Whimsy
Sometimes, I wonder what life would be like if I could do anything. Just imagine if there were no cost to survive. What if money was free? So I dream up my life like a movie, and dreams are a kind of manifestation. A promise I give myself. The gift to not just survive, but to flourish in the constant tick of infinite time, where we have an ending, before a new story arrives.
I would like to live among kindred spirits, where there would be no need to explain myself. I would like to live on the outskirts of some charming cozy town. In fact, I have a two-bedroom cottage in mind with a detached garage apartment. The driveway winds down through Koelreuteria paniculata trees on Chapel Hill Grit, to a lady’s farm.
Pastures, gardens, and acres of. intrigue will stir me to sleep in a pitch dark room, with tall windows that are like my own planetarium of moon and stars. I want a Dutch door where Jesse the cat can sleep on an oversized sill, and the sounds of wild things can linger in and create a symphony of uncharted mystery from the bogs and creeks. covered in pink blooms from the Pinxter roses, and heirloom deep red Tabor azaleas, with blue and white irises and trillium on the cusp of the forest. The owl hoots for me till I fall asleep, my busy mind on autopilot.
I wake early in the morning to a rooster on the front stoop, and Joni on the stereo on replay. “A case of you,” she says, “touching souls” and constantly a northern star and all of that poetry, “constantly in the darkness”…
why is that? Yet, the morning light pours in my room day after day. I wander into my kitchen in old sweats and rainbow socks, clunking around in my favorite Birkenstock shearling clogs. I make a glass of Ambrosia iced tea with simple sugar and a Meyers lemon slice. I sit on the porch with my pups and lose myself in the wonder of the world. The peace of my wide open space touching blue sky, and I am still alive. I think about my new life of living alone, and realize how much I love the quiet, free of human tension. Nothing to argue or debate, to please, or satisfy. I can wear what I love, and buy pairs and pairs of boots and Imogene and Willie jeans and Buck Mason tees. A new Barour Coat and a brown Patagonia Retro. Style is the paintbrush of defining who I am. I don’t have to be like other women. I can live outrageously free, and feel lucky to be just me.
With my unlimited funds, I have options. Three cars…an azure blue kei truck, a forest green Prius, and a Mercedes G-Class. I still love to load the dogs up and go for a ride. We stop by the bakery for sourdough bread and salted chocolate chip cookies. I grab a salad for lunch, made from scratch with local greens and other fresh, just picked garden stuff topped with feta, and tell the nice lady at the counter, “No dressing, please.” She looks up and nods, “Sure thing.”
Later in the afternoon, I head out for a four mile walk through old neighborhoods with houses adorned with stone chimneys, and old. tumbled brick sidewalks and gigantic trees. I dream. I contemplate, who lives here and what do they do with their days?
I notice the shift in the sky, the winding down of the day. I drive home to the place I call home, and curl up in a rocking chair and write. The hours pass to almost nightfall. The absolute blue hour of all magical things in life. There is nothing like flow that reminds us we are closer to the divine in art than in the front pew in any manmade church. As stars begin to shine, I sometimes feel lonely. But loneliness is not fear of being alone, it is an awareness that I must focus on the loneliness of other people, not dwell on the soulmate that never may come. Sometimes, this life is merely a rehearsal for another time. The universe is always the author of messages that beg us to accommodate its wishes of serendipity and magic. Too often, we run out of time in the wrong place, with the wrong people, living a foreign life as an actor in a familiar body we have not yet met. The frustration of the universe speaks in stress and anxiety, and we abide by rules that do not exist, yet persist in those who take vows to the grave in regret and disharmony. Sometimes, peace comes to the restless souls who are. far too kind to live their own destinies.
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Just think, what would life be like, if everything were free?
Mostly, the endless stream of money would give me time. Time to nourish my personhood, to cultivate friendships, to forgo the hurried life, to feel fully alive in the divine matrix in which I was born. We are falling. into the apathy of simple minds dashing down the freeway of life, too afraid to exit the freeway. For all the rubbish that we now call life. And money is the pot of gold, the gold few ever touch, or hold, or feel compelled to share.
Unfortunately, I do not have anyone investing in my existence, or my persistence. I am, however, dreaming of possibilities that might render me free in an unfree and mercurial concept that seeks to nullify certainty, and all chances of a sense of arrival. We can plant ourselves in the mass congregation of manufactured unworthiness, obedience. to malarkey, and become the notion of ignorant superiority, but why?
We are sacred star stuff, created in genius, with an eye for color, a mind that creates, hearts that feel, and we are connected to every living thing. In dreams, we construct our lives. Why settle? Live in what you love. No one deserves an explanation. Be diligent in conversing with the universe, and with God. We certainly cannot sit and wait for things to pan out. No matter how old or young, we must not give up on the heart’s desire. There is an end to this one life. Be selfish about intricacies, and generous with what makes your heart beat fast, and then slow. There is no good time to let go, but find time to go where your heart takes you. Find peace in the reality of the blueprint that gives purpose and meanings to be defined. Our lives are the miracle, and yet too often, we leave the miracle behind.
I am on a race to make up for lost time. To meander through the awe, a walk through time, aware of my place in the scheme of our earthliness, and yet in my universal longing for my uniqueness to be celebrated, today and tomorrow, no matter how far away.
Yet, far away, bombs are dropping. Fear is wreaking havoc in innocent lives with no place to run. And war creates humans unrecognizable to what we thought was good. And good is a slow river. cascading to the sea without fear of what might be. And money funds war. Endless streams of money. Why spend money on hate and fear, when peace is what we desire? We are a complicated species waiting for dreams to come true. But they won’t, they don’t, unless we do. We are here to flourish like a field of daffodils, don’t let the damned dig up the bulbs and leave nothing behind but barren toxic. land.
And in the midst of all this mayhem, and deserted dreams don’t forget to whisper in your most authentic name, to the universe, to God, a most sincere, heartfelt apology, for the end of everything before we actually had a fair chance to ever really, passionately begin.
Oh how the earth waits to bloom in hues of amen.
- Patty Brown
