Floating
Just as surely as my outer geography has changed, so too has what’s inside. I’m in need of new inner maps; the old ones don’t seem to be of much use here. They no longer match the terrain.
Tonight I’m in Bennington, away from the half-eaten hotdogs and quarrels over bath toys that keep me rooted in our new life in Northampton. But now — away from that, away from them — I have the distinct sensation of floating. I feel untethered. Drifting away from everything familiar and being pulled in slow motion toward not merely the unknown but the unknowable. Things that don’t yet exist. Ideas not even seeded in my consciousness.
But I am not floating. I am on the couch in the campus farmhouse, where I’m renting a room for the night. When Mary Oliver taught at Bennington, she lived right over there, out the window and across the tall grass. If I were in this state of mind and solitude at home, I might take one of her books off the shelf, open it at random, and read a few words in the hopes that they would provide guidance or at least comfort.
I can’t do that. But I love Mary well enough to know what she’d advise. She’d tell me to plant my feet in that grass between our houses, to lay my cheek against the rough skin of the oak, and to let my body persuade me that I am indeed grounded on this fertile and mysterious earth.
Look at you! –so beautiful with that heart cracked open wide.
I am startled with a sense of deep identification here … maps are the defining metaphor for all the ways I describe my sense of being lost (and my whispering sense of being found) right now … and I turn most often, of all other writers, to Mary Oliver for solace.
I’m so glad I found you.
Great post….and GORGEOUS photo. You are remarkable.
Damn, Kate.
Beautiful, beautiful Kate.
i am right there with all of them before me…damn girl…damn!
x
I’ve just today fallen in love with your posts and had the urge to read all of them. Admittedly, I’ve not actually done that… but I did go back a few and fell upon this one that Grabbed me with the first two sentences and held a mirror up to my sense of placement. The way you use words is really beautiful and is obviously resonating with many people. Thanks for the reminder that perhaps I need to take a moment to reorient myself in the new world I very rapidly created and plugged myself into. Looking forward to reading more about your reveries.