Decadence

Sometimes it's easier to do the hard thing than the thing I desire. It's cleansing, working myself into a state of utter exhaustion by fulfilling the obligation of each role I assume. I like rules and guidelines.

Sometimes it feels safer to shoulder others' desires rather than excavate my own. The two are, of course, not mutually exclusive, but they're not identical.

Recently I've been practicing more excavation. I do this by~

Taking photos of the juicy green caterpillar in the garden, admiring the way he looks like a candied fruit slice from Perkins Cove Candies.

Listening to music while I weed, uncovering burgeoning bleeding hearts and runaway strawberry tendrils that creep under the brick. Following a friend's recommendation to play Leonard Bernstein's masterful orchestration of Appalachian Spring by Copland. Watching the horns and the violins and all the others building and ebbing together in ways so decadent it seems almost scandalous. Recalling an image of the Saco River in the White Mountains, unrestrained and unrepentant and absolutely gorgeous.

Lining up my wildflower seeds on the rug, arranging and imagining.

Writing next to an open window, the breeze and the school children's voices filtering in on the notes of the symphony and touching my bare shoulder.

What if I valued all my desires equally? The goal being not to surrender to hedonism, but to examine and consider, unjudgmentally, my desires in the morning light, always giving myself 51% of the vote and society's opinion 49%. How would my physical body feel? How would my eyes view the world?

The texture of the world, its filigree and scrollwork, means that there is a possibility for beauty here, a beauty inexhaustible in its complexity, which opens to my knock, which answers in me a call I do not remember calling, and which trains me to the wild and extravagant nature of the spirit I seek. Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek