Time Traveler

Aaah Friday, the end of another productive week of house building;  Tom and his crew of two finally seemed ready to attach steel to the roof.    

“Wow!,” I said.  “Looks like you guys can relax for the weekend before you start tinning on Monday.”

You need to understand, Tom is polite.  Winona County polite.  Not only carefully choosing his words, but somehow even managing to control any negative facial expression.  Still, I saw it.   The slight cock of his head, half a degree off plumb maybe.  The blip of an eyebrow. 

“What have I done?” I thought.  “Did I say something terribly wrong?” 

I felt time slowing, as if my life were a movie where all action suddenly freezes, except for me.  I fished down into the depths of my mind, so murky.  “Must.  Find.  Problem.”  With an exhausting effort, I squeezed and twisted my brain.  Finally, mercifully, the water began to clear.  I yanked  on my thought line.  Splash!   Out of the water, it leapt high.  I could see it.  Clear reality.  The magnitude of my folly revealed at last.

“Monday!”  I shook my head.  The movie ended.  I turned back to my life.  “It’s not Friday!  It’s Monday!”

I felt dizzy, almost sick, as I explained myself to Tom.  “It’s because of my friend Heather and her boys.   They’re here to camp.  I forgot it’s their MEA break at school and assumed it was the weekend.”  Tom was great about it, actually, joking it off.   

But I was far from great.    I knew I had committed a ‘work world’ sin:  mistaking Monday for Friday of all things.  Yet that wasn’t the worst of it.  Like the Star Trek android, Data, I was still struggling to recalibrate my internal chronometer.   Time, I was discovering, is so much more than a flashing light on my phone, or an internal sense.  It’s physical.  Visceral.   Soon my entire being remembered it’s Monday, both determined and resigned.   I could have easily sat down with Heather, a former colleague at Medtronic, and gotten to work like we’d done for years. 

I can’t say when I became dominated by time, but even little Mike was  some kind of efficiency freak.   “Best to carry the bowl of popcorn and the book I’m reading and this full glass of milk into the living room all at the same time.”  This served me well throughout school and my long corporate careers at Seagate and Medtronic.  Producing maximum output in minimum time impressed teachers and management.  Oh blessed internal chronometer, light my way with your time display. 

Fortunately for me, a new truth is surging upward, like prairie grasses pushing from beneath, cracking the hard surface of a silicon lie.  For as I said goodbye to Tom and began walking up the driveway to rejoin Heather and the boys, I felt a tingle, growing to a thrill.  My feet nearly floated off the gravel.  I’d done it!  I’d broken free!  I’d achieved escape velocity from the most powerful and pervasive force of my life:  Time.

Until my Medtronic severance money runs out, I’m off the corporate merry-go-round.  Rather than Outlook Calendars and Gantt Charts, my life now pulses with the rhythms of the earth.   Yes, I am here on the job site every day.  But Tom has given me a great gift.  He manages and worries about the schedule so much, I barely have to.  I’m allowed to let go.   

A bud unfurls.  The leaf basks green in the light.  Blazes red.  Falls to earth.  A bare twig rattles.  The great story of life. And death.  And life renewed.    But is time the same for that leaf as for me?    I’m beginning to have grave doubts.

I also wonder if time is really just a character in a story.  A very engaging and useful character, but no more.  And no less a fictional creation of my imagination than Amelan or Emo or any of the characters in my Corridor novel.   Time the tool.  Time the tyrant.  Time my trusted friend, so predictably and reliably there.  And least he was so on Monday?  Or was it Friday?   

This week I continue to revel in an inspiring comment from Brad, a long-time Medtronic friend.   “I hope you do not have to go back to work ever again, and can enjoy Rah-dur.   While I must earn money one day again, I don’t think I could go all the way back to work, especially with all the travel. 

Unless it were time travel.   A week ago I would have thought such a notion comical.  Now I’m not so sure.  I’m imagining what it might mean to float “weightless” in time, as an astronaut does in space.  I’ve only engaged new life on the Land for three months?  What will three years bring?

Maybe I’ll learn there is no such a thing as three years.  Whenever that is, I hope you'll join me.

Rah-dur!

Yoga Hawk

I smeared my apple---picked from our east wilds, some long forgotten orchard now hidden amidst cherries and tangles of gray dogwood---with creamy peanut butter, fresh from the Bluff Country Coop.  “A successful shopping trip,” I smiled at Linda, seated next to me in our cabin’s “patio”, the old wood shed.  Indeed, we’d pretty much found everything we wanted at Fleet Farm:  telescoping apple-picker to snare those high and wild fruits, cedar posts to support our Humanure Hacienda, 30 reflective stakes to guide you down our 1500 foot driveway some winter eve. 

 Linda took another sip of her steaming Roibus tea.  Ahhh!  We were savoring the last of the year’s warmth.  Yet, as we gazed west across the stubble of recently harvested corn, precious day was already slipping away from us.  And somewhere, not far beyond the veiled sun, we could already feel winter peeking over the shoulders of the clouds.

 “So, what should we do now?” she asked me.

I shrugged.  Sometimes, when life is going so well, I intentionally delay.  As if, somehow, I could forever wrap myself in the moment: my apple, her tea, the warm blanket of gathering October clouds. 

“How about Yoga?”  she prodded.  We’ve tried online YogaGlo a few times in our little cabin.  Now lower your leg all the way to the right.  Hers lands on my belly.  Mine is stopped, pretty much vertical, by the bed.  Now, at the wall, kick up into a handstand.  What wall?  They’re all consumed by our “stuff”. 

Linda must have perceived my resistance.  “How about outside?” she offers. 

Something triggers in me.   “How about at the house?  Up in the Yoga loft?  I’ll sweep up the sawdust.”  The Yoga loft:  the name appeared on the first drawing Architect Paul ever showed us of our one and only upstairs room.  I wasn’t even doing Yoga then.  Now, thank to Linda’s prodding, my wonderful teacher Monica, and Ali, our Yoga grandmother, it’s part of me, physically and spiritually.  

“There’s still no walls.”  She was right.  I was imagining handstand, a pose right at the limit of my yogability.  Sometimes, I even get up.  Now I pictured kicking up in the under-construction Yoga loft, banging my heels on a stud, or missing the studs altogether and toppling into a pile of sharp tin.

Linda---perceiving perhaps the ebb and flow of my enthusiasm---pounced .  “How about the east porch?”

“Genius!”   In minutes, we’d stuffed the Prius with Yoga mats, laptop, phones (for mobile hotspot), warm clothes and blankets, camera and wine (hoping for a celebration of success).  Down the cabin’s steep driveway, up Calico Hill Rd then down our long driveway, our home’s new roof just peeking over the ridge as we approached it.   Amidst pallets of steel roofing, we unloaded, after a good sweeping of the east porch. 

Ahhh! The east porch.   That grandest of views, now covered and protected from the northwest winds and darkening clouds.   And there, cross-legged before us, sat Noah Maze, our tiny digital Yoga instructor shining out atop a cooler, asking us to sing our Anusara invocation, the beginning of a level 1:2 class culminating in handstand.  Yes, handstand.  The east porch has one wall of unfinished OSB. 

As Noah gently builds toward our handstand climax, all goes well.  Lots of down dog, plank, arm-strengthening, shoulders-on-the-back, kind of stuff.   Then, just as we’re about to get serious, Noah is replaced by the swirling arrow of death.  The dreaded “rebuffer”.   Dark clouds roll by to the south.  Bare feet go chill. 

“Ok, you lead us!” I say to Linda.

And, after mumbling something about waiting for Noah and there’s really nothing to do, she guides us, wonderfully.   Shoulder stretch.  Shower pose.  L-pose.  Then, finally, we’re ready to try it.  Handstand.  Not only first Yoga class in our new home, but handstand.  We take turns.

Linda goes first.  Begin with table pose:  hands and knees.  Melt the shoulder blades into the heart (ho my gosh she’s so gorgeously strong)  Knees up.  Walk the feet toward the hands until bent like sawhorse legs.  Then, finally, the kick.  She tries so hard.  Kick after exhausting kick, but her arthritic hips just aren’t going to spread her legs apart enough.  I spot her.  Up she goes: a thing of beauty, so straight, balanced inches from the wall.

My turn.  I’m tired.  And scared.  As always.  Maybe more than always.   Table pose.  Melted heart.  Knees up.  My feet walk toward my head.  “What’s that?”  Upside-down, I’m gazing east between my legs.  And there, just over the tips of the tall grass, soars hawk.  He swirls, dives and just where he disappears over the ridge, lightning.  One bolt, sudden and silent. 

I kick.  I’m up.   In the past, I’ve done pigeon pose.  Crow.  Even eagle.  And now, for the first time, Yoga hawk.  Not the pose, mere handstand, but the action:  prairie root to rise.  My hands, rooted into the mat, draw energy up from the Land itself.  And I rise.  I soar. 

Upside-down, heels against the OSB wall, I gaze between my shaking arms.  Past green grass.  Past golden aspens.  Past dark clouds.  To my new life.  It’s here!  I’m engaging.  It’s already here! 

Rah-dur!  

Making Love with the Enemy

So when did my hatred begin?  I wasn’t born with it, though, as a child, I certainly did not love them either.  Not like the burr oaks with their long, almost scary, arms.  Or the apple, with a built-in ladder to all but its highest fruit.  No, boxelder was a fine tree, certainly better than those ‘suburban’ ash trees springing up in front of every new rambler in Albert Lea.  Yet, when I finally learned to hate boxelder, I suddenly found myself surrounded by nodding heads.  “Damned boxelder bugs!”  Come to think of it, that squishy-soft house invader is the only excuse I’ve heard for hating the tree.     Strangely, I don’t hate the bean field for unleashing the crunchy sand dunes of Asian beetles into my home.

I’d like to blame the Land.  First the Land tricked me.  We first saw the 62 acres when all snow and gray twigs.  “I wonder what all those small trees are?  Dogwoods?” I asked the realtor.  He shrugged.  He knew.  I just know he knew.  And, oh the spring of my discontent, when those all-too-familiar leaves flushed so yellow green.   “Boxelder!  We have 10,000 boxelders!”    

Boxelder choked out our pond, leaving all but a damp malaria breeding grounds.  

They marched out of the forest and onto our grasslands, defying our efforts to establish a prairie. 

And then, ho my then, they dared to shade out our oaks:  our precious, much loved saplings.  Sins such as this could not be borne.

War was soon underway, though the eventual victor was far from clear.  We bulldozed them into log mountains.  We chopped them to pieces with the brush-hog from hell.  We poisoned them: the blue-paint of death.  Along the entire half-mile long northern hedgerow, a legion of hired chainsaws, screaming and smoking, felled them like dominos.  We reserved the worst (or best) for the great mother of them all, whose children trample our once grass-carpeted pasture.  We girdled her.  Stripping a ring a bark, allowing us to watch her slow death as each year another limb succumbs to thirst.  First the mother. Then her children.  Genocide.

I can’t say when, not exactly, but at some point in the war my feelings toward boxelder began to change.  Perhaps it was the first controlled burn on our prairie.  As the flames danced up the grassy ridge, I not only felt the gratitude of the Land---like the first gasp of one saved from drowning---thanking us for restoring her long-last glory, but I perceived the thousands of charred boxelder saplings.  

Boxelder is not at home on the fire managed landscape.  No, my much loved oak is the tree of fire, thick bark shrugging off the flames.  I no longer had to worry about boxelder on the prairie.   

I looked around.  There stood mother tree.

I didn’t really want to admit it, but she was actually quite beautiful.  A rare boxelder specimen, her once lush limbs now look like bones, ghostly white and broken.   Still, it’s a long ways from guilt, acceptance even, to making love.

That required planning a home among boxelder:  the House the Land Built.  “Enable our connection to the Land,” we told Paul Neseth, our newly chosen architect.   Though not explicitly stated, there was a ‘boxelder exclusion’ assumed in that connection.   Then we decided that wood would heat our house.  What could be more connecting than swinging a maul, feeling the thud, hearing the crack and feeling the thrill as the wood reveals its inner secret of colors, swirls and, possibly, ants scurrying for safety.  

Though oak is the hallowed tree of fuel, boxelder deserves a place at its side.   Burns fast (perfect for four-ton, heat-storing masonry heater).  Easy to cut.  Easy to split.  Surprising streaks of red.  And, quick to throw off his coat, he never rots while standing.  Not to mention we have a million of them.  Heat for a life time.  And beyond and beyond and beyond.   Holding hands---or limbs---but not quite making love.

Then came boxelder bear.  Our friend Kevin’s dream come true:  chainsaw art.  “Pick any boxelder stump in the hedgerow.”  So many still remained from the chainsaw legions.    

Physical beauty but still not love making.

That took a horizontal surface.  “A big chunk of wood.”  That was Paul’s suggestion for our bathroom “vanity”.     And wouldn’t it be even more connecting if we chunked it from a land tree?   But only an oak had that girth and we certainly weren’t going to fell one of those.  But love is a funny thing.  It waits, almost rotting, until leaping unexpectedly into your arms. 

I was chain-sawing what remained of boxelder bear’s tree:  16” lengths for future splitting.  All done, save one.  One wide-girthed trunk.  And then I saw it, or better said, I felt it.  Possibility.  Somewhere inside that trunk was something I had to have, had to see, had to free.   Something beautiful.  Something compelling.  Something connecting.  And what more is love than the greatest of Connections?

And now, after a visit to Tom Heim, retired farmer with a love for milling trees, I’ve found that love. 

I never dreamed boxelder could be so beautiful.  All that changed was me.  My perception.  My commitment.  My connection. 

Maybe, if our relationship goes as I hope, she’ll rest in our bathroom, my finger tracing her round and smooth outline.

I hope she waits for me.

Rah-dur!

Cover Your Stuff

The Sawdust Toilet Rap

“Cover your stuff.” One rule’s enough.

To keep the place smelling sweet when you done what you do.

From the sawdust pail, just fill the scoop.

One scoop for one and two scoops for two.

Cover your stuff.  Cover your stuff.  Come on down and cover your stuff.

But when she trumpets: “I want to dump it.”

Then you know you’re in trouble.  What do you do?

Cause under all that dust is one hot mess.

What’ll she say of a week’s worth of pooh?

Cover your stuff.  Cover your stuff.  Come on down and cover your stuff.

There ain’t nothing for it.  She wants to throw it.

So you take her and the bucket to the humanure heap.

There’s the pile.  Here’s the rake.

Now dig a nice little hole for the stuff to sleep.

Cover your stuff.  Cover your stuff.  Come on down and cover your stuff.

Now the deed of dread has come to a head.

There’s a bucket and it’s heavy; you got to lift it high

Over the heap.  Over the hole.

And when it falls, I won’t blame you if you cry.

Cover your stuff.  Cover your stuff.  Come on down and cover your stuff.

Now the worst is done.  But there’s more to come.

Got to clean that bucket.  Give it a mop.

There’s the water.  There’s the brush.

And when you’re done just dump it on top.

Cover your stuff.  Cover your stuff.  Come on down and cover your stuff.

And oh my dear,  the end is near.

You get to cover all that mess until the smell is gone.

There’s nice clean straw.  Just heap it on.

And let God take care of what we’ve all just done.

Cover your stuff.  Cover your stuff.  Come on down and cover your stuff.

And then we pray, for compost one day,

A garden of full of goodies grown from part of us.

But until that day, we’ll keep doing our thing

In the toilet that we cover with clean sawdust.

Cover your stuff.  Cover your stuff.  Come on down and cover your stuff.

Rah-dur!

Just the Facts

6:06AM     Sitting in shed looking out hayloft door.  Fingertips protruding from gloves feel cold.  Google displays 41F in St. Charles.  Distracted by thermos of hot tea, Orion and unidentified night noises.  

Sunday Oct 2   Sitting in Judson church, alone in the 6^th pew on the left.  First time in church since moving to the Cabin.  Communion bread chewy and tasty.  Lynn, mother of Anton who I mentored years ago, sits down next to me.  Discover she didn’t know we’d sold our house.  Felt embarrassed for assuming everyone knows the supposed big events of my life. 

6:29AM   Pink in SE sky.  Dog Star (Procyon) only star visible below Orion. 

April 2004   Purchased 62 acres in Elba township, Winona County, MN.   Though we kept trying on different names for it, all we’ve ever called it was The Land.

6:35AM   Great horned owl still hooting.

Feb 2007   Enrolled 41 acres into CREP program, providing us income from government in exchange for returning the acres to native prairie.  Jagged CREP boundary outlines a future 1600’ driveway to a 2 acre homesite.

6:43AM   Steel rim of thermos cup cold on my lips.  Orion hiding in the growing light.  

Nov 2007   Plant prairie seed into 41 acres.  Many experts tell us our method (no herbicide, drill straight into existing sod) will fail.

6:55AM   Poured more steaming hot tea from thermos into cup.  “Ahhh!”  Crows, well separated from one another, fly overhead and disappear beyond grassy ridge.

Jan 2009   Select Paul Neseth, Locus Architecture, to design new home.  Identify two main themes:  Welcome family, friends and neighbors.  Enable connection to the Land.

7:02AM   Toes cold.   Turn off LED lantern.

April 29 2011   I retire from Medtronic with severance package equaling pay until end of year.   My next source of income remains unknown.

7:05AM              Scott’s horse neighing.  Dakota the dog barking.  Crow cawing.   

Aug 1 2011        Closed on house in Minneapolis.  Moved into 20’ x 20’ rented cabin across road from the Land.  Linda begins working only Tuesdays and Wednesdays in Minneapolis.

7:12AM   Toes even colder.  Tea already lukewarm.

Aug 9 2011       Tom Fort, Fort Building and Supply, breaks ground on new house.

7:15AM

8:16AM
   Just before uploading blog, it occurs to me how facts---no matter how "true"---become a myth as I, the storyteller, arrange them.

Rah-dur!

Inspiration's Mother

I was trying so hard to be nice to Linda, but at some point, don’t you just get to shout, “You’re killing me here!”  Somehow I managed to swallow it.  Looking up out of my little world, I notice she’s suddenly donned her purple sweatshirt. “Where you going?”

“The woodshed,” she says meaning our chain-link wrapped ‘patio’ fronting the cornfield.  “I’ve asked you three times!” 

Maybe she’d invited me.  Maybe not.  It didn’t really matter; I wasn’t listening.   The dreaded day had arrived:  selecting colors.  Doors.  Soffit.  Facia.  Trim.  Ceiling.    

I need to order them now, says Tom the Builder.  Translation:  “Another month in the cabin if the schedule slips.”

This damned cabin.  While technically it has everything I need, my soul can barely lift itself out of the barrel chair.  Never mind soar toward our new life together in the House the Land Built.  Yet there we sat in the cabin, half a day  staring at color chips.  Monotonously churning like a bread machine, my insides felt heavy, bloated.  White bread inspiration.  Thank God my life partner perceives not only the muck but options, another way out.

“Want to go the house?” she asks.

As if a star had alighted atop the harvest-gold ottoman, I sat upright and spit out the Wonder Bread.  We couldn’t pack the Prius fast enough.  Color chips.  House drawings.  Blankets.  Red wine and two plastic cups.   I didn’t need to turn on the CD: the music was already playing in my mind.  Arriving at the construction site, I ran inside the shed, found the blue lawn chairs and sat them down onto the beginnings of our west porch, what will one day be our entry,

,,,where we will sit and wait for you to appear over the ridge top.

It's hard to put my finger on the source of the inspiration, the abundance, but picking colors felt like picking cherries or elderberries or wild grapes off the bounty of the land.  Of course, the physical construct, the decision model, was more realistic.  We could stand in the framed shell of the living room and at least imagine a ceiling, the horizontal plane, carrying our eye right through the top of the imaginary windows and onto the ceiling of the porch.  Ah!  So the porch ceiling color can enable that perception, welcoming the inside out and the outside in.  But our starburst of creativity came from more than just a virtual 3D model. 

As if the ideas were already here, or perhaps just being born, all we had to do was engage.  Find them.  Whether it was the place, the Land, or our connection to it, divine at times, I don’t know.  But in 20 minutes, we journeyed farther in our blue lawn chairs than an entire day in our cabin.  And I don’t mean just the results, the chosen colors, which are all just a theory, but how we felt.  I was so in love with my wife!  My life!  And Linda, poor Linda, impossibly stuck---who’d agonized over these damned colors---now beamed.  True joy!    Somehow we’d engaged inspiration’s mother:  the mysterious creation herself, still heaving and writhing in the glory, the divine ecstasy of life and death and life renewed.

My little mind, impressive as he can be, struggles to accept that he is not always the best provider of ideas.   As I sit here under the shed’s lean-to, gloved fingers typing---listening to the wind-rustled leaves---some other part of me drifts with those leaves, over stacks of split wood, over asters, white and blue, and out onto the prairie.   

Oh mother of inspiration, thank you!   You bless me.  

Rah-dur!

The River Harriet

“That’s my house!  Isn’t it?” I thought.  The Prius crawled by, headlights illuminating the 4100 block of Harriet Avenue, what was my home for the last 25 years.  Until Aug 1, closing day:  when we’d signed over all rights to our house to the buyers, Mark and Kari.  Then the Prius carried me to the Land, where I’d stayed, planting myself into the thin soil of a new life, never returning until Sept 15.  Six weeks. 

And I’d had a great day:  Mike in Minneapolis.  Friends.  Food.  And finally---the reason for scheduling my first trip back on a Thursday---Yoga with teacher Monica and my kula, in the Ann Judson room of Judson Church.  But I’d forgotten that Judson church sat on the corner of my 4100 block of Harriet.  I’d just hugged my friend Missy good-bye in front of Common Roots restaurant and hurried off, about to be late for my 6:30 class.  Not until the Prius turned off of Lyndale onto 41^st street, did something in me remember.  And as I turned right onto Harriet Ave, I seemingly drove into a slow motion movie.  The hood of the Prius turning in front of me, suddenly stopping.  Vivid sounds:  my car door opening, children laughing in the church playground, the pop of my car trunk.

There it was:  my yoga mat.  Suddenly, all returned to normal.  I walked inside. 

But all that was as nothing compared to driving past my old house.  Yoga was over:  the welcome back I’d received is worthy of an entire blog itself.  After class---soaking up good feelings with Monica and my old kula---I’d lingered long.  Too long.  I’d forgotten I was at Judson, my church of so many dear friends.  Suddenly, there’s Dottie and Eileen and Dave and Jenny and Leslie.  What can I say to them; I was already quite late getting to Brad and Pam’s where I would stay the night.  I’d pretty much just drove out of our life together.  Is it better to say nothing of my 6 weeks of impossibly rich new life, than to speak Minnesotan: “I’m good”, “cabin’s cozy”, “house has walls now”?  I can’t remember what I said, it was all too surreal as I waved good-bye to Jenny and Dave, urging them to post a photo, anything, on Facebook.

Now I was totally unprepared for the drive down Harriet Avenue.  I wanted to stop the car, get out, run back and hug Jenny and Dave, then snuggle under their porch-light, sipping white wine and munching chocolate chip cookies.  My gosh, I’d known them since Griffin kicked around inside Jenny’s belly.

So the Prius, sensing my pained madness, took charge of the situation.  No whir of engine.  No crunch of wheels.  A boat adrift on river Harriet.  Dark it seemed, yet my gaze now was fixed:  always to the right side of river.  Sooner or later it would appear.  And “it” had no name.  No memories whatsoever. Some part of me just had to see “it”. 

Suddenly, just ahead---as the Prius carried me past what must have been Jack’s lush front yard garden---a light, a warm front porch saying “come in , come in”. 

Then I turned my head away, stared straight ahead.  I couldn’t even look.  Not yet.  No thoughts of any kind, no image of Mark and Kari and their new life in our old house, no memories of my 25 years in that house, came to me.  I could have drowned in that thick fog. 

Yet Prius saved me.  We drifted on.  Down River Harriet.  Past Jack and Nancy’s.  Ray and Jan’s.  Chris and Albie’s.  Zan and Laura’s.  Dave and Katherine’s.  My heart so heavy, I could have heaved it overboard, anchored.  Prius slowed at 42^nd street, turned, drifted on.

Then a light.  Brad opened the door.  Pam pulled me in.  Hugged me.  Honeycrisp apple.  Peanut butter and jelly.  White wine in the leather recliner. 

What does it mean to leave old home?  Enter new home?  Engage new life?  Maintain what matters?  

As I sit here beneath the lean-to---a new sun trying to peak beneath the heavy curtain of fog---I feel so blessed.  So taken care of. 

The River Harriet carries me on:  down our long gravel driveway...

past Tom the Builder's truck, the House the Land Built...

past windrows of firewood, waiting to warm us this winter...

greeting the sea of grass, its waves lapping at my feet. 

Rah-dur!