Megan Buchanan | Issue 389">
I’ve logged more experience than most with simplicity and the complexity you discover inside simplicity, minimalism and asocial behavior, endurance and landscape.
Here is the truth: I think some deep wisdom inside me (a) sensed the stress, (b) was terrified for me, and (c) gave me something new and hard to focus on in order to prevent me from lapsing into a despair coma — and also to keep me from having a jelly jar of wine in my hand.
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It’s mid-March, and the first real snow is falling. I have learned to make a good fire since he left, though I’m unsure how I’ll pay all the rent. Still, this life is beautiful right down to the dog. My daughter’s a pearl reflecting all manner of light. Flute player, meadow walker, she disappears for days into big blue books. Today in the sun we kept busy with seeds, feeding all the little birds in our gusty corner of the valley; it was Finch TV till sunset. One red-breasted specimen crashed into our window at noon. I brought him inside, held him two-handed as his spirit landed back in his brown body, and I imagined cartoon stars whirling in a halo round his trembling head. He shat twice in my hand, blinking. Back outside, he flew away audibly and at a tilt toward some scattered seeds, like a tiny, feathered jet plane. O Creator of snowflakes, finches, and pearls, I surrender. I wish to drift again in your grace as a feather does: useful and light, part of a miraculous wing. If only I could pry out the pain and skip it, frozen, across a dark lake like a stone.
Megan Buchanan