Ripped

This morning while taking Scooter out and passing by one of our empty, mulch-covered beds against the house, I had an immense urge to rip out the weeds with my bare hands. They're mostly along the edge of the drive, growing up between the cement and the cylindrical wood beams meant to define the space. And there are all kinds, all grouped and looped and green.

The largest weed I don't like to think of a weed at all; in fact, I wish it would grow all alongside the house with its purple, geometric flowers and three-foot height. It alone colors the bed, the house, in one outgrowth near the side steps. If I pulled it, there would be nothing. If I pulled it, I would be exterminating a living thing with no name. If I pulled it, I would be killing it for the sake of taking control of nature. Who's to say a weed is an enemy? Who's to say a flower isn't a flower? I have nothing to grow in its place.

Out back, one bell pepper and one patio tomato plant grow in containers against the house. They're blooming with small fruits, the first I've ever grown. Though small, they're carrying a lot of weight, bearing forth on the rise up.

Meanwhile, I've grown this summer myself, taking on some weight in the adjustment to working from home. I've sat, I've eaten, I've watched a lot of Netflix. I didn't even see if happening, even when my shorts from last summer wouldn't fit, until I found my scale and got on it for the first time in four months. It's not about the weight, but it's knowing where I used to be, how my body used to feel, and lamenting the work it will take to get back there--so much more work than it took to get here.

But it's August. And August is traditionally a month of new beginnings because, despite trying to free myself, I'm still tied to the academic schedule. It's a new year, another opportunity to start over, to remake yourself, to be who you want to be.

So today I started the Ripped in 30 program and, though I finished my first workout more than two hours ago, my muscles are still twitching and shaky. Yeah, I'm starting from the beginning. And this time I'm going to make it to the end because, despite having qualms about ripping out weeds where otherwise there is no green, this fat doesn't belong in my body. I am not at war with my body; I desire peace, the cultivation of health. Because I deserve it.

The other new beginning is the incredible new job I start on Monday, building on all I learned in Spartanburg and allowing me to work deeply with Hutchinson. More about that later, but, for now, it's on to writing about bears.

Scooter's first hike

On waking

This morning I woke with a stomach ache, an ache that pushed into and from my back, to the sweet morning voices of NPR. They were raising money, I heard, and tried to break through to consciousness and press down into the mattress to exchange my ache for comfort. I heard that Tony Curtis had died, though I can't recall seeing him in any film other than the few minutes of Some Like it Hot that Jedsen showed me years ago. I woke to pain, fundraising, and death, and slanted my body toward the open window and the breeze, warmer now at dawn than it had been the night before.

Watching the sky change in the background of the BB&T skyscraper has become my favorite time of day. The few lights still glowing in the tower, and the pale beige of its stone, high, are transformed into this beautiful reflection or contrast or complement to the dawn. I cannot explain how it looks, only how it feels. It feels like this is the earth, new. There is this thing built by man first illuminated and changed, pulled out of the darkness through my bedroom window, each morning. It is in relief. It is surreal. It is the only living thing.

I want to stay in this moment all morning, swallow the image to keep it. But the sun comes, the blue lightens, and the tower becomes a mere tall building, its lights fading into the everything around it. It now longer glows, is distinct--beyond its height and still blinking red signals.

Snickers claws at my nose. Eats my hair. Stares. She has taken to licking me in the biting sort of way she does when she cleans herself. She leans down to my arm and pretends I am a kitten; I can feel the fronts of her teeth, her tongue pressed up against it and through for the more forceful cleaning. Perhaps this is a sign I should adopt another cat. Or a kitten. I would. And a dog, especially, if I could.

And this adoption thing, though it's been on my mind for some time now (again), is now forefront. I have just begun volunteering at the Spartanburg Humane Society, and last weekend was the orientation where we were told all of the statistics--incoming, outgoing, process, staff. I'm going to start out as a dog-walker, and training should be in a couple of weeks. I'm going to be a dog-walker for a couple of hours a week, though I don't know how I will stand to leave, how I will not have to compulsively walk every dog, how I will not, as I already have just by looking, fall in love with every dog that I walk.

I wake thinking of a morning walk with a dog, my dog. Up at dawn, at that best hour, walking for exercise, walking for happiness, walking for health and companionship. I would do it. But I already brush Snickers away at 6:30 when I should be getting up and ready for the gym. I already let NPR talk on and on without letting them complete, quickly, the job of waking they were sent to do. I already fail at going to the gym every morning now, and, mostly, making it by 7. I already lack the face of the man I love in the orange cast of morning, in the humid afternoon, in the shadowed clouds of sunset.

But I don't wake thinking alone. I wake smiling at dawn and its magic on the tower, the tower I have claimed, and grip the covers back under my neck, my head stretched up to catch the light.

Solitaire

Most of my wandering in the desert I've done alone. Not so much from choice as from necessity--I generally prefer to go into places where no one else wants to go. I find that in contemplating the natural world my pleasure is greater if there are not too many others contemplating it with me, at the same time. However, there are special hazards in traveling alone. Your chances of dying, in case of sickness or accident, are much improved, simply because there is no one around to go for help.

--from Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey

You'll be hearing from him again soon, here, for he resonates with me and what I'm doing out here.

In time he understood

In time he understood that nature was not something outside the human world. The reverse is true. Nature is the real world, and humanity exists on islands within it.

-from Anthill by EO Wilson

Literally

I can tell you that, in the last week, I've been to Kansas and back. Just like that. And it feels like it, too. Like just five minutes ago I was walking from the economy parking lot down the sidewalk to the entrance of the tiny and wonderful (though suspiciously lacking in water fountains) Greenville-Spartanburg Airport. A few seconds later I was in descent to Kansas City International Airport, watching the clouds thicken and thin from my window seat. I had been watching the clouds all afternoon, the texture of the upper surface, some tall, some fast, some grey, and the way the sun hit and colored. I had been thinking about the difference of below, how the earth below would be in shadow, under white and lacking sun, while, geographically, I was in the same place yet in an entirely different place. There was sun, blue sky, white only below. I had also been thinking about how wonderful it is that on a plane ride your only job is to gaze at clouds and ponder the earth.

It was in this mindset that I looked for the familiarity of Kansas. As I studied the clouds, we passed through them and, just below, they parted. I fixed on a football stadium below and tried to match the layout with stadiums I have known. First I thought Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, but it wasn't large enough. Then I thought a high school, but it seemed too large. I picked up on the southside building, bright sand, without stands and surveyed its surroundings. Green with more buildings of the same hue. Red roofs on some. Scattered yet close. And then I realized. It was Lawrence.

I searched East for Massachusetts street and found a clustered, lined road. Then North to where the Kansas River should be, flowing East, and found the seemingly still brown mass curving above the town. Just above the Kaw, I followed I-70 from Lawrence to the service station in the middle of lanes to the toll booth farther down yet before Exit 410 and the Speedway. The young UMKC student sitting next to me had been shifting restlessly throughout the short flight from Dallas, occasionally peering forward to see out our window. As we passed over my former home, I pointed down with my left thumb, grinning.

"That was Lawrence," I said, and he nodded, for we had already shared our brief back stories. I smiled and followed the lines of fields and farms, highways and rays of light from the scattered clouds as we closed in on the airport. Kansas only gained this beauty, to me, when I knew I was leaving. And now I was setting down again on this ground that I had left nearly three months before, relieved in the simple curve of the earth and the plotted paths of trees, if only because I missed it and what it still held for me.

Taxiing up to the gate, I texted Jedsen, "I'm here! I'm here! I'm here!" and looked out the window once more to trace the sun down to the ground. A rainbow had formed in the few minutes since we had landed. The right side touched down, centered in my window.

"There's a rainbow," I said to the boy next to me, pointing out again that which I loved.

"There must be a pot of gold down there," he said, shifting his backpack on his shoulders, ready to be on his home ground after three months in Mexico.

I nodded and wanted to walk with him out the terminal to where I hoped to find Jedsen waiting and point to him and say, "There's the man I love."

Blown: Kansas

Radial Home-Making

Definition

Like minds

Marsh Boardwalk

Marsh, with crabs by the thousands, clicking and popping upon the mud and boardwalk, their one larger claw white and folded as they floated sideways. No alligators, though I looked for eyes. I looked for eyes and the texture of tail. I waited for a strike but found none. Alone, I didn't go far down the trail, afraid of the snap and no one to hear. I was content with the tickle and rustle of crustaceans on the edge of the ocean.

In relationship

The Latin root religio means "to bind fast." There are lots of ways that our modern religions attempt to bind us. Ritual, collective history, mythology, and social dictates all serve to solidify our attachment. My question here is, To what? If the purpose of an organization is to help us conjoin with God on a profound inner level, then I'm all for it. If instead its objective is to tie us more firmly to identification with a particular group, tribe, or set of opinions, excluding all others, then I'm not sure I want to be bound.

--from Us by Liza Oz

I gave up religion and the Christian God three years ago. When I had been in the religion, Methodist, for twenty years, I was bound up in it as a member of a community. I loved that community, the common bond of praising and serving with friends and family. Then I moved away and lost that community and, though I tried to replace it in Manhattan, couldn't find it. I realized that my faith had been entirely wound in my own church--that I didn't actually have faith without it. It was a slow realization, and one that I'm not entirely comfortable with still.

I don't believe in a God but in some natural spirit--something tied to nature that isn't a god but an energy. But not mystic or transcendental. I don't know how I would describe it, and I honestly haven't gotten back to trying to discover what it is I feel. All I know is that I'm closer to spirituality in nature--the mountains, the ocean--than I am around other people or a city or near a church.

I don't want to be bound. But I admit I need something on an inner level. Something inside to love.

What I think about the sun

1. It's warm.
2. It warms me.
3. It makes Snickers lick herself more.
4. It's far, far away.
5. It's on my floor.
6. It's never on its best behavior.
7. It's the reason.

quoting SRS

I think, perhaps, I should have been born his daughter. Or niece. Or neighbor. Yes, neighbor, that would do.

"Meanwhile my eyes are also feasting. That is a favorite saying of my mother's: Something-or-other is a feast for the eyes. Like most proverbial sayings, it has been worn slick by too many tongues; and this is because, like most sayings, it names a truth. The truth here is one the mountain reminds me of: I have a hunger for nonhuman spaces, not out of any distaste for humanity, but out of a need to experience my humanness the more vividly by confronting stretches of the earth that my kind has had no part in making. I feast atop Mount June, on a jonathan apple, on vision."

--from "Feasting on Mountains" by Scott Russell Sanders.

This is how I feel when I'm in the mountains. This is why I crave it. I crave the silence, the big. I love the city (Chicago) because of the energy and beauty of water amid metal and glass. Man-made H&M and all those other shops and buildings, I love and wonder at. I feel there; I feel confidence and the power of doing. But I cannot feel awe and true power and understanding except in the nothing of man. The mountains, the true earth, that is home. Mountains and water running down hill, all down and life and the living of souls. My soul. Whatever soul I have is not in any city but sunlit sides of hills and mountains and over and under green.

hidden lawrence

I've been on walks in Lawrence before. Not as many as I should have been on in the last two years I've lived here, though. I usually walk north, to the river or around there. This morning I took off headed west on 9th street, up the big hill to where it meets Iowa, with no particular destination or direction in mind. Just after starting the climb, I crossed Avalon, a street that I have never looked south down. I decided to try it.

As I walked down the tree-lined, foliage-flanked street, I looked at the houses and the landscaping. I looked at the trees. I saw a neon orange bug or spider cross in front of me. I should have stopped to observe it, but I was caught up in the hidden part of Lawrence. Or, it's not really hidden, but it's not a street I would ever need to drive down, and it made me realize how little I look around when I am driving (which, I guess, is actually a good thing). I saw one house in particular that looked practically new and was for sale. It was set back and down, surrounded by trees, with three levels and loads of windows. It was empty and beautiful. I didn't stop to stare like I wanted, and I didn't go up close to it to look for fear of looking suspicious (I was wearing a baseball cap after all), but I looked left as I walked straight and nearly fell several times, not looking down at the drops in sidewalk. I could live there. Jedsen and I have been talking lately about houses and locations (not for "us" but just wants). I don't want to live in the country, in a rural area, and I thought I wanted to live in a city. More and more, though, through my reading and reflection this summer, I have decided that I don't want to live in a suburb or a neighborhood with house next to house, with touching, fenced backyards and no windows on the sides for the sake of privacy. My house needs to be set off. Nature will be my neighbor. If/when I have kids, I want them growing up not on pavement but wildflowers and vines. I want them to appreciate and care for nature and know a world beyond buzzing streets and malls. That is my wish.

So while the house I came upon is still very much in the center of Lawrence, it has some of those elements. And, actually, as I discovered today, many parts of the neighborhoods directly to the west and south of my apartment are set right in the thick of wood-like nature. Oh, all the mature trees and flowers and little creeks and green, all green. My apartment is at the base of a hill, and while I new there were houses lining 9th street on the side of it, I thought they all ended shortly in dead ends like my side of Avalon does. I found out this morning that that is not the case at all. I actually thought there was a golf course up there, (and there may be, but I didn't find it) but there are houses, interesting houses probably built in the 1970s but again all surrounded in vegetation.

You learn your home on feet. I've known it, I've experienced it before, but it came to life for me in earnest this morning. I've been ignorant and deprived by not exploring my home and knowing it. Scott Russell Sanders tells of the importance of knowing your town, your state, your neighborhood in A Conservationist Manifesto and in places in Secrets of the Universe.

I know you a little better today, Lawrence, and I appreciate you better for it. I appreciate the conservation in the middle of the city. The new west Lawrence doesn't have that. West Lawrence may have beautiful, new homes, but they're close together and tree-less, lifeless. I'm satisfied with the part of Lawrence I've made my home, the hilly, covered part with a more retro flair.

Building Arks

Scott Russell Sanders, from his new book A Conservationist Manifesto.

"The ark-builders don't rush from one sensation to the next, as the media propose, but instead they relish the pleasures of an unhurried pace. They hang their laundry outdoors, enjoying the sunshine, instead of stuffing it in a machine. They cook their own food instead of grabbing a sack of sugar and fat in a drive-through lane. They take walks or sit for talks with people they love, instead of buying a ticket to the latest craze. They meet the world in the flesh, instead of through a screen. They remember how to dream and laugh without benefit of electricity."

He touches me. Makes me want to swear off the television and go to the farmer's market right now. Read him, please. All of him.