February, Third Week

Venus and Jupiter are bowing to each other in the shimmering evening light when I arrive home. I'm so out of it from the 40-hour week that when I first see the two bright lights glowing ahead of me, I think they're airplanes. After fifteen minutes, they are still hanging together in the western sky, so I know they must be planets.

I've completed my three weeks of working in the city. The routine was excruciatingly painful, both mentally and physically. All parts of me were clear that we were participating in a system for which we have no value. When the alarm sounded some mornings, I would turn over and groan, “How will I have the energy to face this day?” I forgave myself when I realized that I have never once had that thought when I am here in the woods, even though many rainy days I have spent all day working at the computer.

On the other hand, the costume of working and being a participant in the family life at my brother's home fits me easily. When I analyze it, I was not doing anything really difficult. I was fine with everything, just doing what I needed to do moment by moment. Maybe that is what bothers me most. How fast I can become the run to work and back home robot. Moment by moment eventually expands to a lifetime.

In any event, I arrive home drooping like a tulip on a rainy day. My car air conditioner is out, so a big chunk of money I earned will have to go to repair it. The faucet by the horse tank has broken again, so I have to deal with that before I can have any water in the house. I hang my head in despair; that other reality has surely got me this time. There are two things that I'm fed up with—old cars and old plumbing, I whine mentally as I twist the wrench to tighten the fitting enough so that the water pressure will not pop it off again, yet not so hard that I will crack the PVC pipe.

As I flop into bed, I remind myself of the simple truth that I am most grateful for not having a house or car payment. How many times have I said, "I'd give anything to have a little home of my own-anything, that is, but my freedom?" Within moments I descend into the black hole of unconsciousness: the deep sleep that is sure to restore my sanity.

Some people may be able to get back to their quiet private space at the drop of a feather, but not me. Since I always get involved in whatever I am doing, my mind starts running in a certain high-gear mode. Besides the mental diversion, I get tired physically when I work an 8 to 5, plus traffic time, routine. I have been carefully observing to see just what it is about the 8 to 5 routine that renders so many people into couch potatoes. Obviously, a major factor is the living of an unnatural life.

I had no stress in my workplace, for I was doing routine bookkeeping and phone answering. Even so, I was not able to work on my manuscript after arriving home. I just did not have enough clear energy to give it attention. We use the expression “unwind” after working all day. The term itself implies that we have wound ourselves up. Is it that we have to unwind from being in an artificial reality? There's a big difference in contact with humans and contact with nature. When I work at home from 8 to 5, I feel energized, ready for a long walk. So what price do we pay for earning a living?

We spend eight hours on the job, one hour for lunch, one hour going and coming (if we are lucky), one hour getting ready, one hour unwinding that's twelve hours gone and that doesn't even account for time for preparing and eating breakfast and dinner. According to these calculations, if we get the standard eight hours of sleep, there's not much time left over for living.

Early my first morning back at home, I take a walk out in the yard to try to get myself unraveled from my working-world costume into being simply me. A few wildflowers are already in bloom: a beautiful fuchsia phlox and the orange Indian paintbrush. Wee buds of bright lime green are dotting the smooth gray branches of several trees. The three peach trees I planted before I left have survived and are sprouting oblong green leaves. As I view the bouquet of spring, I realize I am only an observer. I feel dull and stoned; my head is not clear enough to reach out and be in their space. It's not that I have to do something to get back on center, I have to become alive-then I may discover I'm off-center too.

In addition to the mental and physical drain, I think that in the city we have to protect ourselves from connecting too much with our environment because of the multitude of artificial obstacles that surround us. All the walls, fences and pavements are bound to block our expansion out to the horizon-that we cannot even see. Then the continual bombardments of noise, traffic, have to's, along with other's opinions and dramas pound on us to close us down. We have to put barriers to our sensitivity to keep our minds tense and focused to be able to deal with all the diverse input. Whereas, I want a mind that is loose and open.

I can easily tell when I'm in a non-city mode by my movements. I walk more slowly and more consciously. The world seems to be connecting and passing gently through my body as I move. Obviously, it could be possible to do that in the city, yet I have never attempted to try it for fear of all the brick walls. So the two threads of me remain separate: I'm one person in the office and I am another in the woods. Some day I may detect a pattern; after all, my life is an on-going production.

Even after a long walk through a forest glade, I remain insensitive, as if my receptors are clogged up. I have been home for over twenty-four hours before I notice a fruit tree covered with snowy white blossoms in the corner of the yard. If I had been more in tune, I would have spotted it first thing. Going over to look at it closely, I pass through carpets of little green leaves, clumps of round ones, oblong ones and tiny heart-shaped ones. My eyes graze the ground to take them all in, when I spot a tiny lilac flower on a tall thin fragile stem.

In all my sojourning through woods and meadows to enjoy the flowers, I have never seen anything similar to this one. It is so incredibly delicate I wonder how it possibly can survive in this harsh world of wind and rain. The next few days, I begin to spot several others, even a few scattered around the pond. What particularly intrigues me is that each grows as one solitary plant. Usually wildflowers grow in clumps or colonies; they find a favorable spot and spread out from there. But this lovely adornment to our world seems to have developed its own unique mode of survival.

In the early afternoon, I take a break to sit out on the deck to eat my lunch. I relax in the warm sun while a chilly breeze blows at my mind chatter. It is a day that I am not “fit for human company.” Yet the trees, birds and butterflies don't seem to notice. They are waving in the breeze, singing and fluttering all round me as if to remind me that Mother Nature loves unconditionally. I behold two small hawks soaring in clear blue sky overhead as if to draw my mind away from itself. I wonder how far my mind can reach. . . Is it just as far as I can see in this green world of meadows and trees? Or can it reach to the world of black asphalt that just brought me home?