Three Things

I am eating Turkish figs on the one year anniversary of my move to Austin, TX.

I am drinking Washington wine while my 60 lb southern hound dog snores on my bed.

He just turned a year old.  Funny to me that a few days before I boarded a plane with 2 bags and a guitar (so wonderfully cliche, I know!)  a dog mama somewhere was panting and squeezing out a litter of pups, including the shy little guy who would one day end up in my life.

As it turns out, my dog and I were well matched.  We both eat quickly, sleepy easily, and are nervous around men we don't know.

I made pancakes this morning, put on a pair of jorts and a t-shirt, and went for a long walk with the pup.

I let myself bask in the glow of January sunshine, felt that cool breeze a blowin' and did a bit of thinking on the past year.

Texas has given me the big space I needed, and I feel like I am in the middle of a wide prairie, not yet able to see the horizon, or what might come next.

There is momentum to my inner life, and also lots of uncertainty, which is difficult for me to sit with.

Over the holidays I was lamenting to one of my friends my feelings about grief, and loss, and my tendency to attempt to prepare for these cannonballs, or stave off what I see as inevitable sadness.  She gently reminded me that this is what life is- sadness and joy exist together, and in truth all these things WILL come to pass. In other words, the cold prickly's and the warm fuzzy's live in one big house together, and they are just fine with the arrangement.  She asked if there was some kind of motto I could say to myself that might remind me of this.

I imagined myself walking around the pond by my house, all of a sudden yelling, "This is all going to end! Yep! Everything is going to end!"

Might as well get myself an evangelical sign and park myself outside a grocery store.

But the more I thought about my motto, the more it rang true.

I started thinking about Mary Oliver, how I read her poems in the White Mountains of California almost ten years ago, waking to the sunrise over the Sierras, and feeling like I was home.

I thought about Billy Collins, how I think of his poem "Dharma" when I look at Guthrie, how I buzz around the house on espresso early in the mornings, during that sacred time when I eat yogurt and sing along to Gillian Welch or Neko Case, and let my hair stay uncombed.

I remembered Annie Dilliard's "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek," how I read it on the subway in Manhattan, and it felt more like a morning prayer then anything else.

I thought about these poets of mine, that so many of us love, who help us to hit that high note of sorrow or makes some sense of the big mystery before us.

I thought about how it's all going to end, and how maybe that isn't such a bad thing.  It's just a thing.  It doesn't mean it is easy, or simple.

I went and read Mary Oliver's poem "In Blackwater Woods," and found these lines, which I have known by heart for several years.


To live in this world


you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal
     to hold it


against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and when the time comes to let it go,
     to let it go.


I'm gonna keep working on the third thing.

And in the meantime, I promise to tell you more stories of alligator fish and drunken italian waiters, Polish boyfriends and vegan donuts, and everything else that Texas has to offer as we stride along into year number two.