Falling Through Another Portal

on learning that you don't always have to be learning

Oh yes, another portal I fell into, on my way back home from work, the long walk from the cooler to the house. I’ve been falling in love with Michigan, which is not a hard thing to do this time of the year. I’m living in a tunnel canopy bungalow of cherry, walnut, beech trees. I love the trucks that rumble past the road and the morning fog that is so different than the Eugene fog, and the way that people are beginning to prepare for winter. I’ve decided that the sky is more beautiful here. I’ve decided that I love how the tourists come and go. I never realized that Michigan is a cold place, a place up north. I always just thought of it as central, the middle of everything, from where I existed. It is making more sense; I see a clearer map now.

I lost my keys last night and had no clear map for finding them. I re-traced my steps for hours, but in the end (the end being this morning) I discovered that I had missed one place: the swing under the walnut tree. It is a magical swing, one I spent a lot of time on this weekend, pushing and being pushed. It is a good feeling, to have someone you love throw you into the air.

I learned some things about losing a key: (I have never lost a key before.) It costs $18 to rent a metal detector, it is good to take a break from things, and I believe the moon and the sun must be our version of the slug being thrown through the air, my keys being placed so perfectly on the swing, wrapped around the rope, a defense against last night’s wind. I can’t say it was the moon or the sun, so it must've been me. I must have put my keys there. But it’s more fun to imagine the moon extending some long wobbly arms, with absolutely no muscle mass, playing with my destiny. I was supposed to drive last night, but I didn’t, and this morning I woke up fresh in bed. It could’ve been otherwise. Everything could’ve been otherwise, I learned this. But one day, I know, it will be otherwise, I am learning this.

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I’m sort of living a quiet, unbothered life out in the Michigan country. I love it but the truth is that it is slow and I came to earth with the human urge to leave.

Rachel came to visit this weekend and told me and Sar about raising butterflies this summer. How their wings unfold, how some don’t make it, how you become attached to something that is waiting waiting so still and silent to be born. Some places are like this: untethered to wake but slow to emerge. Why are there so many goddamn cocoons in this life, I think. Humans are way more confused. I just want to move move move. I sigh in relief when I believe it’s time to leave but resent any stagnation. And there’s something so cliché about butterflies, I don’t know what it is, but it’s like god! They are almost so relatable that it is nauseating. I guess you can’t leave without sitting still, I’m learning.

More on butterflies (I know, I’m sorry), but my favorite movie as a child was Bug’s Life. Remember when Heimlich falls out of his cocoon, without wings? (Linked for your laughing pleasure, I am cracking up.) But anyway, I don’t remember exactly why Heimlich didn’t grow wings, but off he goes with his little ant friends carrying him home.

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I started missing Oregon a few weeks ago, when the peanut butter ran out, and then started loving Michigan again at the same time. So many walls have been falling down. I can’t even fully remember what I have written about here and what I haven’t, but it’s all jumbled into one, anyway. I’ve spent this whole morning writing, I’m in a portal, there is always a fork in the road, the path to consciousness is not zen at all and actually quite terrifying. This newsletter has always been about what I’m learning, and this makes me susceptible to learning, to growth, to change in my own life. Sometimes it is nice to not learn, to take the wrong turn. To not have anything mean anything at all. Art is fascinating because you can always dig deeper, and you’re given this huge plate of life to work from. I’m always interested in that, this digging of what we’ve been given. But we get to play with it, too, rearranging bit by bit. And sometimes none of that involves learning. The irony is so many of us have only been taught to learn in school that we forget to sit, we forgot to play with what we already know.

I remember when I first started this newsletter, which was originally on TinyLetter, I wrote about my neighbor coming to crawl under my kitchen counter, pretending he was an ant because in his words, that was the best way to find them. Maybe all along this has been a newsletter about ants. Maybe that is how I should answer to what this is all about. We are ants, really. Guided by the moon or maybe not, if that’s not what you believe. I just can’t help but learn, and sometimes that is tiring, and sometimes I have help from friends to push me higher, to release the worry to find anything at all, to lose everything—including learning.

Non-sensical, take it for what you will, the moon is a god. I’m working on sitting still—walking to no destination at all—without sense, no answers. I will probably lose more belongings on the way, but I would be lucky to lose what I think I control. There is barely a matter to anything at all. We already know this. We don’t have to learn. It is like tarot, whatever you think it means it must, in some way. A life without meaning must mean so very much. It is without control, it just is. If nothing else, don’t care so god-damn much. Don’t care to make sense. This is a letter to myself.

Love, (to even those I don’t know! which is wild to me! thank you.)

Jo

Picture by rachel