Letting Go

9.21.23
autumnal equinox. Eight years ago today! I lost my baby brother. Now the light southward shifts again. Am I coming out of my oblivion? Guess I don’t need that hidey hole no more. It is bitterly sad and painful but I will let go, I don’t need to live in the friendless dark damp and cold. The barking of dogs chased the owls away. The lights in the night feigned security, but drove me mad. It was open sky and the trees that made me feel safe, and solitude, and silence, and the flitting of bats overhead at cocktail hour.

Is there anything I can learn here? I was so destabilized, I thought I, we, were building something, I put so much–time, money, heart, belief–into what seemed to be a future. Now in the Now I find myself trying to build something alone, no idea what the plan is. Maybe just need to peel away the dead skin, and there I am.

I kept going back to fix it, to see what was left. My life in Canyon, my little studio there, my van parked in a quiet pocket where I could curl up and read a book, a rare treat I have trouble achieving now. Even there someone shaved the legs of the trees in the name of fire safety, laying bare a collapsing hillside. I still go back to the little fantasy island in my head, but I park my van on the street now, not level; exposed, not private. There used to be a lush curbside stand of redwoods out there, too, too bad.

I think I’ll hit the road, heading home, looking for a patch of forest to sleep under, and a drive-thru double cappuccino. Not a bad plan.