Much about the times is difficult for me to accept, process, reconcile, and so on. The politics. The environmental rape. The selfishness of maskless morons. Racism. Nationalism. It has all relentlessly driven me inward.
Fortunately I have some good friends who routinely draw me up from absolute misanthropy, but I wade at the dark water’s edge.
Lately, as I mentioned in my previous post, I have been feeling far more connected with nature than with people. Skin burning with buffalo gnat bites, fading inked circles on my abdomen and legs mark the sites of formerly embedded ticks, I’m often up to my elbows in bird shit, with a pack of rangy hounds circling my legs tripping me up. Outside, I have larval Lepidopterans dropping from the trees tangle in my hair and a menagerie of breeding wild birds commingling with recently released rehabbed birds in constant song or braided flight through the trees.
The easiest way to dig holes for the arbor is alternately spearing the Earth with a 20lb digging bar and rooting up the loosened rocks and soil by the fistful. Through the action of insects on my flesh and my own labors on the soil, the negligent ugliness of people recedes as I am integrated more thoroughly into this acre. I glance up from this process and the rich blue sky has a narrow veil of dappled clouds winding to the southeast. Dinosaurs saw that same sky, I assure myself, as a catbird and a vireo chatter excitedly in the brambles.