Tuesday May 25, 2010
Guilford Vermont
Dear friends and loved ones, It’s been a while since I’ve communicated much although I did recount some of the details of our travels back to Vermont from Brazil in case you missed them. It took so long to complete that letter and post it that I did not send the email notifying you of the post, but it’s there none-the-less.
This has been a more than difficult transition for me and because of that I haven’t felt much like writing. I preferred to wait until my perspective had a bit more of a positive slant. What I have noticed in this process and it becomes more and more apparent to me is how little our inner state is affected by any external factors. Body chemistry on the other hand seems to play a vital role in mental health and good attitudes!
We returned almost to the place we left, just three miles down the road from our old home, only this time we have no “home” nor all the things that once filled that home. So I’ve been contemplating just what makes a place a home? Does it require ownership? No, how could it, many people rent their houses and feel just as much at home as a person who owns one. Even if you think you own, do you really, or does the bank allow you to think you do while you pay them a hefty mortgage resulting in the overall cost of your home being three times the price you agreed to pay for it? Is home where you hang your hat? What if you are a guest in someone else’s place and your hat is hanging there? I’ve been asking myself these and other questions like these because I came here with an over-riding sense of urgency to find land, buy it and build a home, thinking that what I really want more than anything is just to have a home again; a place where I can grow a garden, providing my own food and a place where nothing is expected of me other than what I myself deem is expected. Freedom.…Especially if I can pay for it without any loans from a bank.
But with all this said, I’ve been busy making ourselves a home here on our friend’s farm. Paul is incredibly happy! This is why we’re here. He knew what he needed to be happy and he found a way to have it. He tells me everyday how happy he is. This to him is the perfect place. We happen to be two of the luckiest people in the world. There are many things that support this statement and I will tell you one of them. We have two friends who own this beautiful two hundred acre farm. It happens to be one of the most beautiful places anywhere in the world. Acres of wide green rolling meadows cover this south facing mountainside from where we sit, perched atop a knoll in a thirty foot long trailer. Outside our door, just 100 feet away, is a huge tilled garden plot, large enough to feed a family three times the size of ours well into the winter season. Between here and there is a fire ring where just last night Paul and I sat in front of a campfire eating dinner from our borrowed lawn chairs while we watched eastern peewees flying over the field diving for insects with a ring of mountains in the far distance, the closest displaying hundreds of shades of green while the furthest extending well into New Hampshire revealing as many shades of blue and grey. Rocket sits at our feet wherever we are or maybe just outside the door when we’re inside, warming his belly in the sun. He has a friend here on the farm too and watching the two of them is enchanting as they are the same size and seem to delight in the company of each other. Behind us and just to one side, the shade of the woods helps to keep us cool on the hot days and bring all sorts of sounds of wildlife up close and personal. So here we are. Incredibly grateful to our friends who have welcomed us to use this place while we land and regroup and figure out what’s next.
So what is next? Paul is encouraging me to slow down and not move too fast towards anything. Funny but that’s one reason why we left Brazil and came here when we did, because we were in a hurry to find our homestead before the end of summer. We thought it would be most important to start planting and building and secure a place with good water and the ability to feed ourselves before the summer events we foresaw coming. We were sure then that world war three was in the making and there was a good chance something big would take place likely on the fourth of July. Maybe it still will, though you’d never know there was anything out of the ordinary going on in this calm idyllic pastoral setting. All our family, friends and acquaintances seem safe and secure in their same world as when we left without any change. They don’t seem to be encountering any economic hardships or even down turns. Perhaps with an unspoken feeling of pity for our misguided ways, we are treated with just the slightest sense of care and coddling while being acknowledged for our bravado at trying something so daring as our move to Brazil. It could be my imagination which does tend to run wild, but on the other hand I’m more perceptive than most give me credit for.
So what exactly is going on in the world and does it even matter? Not too many people around us seem to think about it much or care, but then we haven’t got out much yet, so maybe I’m wrong. More time out with people might tell. It’s not easy to live in the moment while at the same time preparing for the future. And preparing for a future is merely guesswork anyway. I suppose with a 50/50 chance of getting it even close. Lao Tzu would say, stay close to home, keep it simple. And Rumi reminds me that like the cows in his poem who eat grass every day and worry all night that there wont be any grass to eat in the morning, I too whine with my mouth full.
I do an awful lot of worrying about not having enough money lately while sitting with my little balance in the bank waiting for the right little piece of land to buy. I’m afraid to spend too much on coffee and donuts because just around the next corner is some government regulation costing me hundreds in registration fees or taxes and I wouldn’t want to come up short. There’s no way I’m going to go to an acupuncturist to fix my injured wrists because surely that will blow my limited budget and the possibility of buying some land will dwindle away. But damn it I am tired of worrying and being afraid and absolutely over living at the affect of that.
We don’t have the kind of access to the internet we once did and so are not getting the kind of information we were once more easily exposed to. Taking the time to do it seems more of an annoyance than an easily obtainable thing, but Paul has been listening to local radio and reports that everything on the airwaves is designed to keep people afraid and in a state of anger and lack. What I’ve noticed since returning to the US is that daily I see chemical trails in the skies and I know we are being sprayed with barium among other poisons and I feel the effects of it. I am almost constantly in a state of agitation, confusion and often argumentative. This isn’t like me. But how to avoid it here is the big question. I’m sure Dr Rima’s health network connection could sell me something to combat the ill effects of it but then there goes that pesky budget again. I’m with David Icke these days, we both know an awful lot about what’s going on in the world, but we can see a positive outcome in all of it and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that consciousness is changing. We’re coming into a new era and this one has to go away to allow the new one to take it’s place. We need to change our vibration to one of love and get out of fear and live in the world we want to see now. It’s not so easy, but I’m staying focused on that outcome.
So possibilities abound at the moment. Who knows where Paul and I will be three or six months from now. I can no longer guarantee or even say with any certainty that you will find us living on a Vermont homestead because we could be anywhere. Ambiguity is without a doubt more open to possibilities, yet unsettling in a foggy surreal kind of way. Like the cartoon I have framed and hanging on the wall, Coyote loved that nothing was real, the wind remained favorable, the weather fair and the unreality felt firm beneath his feet.