weasels, waning, widening

"...Time and events are merely poured, unremarked, and ingested directly, like blood pulsed into my gut through a jugular vein. Could two live that way? Could two live under the wild rose, and explore by the pond, so that the smooth mind of each is as everywhere present to the other, and as received and as unchallenged, as falling snow? We could, you know. We can live any way we want. People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience- even of silence- boy choice. The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting. A weasel doesn't "attack" anything; a weasel lives as he's mean to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity."

 

Today the fog rolled back. Earlier, we spent days drifting through suspended water, fighting our own dumbly spinning compasses. We failed at questions of any kind.

Breakfast? Waffles? Highways? Back roads? Maps? Atlases? Destiny?

We drank terrible coffee, we made due with microwaved eggs, we were sorely disappointed by donuts. We tried to hide our anxious mists as they packed up into our sleeps and receded, saltily. And then. We parted ways and stuck our thumbs out to catch the correct current. Nevermind our fear of open water or waves. My own especially.  Calling voices can take on any timbre, any species, any shade. Greens where I am, and birds, and lakes that are easy to call across. Grays over There, slants, windows, elevators, stunted refrigerators. Love is a hard thing, tongues can be stones.

But! 

Light.

Startled.

Everyting!

     ....today.

 

All kinds of calcified water marks. Things left behind, discarded. New selves on this end! Smooth knees, beeswax lips, combed hair, verbena cream rinse. Cream rinse! Things have to look up because I went on a boat ride and ate raspberries and stewed beet greens into a sludge that wasn't even terrible. Right?

Faith in something Bigger is here, with sunburns to distribute.

(...the above quoted text is by Annie Dillard in her amazing essay Living Like Weasels, published in Teaching a Stone to Talk.)