewear garments, to walk about the room and tend to the fire. I do not face rushed motions, where I must meet the schedule of another...but then, those others are not here, either. Perhaps I shall try standing up again to the jostle of the urban crush, when I finally leave today. 36 is still a rather young person. Perhaps I can finally build the toughness to live a real life, and not be beaten down long by the trivial. That is a condition of readiness, requiring decades of training, that exceeds anything a person needs to live out the elements, here in the woods.
RB
27 March 1998 -- Replenishing my supply
It's time today to walk down the path into the gully and bring a few buckets of water back up for the cistern. Since I kept that particular walkway shovelled out during all the snowfall, and because of the recent warm weather, it has melted completely free of ice now and has dry footing, along the sequence of rock steps I found that roughly approximates a real masonry staircase.
As I step down into the ravine, I hear it...the low, steady, bubbling roar of the river's flow, which has started back in earnest, now that snow has been melting at a more rapid rate up above. Sometimes now, with the window open in the rear of the Cabin, I can sit still and hear this sound. I work my way down the assorted edges of rock, a 5-gallon bucket in each hand, and reach the bed of the stream. The ice cold water rushes past its minor cataracts and eddies, tumbling towards Civilization, as all running water must.
I dip the buckets where I can, and carry the first load back, with my arms strained and each step a significant lifting effort. I become fully aware of the parameters of my physical body when I do this kind of job. It is an asceticism just as severe as any mental discipline faced by a person in a cloistered Order. Intellectual loading is all too much of the routine for a "professional" worker in a city office. I think about this for a moment: how it is that people who live the way I do in real life almost see manual labor as a recreational activity; a sport; a curious diversion to remind themselves that they are indeed human and living and getting older. Office work is not really work as the word was once understood, but rather a form of forced devotion and intensity of attention, and a contractual obligation to stress.
This is what interests me in getting out for some hiking soon. Nothing feels better than to drop one's self down after several miles up and down the contours of these hills! Finally, I reach the rear dooryard, shovelled clear like the path, open the lid inside, and pour the two buckets into the top of the filter and cistern. It will be several trips to fill the entire 55-gallon drum, from which a brass tap supplies "safe" drinking water. I have heard others describe safe backcountry trips drinking untreated water from rivers like the one here, but they weren't spending days on end.
I decide to sit for a moment at the kitchen table and catch my full breath, before bringing up another load. I've been able to open the windows here, finally! Although I cannot leave them open long with the remaining cold, the breeze carries through this interior that had become so stale. Yes, I think I have Spring Fever. It is no mystery that the professional baseball season starts at this time of year, with its unmatched freshness.
I pick the two plastic buckets up and head out the back door, noticing that there is something coming alive, and I cannot pin it to a particular plant or bird or insect. Those of the Animist faiths would of course recognize divinity here. All is encompassed in a tide that rises like the stream below, but I do not feel insignificant or powerless. No, the influx raises me to a new state along with it, for this, God's renewal of life, is meant for me, too--he shows no partiality.
RB
31 March 1998 -- Familiar surroundings
I've been able for some time now to get the truck through, along the dirt track road that winds its way up the several miles of river valley from the Main Road and the town below. The danger of being snowed-in now less likely, I still must pass through long mud patches and standing puddles until summer. This gives an SUV real dignity, in comparison to the ones serving their days, clogging traffic in the city gridlock.
Today I have a chance, once again, to experience a bit of that feeling that comes from a change of scene, as I crawl down from the cab and proceed onto the porch, through that wooden door, and into the simple stillness of the main room, where all is as I left it when I went for a few more supplies. I remove my lighter-weight spring jacket and hang it on the other peg inside the door, next to my oft-used parka. It is so good to leave behind that state of continual vigilance, of which I have spoken so often, where I'm always expecting the unpredictable to pop into my path or come up from behind. This is why I seek solitude; to pass from concern over transient irrelevancy, which does not matter, and perhaps move on to something lasting, which does.
I walk softly across the floor planks, over to the hearth, where I shall need to light a new fire for this evening's heat, since spring has only begun. I take a seat in my rocker and pass my gaze slowly from item to item in the room, and back into the sleeping alcove, and over in the direction of the kitchen and back door. Having lived here now the entire winter, these furnishings have grown almost into an extension of my own person. Each object; each bit of fabric; each component of wooden furniture is as familiar now, from the hours I have spent in its midst, as the hands with which I have moved it and the eyes with which I have contemplated it.
This, I think to myself, is the simplicity I would carry back to my more disheveled city home, schedule, and life, given a chance. I would establish as much time-invariant stability as the rapidly changing world at the opening of the 00's would permit. Yes, change must occur, but let its reason be fully debated and examined in the mind, and let it not be taken blindly, in a mass-gorging of the wares promoted in the media. Those who see cataclysm in the immediate offing (which often includes myself, I should say) never take fully into account how much the human person values consistency in surroundings, traditions, and principle.
These invariants, I realize, are based at their foundation in a God who continues to love me as always. He provides what I need, while the marketplace pitches in at that moment of provision to clutter my view with more things I have been convinced I want. I sit in the rocker, lean back slightly, and go over this life I have had, and those parts that carry through unchanged, from my earliest memories in the 1960's to today. I try to integrate all I am into a being who does more than occupy the space in which I sit. Calling forth the comfort of what has rung true from times past, I create a sense of a life over time. This is how, after all, we remember the ones of unwavering principle who have gone before us.
RB
