The Meadow

I left work early on Tuesday, happy to be out of the office and free for the afternoon. Much to my surprise, daylight was still beaming across the land. Not to let a mild and beautiful day escape me, I threw on my running clothes and soared over to the meadow. I literally mean soared– few are the runs I’ve had that leave me so free and exhilarated.

I left the rigid office, full of order and chaotic professionalism, for the meadow, strewn with gigantic hay bales and golden grass. They were my hurdles. I flew around them, enjoying the sharp turns and random patterns of running free, wild. I stopped atop one to catch my breath, and then sprinted back through the field.

Ahead lay a particular hay bale… can’t go through it… can’t go around it…. got to go over it. I lost my footing on the far side and went tumbling off, head first, onto the ground. Gracefully, laughing, I rolled to a stop, sprang up, and tried again. Success! With a parting sprint, I headed back to the house as daylight faded to dusk.

I’ve realized recently that in spite of all the many gadgets I own which promise to make me smarter, freer, more efficient and happy in every way, I am none of these things. Instead of being calm, cool and collected, I frenetically run from place to place and task to task, being everywhere and nowhere at once.

This is no way to live, but we fall from the mold with such habits already shaped:

On pretty weekends in the summer, this riverbank is the very verge of the modern world. It is a seat in the front row, you might say. On those weekends, the river is disquieted from morning to night by people resting from their work

This resting involves traveling at great speed, first on the road and then on the river. The people are in an emergency to relax. They long for the peace and quiet of the great outdoors. Their eyes are hungry for the scenes of nature. They go very fast in their boats. They stir the river like a spoon in a cup of coffee. They play their radios loud enough to hear above the noise of their motors. They look neither left nor right. They don’t slow down for–or maybe even see– an old man in a rowboat raising his lines.

((Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow, 331))

I would like to reclaim my life. This is the year of the tortoise– of deliberation, intentionallity, simplicity.

I recently subscribed to Xanga pro (or whatever they’re calling it these days) so that I could download an archive of my posts to add to my wordpress blog (because they are deleting inactive blogs), and much to my chagrin, they only allow you to download them as html files. Thus, here are links to past Xanga posts, as best as I could do. My apologies for the unseemly format; perhaps someday I’ll have time to fix it.

2004: September, October, November, December

2005: January, February

Welcome back! Many moons have passed since I last blogged seriously, so if you are one of the few checking in on this, consider yourself a faithful reader, though this honor may go without note in the blogging community. Those of you reading this probably know the following already:

• I graduated from college.
• Once again (and perhaps for the last summer ever), I am a super-scooper at Clumpies Ice Cream Co.
• I am joining the Trinity Fellows Program in the fall. Certainly, there will be more on this to come.

With that in mind, I plan to begin updating this more frequently, at least every half century or so. So check back soon!