What is and what is not.

Four days ago I received a call about my father's second-year PET scan after a run in with cancer in summer of 2009. The message from the doctor said that there were "significant findings" and that an appointment needed to be made for a biopsy. I decided that if the results were positive, I would move back to California. Three days ago, my sister drove my father to Stanford for the biopsy.

I have been struggling to keep my head above what has been an enormously overwhelming week. The reality of where I am in my life, everything that I have lost, and what I have left to lose weighs heavily on me. My actions have cost me the most important people in my life and it is a difficult change. I have decided to be frank, here, because I think its important: I know that my choices have brought me to enriching, awakening, beautiful experiences and people that I never otherwise would have crossed. I know that I wake up in touch with every hair on my body and that for the first time in my life, all of my insecurity and anxiety have melted away. Suddenly, I know who I am and that I am meant to be alone during this time in my life. Still, the consequences of this have been devastating and not a day rises that I am not woken by the sorry and sadness of it all.

A very important woman in my life showed me how to have faith. At each crucial juncture in her life, faith has brought her comfort and at the most difficult moments in my life since I have known her, her faith has generously brought the same to me. There is a tree on the property here that stands alone, making a perfect sphere of shade on an overgrown field. The grass inside this circle is smooth and matted from various creatures resting beneath it and so, every day, I sit below the tree and listen. This week, for the first time since I was a kid, I prayed for my dad. I don't know what answers or how it does, I don't know whether I have a right to ask at all, but I know that these moments fill my heart and visit me throughout my days in the garden and around town.

Yesterday my father called me to tell me that the results were negative, and he is still cancer free. Next week I will find a way to Montana to be with my family and then I will return yet again to the road to try to understand these lessons, to find a home, to give every ounce of love I have to everyone I meet, and to appreciate the most generous gift I have ever been given: the understanding that we are a part of something enormous, and that if we trust it, it will help us find our way.

draught

Last night (for the second night in a row) I woke at 2am to a sky like flickering electricity and trees above me moaning against tornadic wind. I could feel the tarp floor lifting around my body and the fiberglass frame swaying; the storm had pulled my stakes loose again and, worse, I had fallen asleep with the screens open and the tent floor was soaked. Ducking into the downpoor, I crawled around the cold mud feeling for stakes and trying to re-anchor them quickly. I glanced inside my tent again: Guitar, backpack, sleeping bag, all of the clothes that I own. I looked up at the tall, shade-giving tree above me aching back and forth and thought of the large bough that had fallen into the driveway the night before. Forget it, I thought, and ran into the house.

It has almost been two months since my life changed course and I can't believe it's been so long. Somehow I am in Lawrence, Kansas, alone, with no plan for how long I will stay. I am embracing the warm and weird that this town is known for. What strikes me is the pride here. Everyone in Lawrence is here for a reason - most people I talk to are from other parts of Kansas and insist that this is the only place in the state worth living. The mastermind of this farm, Brady Karlin, is one of the most social and excitable people I have met. Anyone he doesn't know in town he sticks a hand out to and if there's something in particular you want to see, he knows the person to show it. Yesterday, through his connections, I exchanged information with two women who run sheep farms and process (spin, dye) their own wool, the man behind the dye plants at the KU Medicinal Garden, and a gorgeous secluded pond that graciously allowed a small group of us to take a dip.

I am trying to be realistic about where I am in my life. Recently turned 23 and homeless I have made a lot of big decisions in the last two months. I learned, recently, that a thought can catch you off guard and rush out of your mouth before you realize what you have said. I learned, also, that if you spend some time with that thought, introduce yourself to it, you may realize that you recognize it. You've seen it around and never wanted to accept it. In my case, my heart made a decision and left my mind reeling for weeks trying to catch up. Where once I had a direction (East) and a partner and some vague idea of a plan, none are now. This is a change that can either crush or motivate.

For now, a mostly dry tent under a (thankfully) strong Locust Tree in Lawrence, KS is my home. I will spend the next week trying to make the kind of connections that will keep me engaged, excited, and at least partially employed. Depending on how well that works out, I may look into sublets and stick out the summer.

If ever you feel lonely, find the honey vendor at the Lawrence Farmer's market dressed in the bee suit complete with antennae. If ever you feel trapped, jump off the dock at Anne and Mel's pond and sink until your feet feel the murky cold bottom. If ever you feel off balance, take a nap in the hammock and wake just in time to catch the lightning bugs taking their positions for sunset.

Forever alive, forever forward,

Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble, dissatisfied,

Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men,

They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go;

But I know that they go toward the best—toward something great.

Walt Whitman - "Song of the Open Road"

Changes

It's been a hard couple of weeks. It never ceases to amaze me how, in a matter of hours, everything can change. I started this trip with a plan, an end goal, a partner. Now I'm not sure I'm still on a trip. I have to remember that I am young, that life is long, that hearts are resilient and that life has a way of sorting us all out. Someone I have an enormous amount of respect for told me recently that we make the decisions we mean to make, even if if we catch ourselves by surprise in the moment we make them. We just have to trust our instincts.

Yesterday was the first birthday I have ever spent in Chicago, despite living here for four years. It was a long, beautiful, hot day spent in the company of one of my favorite people and ending in the company of our closest friends. I tried to use the day counting my blessings. My plan is to stay here as long as I can stand it and try to absorb as much love and positive energy from my friends as possible before I head back to Lawrence. There I'll go back to the farm and try to take on the reality of a new life, a weary soul, and a lack of direction.

I know that this tetherless state is something I have ached for. I know that there are only brief moments in our lives when we have this opportunity and the trick is to see them as such. An opportunity to be young. Be one's own person. Live simply and fully in every moment. Ram Dass says :

 

"The question we need to ask ourselves is whether there is any place we can stand in ourselves where we can look at all that's happening around us without freaking out, where we can be quiet enough to hear our predicament, and where we can begin to find ways of acting that are at least not contributing to further destabilization." 

 

"It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed."
— Ram Dass

 

“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.” - Anatole France