Feeling the Pull

I am sitting at Cafe Diablo in Torrey waiting for my lunch. My truck has brought me "up the mountain" as it needed a new starter. Fixed and ready to go, it touches a longing in me to get back on the road. As I laid down on the edge of Capital Reef, contemplating self and life, in and out of doziness, my desire to keep going increased; driving, listening, stopping when or wherever, living simply; just me and the highway like so many times before.

I find it incredibly interesting to watch this pull in myself and recognize the tension caused between craving for home and  and the sense of wander in me as a constant in not just one aspect of my life.  Fortunately and maybe not coincidentally I currently live in a place that touches both the wanderer in me (just minutes from my house it's easy to get lost amongst the sandstone) as well as the one who longs for community and place.

The question is, am I able to balance both? To step into home, community and deep connection, fighting the instinct to bolt from that which I want? I think so. I think I can find the equilibrium,  and it's time. Time to do the work, balance it with play and to stop handing out "the speech". As I commit to community theater, a new teacher and changes at work, I recognize myself shifting into summer, bringing me home or 'home for now'. All the while saying hello and goodbye to friends, old and new.

A friend of mine asked today “when does it get better?” I’ve been thinking about this a lot and what the answer is for me because it has gotten better,  and not due to circumstance or even environment. Nor can I say exactly when it happened, but it is better!

This is not to say that my heart doesn’t break regularly but that it breaks open in a way of beauty and trust. It doesn’t mean I understand why we’re apart, or that my body doesn't ache occasionally or that I know what to do with the anger that seems to have shown up after grief. Nor does it say that the desert wind doesn't seem like too much but sometimes.....and at other times, the breeze  that stirs the sagebrush, stirs my being in just the right way. It may mean than I am honing the practice of turning toward what is present for me, doing my best to live authentically and in integrity and letting "the soft animal of my body love what it loves".

-------

"Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.