Invitation to Resist

While it is of course and always tremendously exciting to see a message with the subject PARTY!!! in one's mailbox, there is a certain--how shall I put this?--poetic pinch of (in)justice when the invitation which follows includes the singled-out and arguably overly emphatic phrase "Everyone remember - [My Name Here] STAYS ON HER CHAIN."  So all right, it's not really the host's fault that I share the name of their adopted pet who happens also to be a mad runner, but I have to wonder if there might have been a way for this missive to be communicated to the potential guests in a way that could have been...oh, I don't know--less of a knife in my heart?

Nonetheless, I'm looking forward to an afternoon on the St. Croix with family, for a change.  It's been a while since I spent any time at the homestead up north--rather strange at this time of year and recalling past summers--but even so I find my intentions turning homeward this weekend, toward my own little place... I guess that's good, and probably important.  Creating a home on my own has been challenging, since I've always thought of home--as many of us do, and as is only natural, I suppose--as being a place with other people in it, something shared.  Without that, I am finding, there must be found very different reasons for, well, almost everything.  And if pretty much everything I'm doing here is more or less defined by what I want, the question I'm left trying to answer lately isn't "what do I want?" but "(why) does what I want matter?"  It's been a big adjustment, and still is, although things are coming along... just yesterday, when I walked in the back door, I was surprised and not a little joyful at being met for the first time by the sweet, complex and unmistakable smell of home...

At the same time, I am estranged from the land for which I felt such passionate devotion a couple years ago, or forever, that I could speak of it only with love, hope and confidence.  I am a wayward stranger, only, now.  This too shall pass, I must presume, but at the moment and recently it's been hard for me to get there, to be there and not feel displaced or even somehow turned away, at times.  If it's a switch my mind could throw, to cast some stretching summer light upon this rugged landscape, I (would hope I) would have turned it on a while ago... Sadly, it seems my chain doesn't quite reach that far.  (But, as all of us should know by now, it's only for her own good.)

So anyway, as pathetic as all that is, it'll be good to have a couple unfettered days at "home" to take care of a few things, not the least among them myself.  I can't say Independence Day has ever been particularly meaningful to me, in nationalistic terms, but it might be a good excuse to get my hands on some sparklers and spell disappearing words in the dark, raise a flag to the open sky and take a shot at some recreation.  Also, with the tarp off now, there's a whole heap of work to do in the garden, so if anyone feels like getting dirty, sweaty, sunburned and sore this weekend, I've got a big ol' pile out back needing to be moved.  Haha. 

Enjoy yourselves--and don't go blowing anyone's fingers off!