Every time I arrive, I see that I no longer have cell reception and grin. I unpack a stack of novels and books of poetry. I brew coffee. Light slides geometrically through pines. A veil is lifted in my imagination. There's a spark of a story and I grab a pen. Hours slide away, longer and leaner than I normally know them. I run through them but there's no rush, just open space.
I wonder, every time, could I live like this?
I come home and it stays for a bit. The cashier tells me I'm "friendly" because I still carry a whiff of a long evening watching fireflies. I'm unencumbered by the momentum of home. But, eventually, it gets me. And I get it. I like the pace and possibilities for anonymity. I like endless coffee shops to hide in and classes to take. I sign up for stuff, begin projects, and clutter my desk.
And then it gets to be too much and I run away to a cabin in the country.
Something odd happened this past week. The cabin came in.
Over these last two years I shed a lot. A sort of unimaginable lot. In the process, I fought plenty. I raged and grieved. Projects, ideas, relationships, identities all came undone.
It's done now. I feel that and know. It's done.
After the storm, I felt space. Open, undefined space.
And that's a bit terrifying.
My old habits have been chomping at the bit. I liken it to an empty living room. There's some impulse urging you to buy a sofa! Any sofa! Just put something in there, dammit!
But I knew that's habit. That's reflex. It's not intention.
So I've waited. In the empty room.
The space has felt deafening. It's felt a bit frightening. I'm so used to being set on my path, moving forward one step at a time. Where is a path in an empty room? Shouldn't I just do something? Anything?
But a smaller, wiser part said, "wait."
I've waited. I decided the answer is "no" until it is a clearly lit, brightly felt, undeniable "yes." And the undeniable yes hadn't yet arrived, so I've waited in the empty room. I've said "no" to many sofas.
Finally, last week, I got sick. And surrounding being sick for a few days were endless March nor'easters. Even when I would have rejoined the world around me, I couldn't. Roads were closed. Everything was canceled.
Initially, panic. I am home alone in a metaphoric empty room. What am I doing? Don't I have to decide it?
And I know that frenetic reaction is the devil. So I waited. I decided the job was to heal and rest because those were the opportunities in front of me. I got lots of sleep, read novels, and tended to my own health. And it returned fully.
Something else began to take shape in those open hours too-- that feeling. The phone didn't ring. I had stacks of novels. I watched the snow fall.
The cabin came into my house.
I looked at the ceiling and it looked like my ceiling but it looked softer and sweeter. It looked like my ceiling but not the one I have to make sure to sweep and repaint and tend, but like soft points of focus during day dream. It looked like the ceilings in the cabins. The ones I'm not responsible for.
I realized that the cabin could live in here. I can live in the cabin. Even in the midst of my life. My life has its own pace and momentum, but I have some say here too.
I always wondered what the ingredients would be to take that open, sunlit cabin feeling into my daily life. I'm starting to wrap my head around it-- it's time. It's open, unencumbered time. And not being afraid of that time. Being within the open space.
That's the cabin.
No wonder I couldn't do this on my own. I had no frame of reference for bringing the softer space into what I know. I'm good at making it hard and defined. There's a level of surrender in allowing something to grow.
I don't know if I'll be able to sustain this and I'll say that outright. But I intend to try. At the very least, when I find myself with a gaping calendar and the predictions for a couple of storms, I won't fight it. There's peace in there.
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