Renewal

On our way out to an island in Maine the trees were not yet showing signs of spring, but by our return trip the forsythia was blooming in Albany and the willows had gone from gold to green. Maine for me was wonderful, I am certain it was not so wonderful for the man, and for my friend.  Dog ate a toy and managed to barf on a white rug and a brand new mattress.  Of course after that she was fine, she doesn’t barf a lot so of course she had to christen the new furnishings.  grr.  But for me the peace of painting in a place, outside, despite cold temps, downright drizzle and brutal wind.  My legs cold through and my left fingers icy from holding the palette.  Upon return and viewing this work with the work of last summer I am super pleased with this new body of work.  I am really looking forward to the summer when I can go back and paint more.  There were several sites I would like to sit and paint from, just from the brief tour we had by our hosts.

I wandered around my yard on Easter Sunday after two days of spring cleaning, still utterly not complete, and noticed the tulips pushing their heads up past the mud and coal ash.  The tips of the elderberry bushes have started to bud, the rhubarb with its dark green leaves is growing beautifully.  The crocus and hyacinth are blooming, though my transplanted grape hyacinth is not too happy with life just now.  The tansy and the comfrey are looking healthy, and my transplanted lilies look like they just might bloom.

The man made a compost tumbler out of an old dryer drum.  So impressed, he is really an artist in a way, he can fix anything, he can cobble together anything.

The dogs, particularly Marley the little beast, ran to the neighbors house for cookies.  Following L. into her kitchen while I shot the breeze with M. who lifted the lid of his grill to show me Easter dinner, roast venison on a spit wrapped in bacon.  “This is what rednecks eat for Easter he said deprecatingly, though I did not say it, I thought this is what I would consider a superior culture.  He again iterated my option to walk his land and gather plants from his property, along with a hug and a kiss on the cheek, as my man says, M. likes me because he usually doesn’t let anyone on his property.  We talked about natural dyes.  He thought I said natural guys.  So we made a few jokes about manscaping, and ear whiskers….

I looked up the possibility of using rhubarb leaves for dying wool, high in oxalic acid, I think it would be cool to mix them with pokeweed which grows in abundance in the yard, nettles or maybe sumac.  My summer project slowly forming.

I spun my white wool for a while and finished a recycled sari silk scarf.  STILL trudging away at the brown and white log cabin weave on my 32” Ashford.  Blah.  So dull and my tension is wonky and annoying.  So much to do for spring.  So very little time in the day.

 

 

Silence

The pain in my ankle has forced me to forego my morning walk, but there is no reason not to paddle.  It is the first time I have been on this lake since sometime last August, but it is like an old friend, and I find comfort in sharing it with a friend.  Who may or may not be old, but surely is older than i am, in many many ways.

I take too many pictures of her for her liking, but she cannot see the beauty that radiates out of her.  She may not be a twenty anymore, but she is more beautiful in my eyes.  One does not review an excellent aged wine and say, oh i wish it were 20 years younger, one savors it, holds it in their mouth and lets its deeper, richer, flavor sink in.  It is a better wine by far.  And I do not focus on her flaws, or know the things she hates about herself, I know my own far too well, they fill my own mind with endless chatter.

Here though, in this spot, I can see that chatter fall away from her, and a goddess emerges, the look of contentment as she basks in the silence, the sun, the shared friendship of many years.  We are like tiny blue and green Buddhas made of modeling clay in this setting.  When I emerge from here, my body filled with oxygen, and love, I am like a rock cairn, a steadfast sentinel in a crazy world.

We talk of the history of the lake a little, my body unused to paddling, of her previous trip to the lake with another old friend, but more we paddle, look at the loons, inhale the fragrance of the cedar and pine, and appreciate the graveyard of trees. This is all a gift, this silence, and shared solitude.  Is it not what life is all about?  I ask myself this question, does one live to work, or work in order to have moments such as these, where playing to take a picture of a lily leads to a vision of a heron catching fish.  Where we count loons hoping for as many nesting pairs as the lake will take.  Where only the sound of the water dripping from the paddles and the occasional clunk on the side of the canoe, and the breeze as it carries us in waves back to the put in.

This is the silence that I yearn for, that I spent many months without, many years not looking for it, or understanding its place in my soul, or my own need for it,   This love of myself, reflected in what I see in her, is touching, and delicate and fair, where I am none of these on my outsides.  But it reflects a strength that is undeniable.

I continue to learn as each day passes.  Is this not the gift one must step into?

Morning Constitutional

 

Rusted Post and Ring

In the dream I had, I was trying to cross a river which was now raging where before it was barely a trickle, and I am immediately swept away, I give in to it as the rush of the water picks up speed, I am throw over a raging and deep water fall and pulled from the water.  The man who pulls me out is like a fairy, only human sized, and he has a magical fire burning bright but smokeless.  He tells me he does not know how to build the kind of fire I need to warm me from the shivering hypothermia of the icy cold river, I tell him to collect wood and we begin to build up a warm cozy fire.  I wake with her body against mine like a lover warm and snuggled, she kisses my hand as I gently stroke her, and then gentle becomes playful.  After a bathroom break for all of us, I get back into the warm bed with my kindle, and then knowing the day promises to be hot and sunny, I offer a walk.

They are a bit off their guard, where exactly is breakfast their faces ask, while they enthusiastically line up for the leashes.

There is a small park near my home, and this is where we wander sometimes, still exploring, still a new place, but a favorite.  I never go to Clark Reservation anymore, it was once a sanctuary, now spoiled by a person who has every right to walk there, but who has smashed my peace in that place, in so many places.  This new park, filled with the people of the city,  but in the hush of the early morning, a solitary woman, a neighbor and her two dogs, and I.  The best part is, I can step out my door and be there.

Yesterday I met an old friend at the Oriskany Herb and Flower Show, sponsored by the Cornell Cooperative Extension.  And when I came home, I planted my rose campion, which will reseed itself ten fold, my two white yarrows, “they will spread”, “I know, I want them for their medicinal properties”, my lavender, and a pack of strawberries in the strawberry pot.  I also talked with my landlord and placed the sedum and hollies as he wanted in the front.  Then I mowed the lawns.  “The house looks great” he tells me, “we both love how you have it set up”.  “Well I guess I am done here, since you did most of the jobs I had on my list”.  I feel proud.

The pirate comes to bring me a Polish lunch, which of course I have to pay for.  He is here not more than twenty minutes, he spends half of it communing with Marley.  I cannot help but wonder what he thinks, when he sees the made bed, the tidiness of the house and the work done in the yard.  Does he self reflect and ask himself, what the hell was I thinking by knocking this woman down?  And I find I do not care.  I like him like this, at a distance, I chastise him for yelling at the dogs, and model the correct way to speak to them.  When they respond, he makes a noise of surprise.  When he leaves I take a book and quiet now, read about Elizabeth Warren in my big comfy chair while the dogs nap nearby.

Is this not bliss?

 

Bird Dog

She is not the same as he, he herds, he stays close, he is a loner.  She is high energy, always happy to say hello to anyone, to anything.  He pays attention, but only as a means of protection.  She pays attention to, to smells, to people, to birds.  She watches as the murders of crows wing through the windy grey sky, at the doves as they watch us from the wires, at the hawk that circles and circles.

It is afternoon, cold, and snowy, and she is wound from a day in her crate.  She throws herself into the banks of snow, buried up to her nose, leaping like a horse over some high obstacle in the steeple chase, up and over, up and over, and then into the snow pocket of the fire hydrant.  It is the home owner’s duty to shovel around it, keeping it clear and visible in case it is needed.  And she comes out from behind it with a bird in her mouth.

I am dismayed, a dead, diseased, rotted or covered in lice, little bird.  But as I look, I cannot tell if it is the wind or her breath or a beating heart I see movement, either way this must be dropped.

Drop it.

Drop it.

And she does.  It hops off, trying to fly, and failing, it is hopping in the road, saved from the mouth of dark slobbery death only to be smashed by a speeding car.  I quickly tie both dogs to the hydrant sign.  And hop along after it, trying to catch it as it hops and flaps and flaps and hops.  Finally, it stops, realizing flying would not be happening, and giving up to the giant creature, trying to peep like a baby chick, and uttering such lies as, I won’t hurt you, I promise.

It waits, looking back at me, immobile.

I pick it up.

I cup my soft alpaca covered hands around it making a nest of mitten, it is turning its head waiting to look death in the eye, defenseless with its tiny beak against the lumbering land bound giant who know holds her captive. I feel her heart beating in my hands, I talk soothingly to her, seeing that death is not immediate and  passing the dogs, I tell them they are good for standing so still, but she sees I am not delivering her into their snapping jaws.  I take the little wren to the brambly bush they often congregate in, making a racket in the afternoon sun, although the birds in the neighborhood, have gone from, its almost spring,gabbering, to silence as this drama unfolds.

I set her carefully on a branch and shortly she drops to the ground, burrowing through snow deep into the  bramble.

Later I clumsily throw seed into the bush, hoping she will live, hoping her wing is only bruised.

I worry that I will get lice or bird sickness on my mittens.

I see this dog’s predatory nature, she is bred for hunting birds.

I hear the birds in the neighborhood, they are saying something to me, it is a directed noise, a sharp questioning cheep.

I hear it, but I understand nothing.

 

 

First Snow

Hard to believe that two days ago, I turned off the heat and opened all the windows, letting the warm wind blow the white and purple embroidered flower curtains like wisps of angel wings over my room, sending a healing breath to my body.  I wake an hour earlier than I want to but rather than linger I get up, make coffee and get ready.  Sancho refuses a walk, his age and creaky bones are showing and it is cold.  Marley and I walk out into the cold windy air and by the time we get to the end of the street the first flakes of snow are drifting down on us.  And by the time we turn the corner on the return trip I hear the sounds of the white throated sparrow, still new enough to me here to cause the nostalgic mental drift to summer in the adirondacks, like angel wings on a troubled mind, sending a healing breath to my mind.

Sanctuary

My bedroom, my bed, my comforter, me like a burrito, windows open, crisp air, already autumn in New York.  Shhhh.  Rest now little one, let your cares float away.

Yoga.  Surprise, the wrong teacher becomes the right teacher, yes.  The ego is loud, and obnoxious and annoying and you don’t have to listen to it.  No.  I am me, I am a bird flying over me.  I am not who I was five years ago.  No.  I am not.  No.  I am not.

I miss you sometimes.  I miss your smile, I miss your silly dance, the intense way you looked at me, the way you read aloud to my daughter, the way we read Anna Karenina together, the way you were before you got too big for your britches, the way you were when you saw me as a gift, the way you jumped the fence to hug me, the way you cried when I flew away, the way your eyes melted my heart, the way you gave up everything to be with me.

I float on the water, or more precisely explore the reeds and rushes in the shallow edges of this woebegone lake.  A heron flies away before I get too close.  Two turtles make love, turning slowly over and over on each other, until they see me watching them.  They look embarrassed.  And the Loch Ness monsters flip away as I paddle over them.  Their giant striped bodies undulating under the thin hull of my carbon fiber boat, I feel them, on my bottom, sliding, giant ugly things.  Last year someone caught a 41 inch Muskie from this place.  Two women sunning on kayaks stop to talk to me.  I hate my ugly life vest.  I wish it were purple.

I sleep with the light on sometimes, ever since you left.  I don’t know why.  Especially now when I just don’t care anymore, when I am not the person you left anymore.

Yoga the right teacher.  After we talk, I tell him how happy I was to live in the quiet solitary woods.  Not to say I was alone, because I wasn’t, but when I was, I cherished it, adored it, loved it.  I see surprise on his wrinkled and spotted face, so youthful, and yet showing his age, his impish smile and sparkling intelligent eyes.  He tells me of backpacking alone in the wilderness where my uncle was born, of not wanting to return, and the surprise, that we are kindred, that we are alike in this way, a thing he did not know of me, nor I of him even after all these years, and friendship.

They sit across from me, shoulder to shoulder, as long as you are not behaving, he says in a co-dependent manner.  Ha.  I say.  I am so not co-dependent.  So not.  Not even close.  I am fully cognizant of my choices, of where I am and what I am doing.  You can be alone, he instructs me, even in the company of others.  Oh sweetheart, I say.  I know that.  Oh.  Don’t I know that?  He of course is at the gun show for the millionth time, and I am with men who know how lucky they are to have worked through the times that IN love was a challenge, buoyed by just plain love.  Isn’t it funny how I don’t have any problem doing my own thing, going my own way and waving as he goes off to do his?

Kateri Teckawitha, I say, I cannot even pray, because I don’t even know what I want.  Or I do, but I don’t know how to sustain it.  But anyway, thank you for what you did for my daughter.  Thank you.  Thank you.

Hot tub.  Me, wishing to get out, now that my limbs are warm.  The music is so loud it hurts my sinus infected head which is dripping from the steam.  My heart is pounding, I am a million miles away.  I am on my haunches ready to spring, like an animal, like prey.

Do you know what it is like to sustain this?  How hard it is, truly hard it is to make the choice to live alone, and that is what it will be, alone, because I will never put myself through this punishment again.  Do you know this?  That my ego tells me things, like you are so fat, you are a stupid fuck, you are a lazy piece of shit, you are ugly,  you are not worthy of being loved, you are not worthy of time or attention.  SHUT THE FUCK UP.

I love myself, you see, I do, this girl who makes herbal salves, this girl who paints driftwood for hours, stroke by stroke, this girl who knits until her fingers ache, this girl who throws the boat on the car and goes, this girl who would rather be in the woods than in this stinking place.  This girl who is a great cook, this girl who recycles, this girl who loves her dog so much, this girl who cries, and laughs and talks in her sleep, and does yoga and rides her bike while reading a book eschewing television, this girl who loves star trek, and doctor who, this mama llama, this everything and nothing.

I do not love my ego though, my God, it will not shut up.

He climbs into my bed, and promptly falls asleep, taking up 2/3rds of the bed.  He snores loudly, and grunts and farts and moans in his sleep.  Not to say I don’t have my own animal noises, but to say instead that he is like my ego, keeping me from rest, trapping me in place, what if I feel sick from the chicken, what if I have to pee, what if I need my joyful cocktail of benedryl and melatonin?  Oh please, I say, wake up, I have to take medication to sleep here, with you.  He goes to his own room leaving the light on.  An hour later I am still awake.  Thinking of my ego.  Thinking of the lesson.  Listening to the sounds of cars on the street, and an airplane off there, flying in the dark.

And now I have nothing more to say.

Except this:  Clark Reservation used to be a sanctuary to me.  I haven’t been there in a year.  I miss it.  Can you please ask her to let me go back, to please leave me to it.  Let me have this one small place.  Because I really do need it, way more than she does.

And I dreamed of you last week, and I finally remembered why I loved you, and I stopped being angry, and in the dream, and for once, I didn’t even ask why  you left me, but I told you this, you were my best friend, and I really believed you and I were meant to love each other for the rest of our lives, and it crushed me when you left.

But I am okay.  Really.  Really.  And I actually don’t even think of you every minute or every hour, or every day any more.  I only think of you now and then.  Sometimes I am surprised how long I go between thoughts of you, driving, in the car, I think, oh my God its been days and days.   What a relief.  What a relief.

This place is a sanctuary.  This place, this place inside me.   This place.  Inside me.

 

 

Inspired Summer

I am not yet ready to write about my experience this summer, maybe I never will, but I did take many photos, and then yesterday I painted an image from one of those photos.

So the lake I paddle in, I will not name it because of the stalker, sad, anyway, there are in the outer edges what I call the tree graveyard.  There are many stumps of trees sticking out of the water, and also underneath there are many logs, when you paddle through it is like an obstacle course.

I began by drawing from the photo I took, since painting while in the canoe is not really an option.  I love this particular branch sticking out of the water because when I first saw it I thought it was a bird standing on the end, and as I paddle closer I thought it looked like a dragon.  As I look back through my photos from this summer, I see I took a few pictures of it, on different days.

I then went to my art area and painted, forgetting everything, the phone, the internet, using the bathroom, everything, completely lost in each stroke.  I had a teacher in high school, whom I overheard talking to another student about painting hair, and that moment when you get so lost in painting hair that you forget what you are painting.  That was me yesterday, painting the twisted and gnarled branches.

I love Georgia O’Keeffe and I did go to a show of hers in Glens Falls this summer, and there is no doubt that I was inspired by her while I was painting.  She has always inspired me.  But I think in some ways I did what she couldn’t.  She did not like the Adirondacks, found it too green, painted dark and blocky paintings of the grounds of the Stieglitz estate, twisted the ubiquitous birches into some nearly unrecognizable form, but there are bright lights from this time though, short star bursting breaks into the artist she would become.  But I do not find the Adirondacks to be so green, if you look and love this place with all your heart, the green goes away and all the other colors come out.  The green becomes like your skeleton, its there, it supports everything, but it is not all, and in the winter the green is gone.

Anyway.

Here is my painting.

Dragon in the Tree Graveyard

Trip into Town

I am truly an introvert, these windy, sunshiney scattered shower days are so deeply quiet, so deeply fulfilling.  The neighbor, who is only here for two weeks, checks in periodically, to charge something electric, to shower with his wife and children, to ask if there is anything I need, or stops along the road to ask me if I have picked any wild blueberries yet.  Other than that my only human interaction is a phone call from my mom, to my daughter, the pirate in his way only answers his phone, he is incapable of calling.  The counselor told me, before I left to plan outings into public, but I hardly need it, I am feeling astonishingly strong and deeply moved, and touched by mother earth.  Herons abound.
But each time I venture into one of the towns nearby, I am rewarded with just the right things.  Today I am absolutely dizzy with congestion in my sinus, I found eucalyptus rub, and a book by Rosemary Gladstar, outlining several of her herbal remedies that are in the correspondence course on loan from my friend.  Oh yes and wasabi, ginger chocolate truffles.

Colstfoot leaves ( I believe)

Calendula Flower

Barkeaters Chocolates and Funny River Trading, both local businesses.

 

I have loved the quiet, and the long walks with the dogs, and the breeze keeping the bugs at bay.  Especially the breeze keeping the bugs at bay.

Today I raided my friend’s cupboards, pulling out skullcap and lobelia, and vodka to make tinctures with fresh herbs from her garden, some to dry on her screen, though she has plenty of all jarred in the basement.  Tomorrow I have to go and get more vodka, I used up the last drops, not much more than four shots worth, but I hate to leave her empty.  These tinctures designed to help me sleep.  Plus I stole a little of her mullein oil and put some fresh mullein flowers in it, to make ear drops for my daughter, who suffered terribly with ear infections as a baby, and still has to have the wax removed from her ears, and has frequent ear aches.

Herbal Tinctures

Off to deliver some cucumbers and squash to the neighbor, they will go bad before the family returns, and are more than I can possibly eat.

Stunning Morning

I dream of feeding whole wheat bread to salmon in a deep clear river, they see me, they know who I am, they watch clandestine waiting for the right moment to take the bread, for they are hungry.  Later I go to a crypt with a group of other people, and we drag out the oily black (black not brown) shriveled monster that has lived on despite attempts to bury it, to let it die, and we carry it up the steps of a sacred building, and up to the turrets, and we wait for a bolt of lightening to kill it dead once and for all as it is destined to die at this moment in this place.

I wake with little sleep, restless early in my sleep.

I stir the dogs with talk of walk.

I notice it right away, the way the forest is alive, not the usually sound of birds, and water and yesterday’s raindrops, and bugs, but a breathing, as though the rain has awakened the forest from a slumber and it is yawning and stretching towards the brilliant sun and bright blue sky.

I notice too how much easier this walk is than it was when I first came here.  I no longer return home a sweaty panting mess, and the dog too is more lively and energetic, and these other two, this morning stay close to me, with H. on my heels beside Sancho most of the way up.

It is a spider web morning.   That is what I call it, as I notice the webs scattered along the way, I never saw them before, it must be the light.  The forest is full of them.

I cannot stop marveling in its stunning beauty.  This morning.

This ordinary morning, this everyday walk, this unremarkable stream, this scarred wilderness.

River of Life

“…my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.” ~Pablo Neruda

This is so hard, this rich, rocky, roaring, beautiful, deep river of life.

My thoughts as I am in my bed, the sound of the stream below singing to me, as it always does.  A hard evening, but not too hard, just hard emotionally.  Hard but sometimes the right things, the good things, are hard.

I curse God sometimes, you know, for all this hurt heaped on me, she tells me as we drive into town, you have not had it easy.  No, I have not.   How many times have I gone over it, again and again, this sordid story of my daughter’s father.  With him, until my throat hurts, with myself until my brain hurts, with my child as my soul aches, with my mother as my heart breaks, after the death of my father, after the leaving of my husband.  I wanted to fix it, I wanted it fixed, but some things, somethings are not fixable. And in a branch of the same twisting fault line, I have gone over it again and again, all the bending over backwards I did to make my marriage work, and all for nothing.

So as I go over this fitful in my sleep, and on my morning constitutional, as I go over it, I realize that in this regard my prayers have been answered, not in the way I asked for it, but in a way that works.  I see her grandmother now, in the intense way of this woman in the deep way she cares.  I see in him, her uncle, a snapshot of her father,  as he should be, as he could have been, without all the mind altering substances, and mental acrobatics.  His manners, his interests, his deep thoughtfulness, his intelligence.  We share much, we, this odd grouping, of the son, who is his son through action, and her, and him and me.  With this wreckage between us, and this shining light above us, around us.  We who would not know one another were it not for this, this one thing.  A writer, an artist nay, painter, teachers, readers, music lovers, fishermen, hikers, gardeners, homesteaders, Zen dabblers, mountains, rocks, nature lovers.  Yes this we have in common, but that, that too.

I am self conscious, and in it I am awkward, I feel always the left over burning scar of blame.  I could not do it differently, but I know that the blame is raw on my flesh.  On my heart.  And when I try to put it into words, they seem inadequate, as awkward as my hands without a cigarette (for years) or my hands without a coffee mug in the mornings, as awkward as my hands without a cell phone in the wilderness, a livable awkwardness.  This self consciousness a constant swinging weight on my life.  (How I wish I could cut it and walk away).

I tell her, or try to, and she answers me with love, love of me, love for my child.

But this is what is sent in his place, family that is there for my child, family that embraces and welcomes me, family that finds her a joy to be around, on her terms, when she is ready for it, and family that for what it is worth, is why I loved her father, once, why I thought our child deserved more, more than drunken rages, abuse, anger, the cold shoulder, drugs, joblessness, homelessness, poverty, and deep seated depression and despair.

I think too, on my failed marriage, that feeling I had that it wasn’t me so much and at the same time that it was all me, all my fault.  I mean I know I am not perfect, but when you are with people who are not well, you too become unwell.  I cannot express this well, and have to think on it more, but one way I illustrate it in my crazy mind, is to say, I was never a jealous woman until I was married, I am not a jealous woman now, though I have seen my Pirate only a few days all summer.  I left my daughter’s father when I was pregnant, it was not about the leaving, it was about the unhealthiness, I think.  I was always jealous and possessive of the ex.  And I see that the stalker has her own issues with distrust, since she liked being up my ass so much.  It isn’t me, it isn’t her, it is inherent reason for mistrust.  There is an unhealthiness there, only it is more subtle, and well hidden, with lots of subterfuge.  How did I miss it though, and why did I believe, when all the signs were like billboards screaming at me to see.

And I think, as I walk, of this other thing I ask for, for closure, for understanding, not just of the why, but of my own inability to heal from it.  I have healed from the other wounds, I have become stronger, wiser, more compassionate, and have begun the return journey to the Earth, but I have not healed from that.  But there is no answer, perhaps I will have to wait another 16 years to have it.  I yearn for it, though, yearn for an answer, yearn for understanding, yearn for the scar to fade from this festering thing, deep inside of me.  Will it ever leave my mind?

I once told him, as he was leaving that he was the worst thing that ever happened to me, after he told me, from his new apartment, and with his new woman in his heart, that I was (somehow) the best thing that had ever happened to him, and I cannot rectify this dichotomy.  Because he is, even worse than being abandoned for a sheet of LSD by my daughter’s father, for a bales of marijuana, for broken inanimate objects, the sting of a smacking hand and a seething rage.  It is worse than putting myself through college and being broke for years and years, and worse than being bullied in school, and of never quite fitting in, it is worse than all the sleepless nights of my life, worse than anything I can think of, and there is still no closure, the wound still gapes and pulses, and aches.  I want it to fall away with the sweep of my mental knife, like that self consciousness.

She tells me in an email that I am funny, thoughtful, smart, sensitive, interesting, amazing, tremendously wise, and loved.

He once called me charming, and lovely.

And as I share my fears and thoughts on some of this with A. (weeks before) she tears up, and tells me she cannot imagine their lives without me.

But I do not understand any of this.

If I were all of these things, I would have closure.  If I were all of these things, I would be healed.  If I were something, really something, it wouldn’t be this hard.

Would it?

This is my soul laid bare.  Do not chastise me for it.  Nor should others, these men, these situations, be torn apart…

I struggle so with these questions and seek for truth.

On my way home, in the setting sun and long mountain shadows, I see a great blue heron standing on a giant boulder, in the middle of this deep and cutting river that gouged out part of the road and is still under repair from hurricane Irene.

This wreckage, this beautiful river, with the sun sparkling on it, with its deeply shadowed pools, with its towering mountain walls and its rocky bed, and rushing gorges.  This wreckage, this river is so hard.