whatever grasses want to grow

 So it is raining today, but lightly. It’s just so lovely and I've had a lot of yard time and I am doing a little elaboration on my tuatha.

Basically I’ve added another layer to my tuatha, which started as this one circle. A square foot ring of stones with my Bríd statue and whatever pretty / emblematic token I felt like adding.

I don't know how long ago, but it was before you got here that I added kind of an outer ring at the top of it, where I have the castle now, and this other little strip that’s become a zone of intended cultivation, as in, I planted some bluebonnet seeds there last week. I'm not sure how they'll come up because — I did the pencil trick that Wendell showed me (he’s the guy with the wild bed of bluebonnets by his mailbox, he gave me the seed pods) — but anyway.

The thing that I added today was this other zone, on top of that one. A third layer. It’s a marked off area dedicated to my wildness, basically honoring and including that dimension in my altar.

That has been the theme for a while in a lot of my misadventures and relationships and this project itself — the house, the yard, the gardens. Texas.

And I've resisted it and I've called it in…

So here I am literally giving it space by marking off, oh, I don't know what it is, three square feet, maybe less, but it’s a recognized place for whatever grasses want to grow. And for them to be included in what I consider my self, my sacred space.

This outer aura of my tuatha is lightly framed.

There is a border, there is a limit, There is a shape — but it's open. It's not established like the other two are, in stone and logs. These are stakes in the ground. Just random, what I had on hand: a bit of bamboo, a bit of piping that, I don't know where it came from. It looks like it's some sort of closet accessory or shower thing. One little piece of fencing that came with the house, and the stake that the city put in our yard this week telling us we had to cut the grass. Mm-hmm.

And then I'm using some of the Gold Fringe from the bathroom décor, which itself was reused from a photo op at one of my birthday parties. 37 maybe? It was a film festival theme, but I digress.

I am tying these golden ribbons to those stakes with intention to respect and enjoy and see beauty in the limits to my self-control, the limits to my symmetry, the limits to my appeal…and yeah, to stop pretending like that isn't in the mix for all of us.

Last week I told you about making new choices in how I respond when people I care about, hand me things to deal with.

I think I used to be such a people pleaser, and then upon realizing that wasn't working, over-corrected into being kind of preachy. Or self righteous, I don't know. I experimented with judgment and idealism, which is probably what you’re supposed to do when you’re “young”.

But things do seem less black and white now, which was scary at first. It felt like going blind, morally. But now I just see it as the wildness coming into focus.

And so the question of wildness, personal wildness, especially the emotional factor in community, that's a theme I see arise in other attempts at intentional community, particularly in their downfall.

This is what I was talking about with that Nathaniel Hawthorne novel, The Blithedale Romance: he really has an understanding that you can have an airtight philosophy and you can have, yeah, the economics all worked out like math — but then there are human feelings and realities like embarrassment and infatuation and self-deception and fatigue …

I don't believe we're gonna clean those from the earth no matter how clever the meditations we come up with. I believe those are part of the materials we're building reality with. And so, I suppose this is a reminder that I don't have to be judgy of others or of myself over inevitable episodes of unconsciousness or overwhelm. It has a place.

And sometimes being the energy vampire // drama queen — well, we all take turns. And those who don't are just kind of taking up parking spaces… You know?