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Wednesday, August 7, 2013.  Well, I’ve rebooted my computer and the problem I see on this post writing page appears to be due to something WordPress has to fix.  Most of what is supposed to be visible at the top is just plain missing-in-action.  Oh, well!  Life is full of surprises and adaptations to those very same surprises!  I can hover my cursor over where things are supposed to be visible and they seem to work when I click on them.  Fortunately I have written nearly 1,500 posts here (and many more thousands of pages) so that I know where the invisible SHOULD be visible.  Lucky me!

In three weeks I will pass through my 62nd birthday.  I find myself hovering over these moments of my own life in wonder – in lots of wonder – about my life lived thus far and about my life as I might be blessed to continue to live it for some time into the future.

I am anticipating leaving my home here in the gorgeous high desert along the Mexican border where I have been humming along (some days more humming than on others) for 14 years.  I am returning to the far north not far from the Canadian border where 2 of my 3 children live (my daughters) and my 2 grandsons (ages 1 and 3).  I first visited and then moved to Fargo, North Dakota right after my 20th birthday.  42 years ago!

Why?

Why did an Alaskan mountain homesteading girl end up in the perennial very flat lands with not so much as a pea-grade hill to be seen?  Windswept.  Frigid Siberian winters.  Destiny is my only answer about then and about soon-to-be.

I can no longer argue with destiny.

I don’t understand it but I still believe that there are parts of everyone’s life that are orchestrated by God (however we understand that Greatest Mystery).  “Now” and “then” hardly matter at this point in my life.  My decision has been made.  All that’s left now is the PROCESS of leaving here and arriving there.

I expect that I will leave my home here the 2nd week of October.  Somehow.  I do not wish to again “lose” my belongings.  Generosity of family and friends, even some borrowed money will be required to the tune of between $2,500 – $3,000 to make this move happen.  Seems unimaginable to me if I look at any of this rationally.  But “unimagined” is not the same thing as “impossible.”

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My actual home including the gardens is my place of solace.  It is my place of calm at the same time I have felt it to be on occasion my physical prison.  But, then, being in a body seems like being in prison to one whose soul never quite grew down into this world.  Severe psychotic abuse kept that from happening for me – and as I approach age 62 I realize I will never “make up for lost time.”

I am simply – or complexly – ME.  Sometimes I have songs for a brain.  This is our glorious desert monsoon season and the beauty is stunning all around me.  Billowing clouds against blue skies flashing immense shadows over the mountainsides as the clouds grow and pass us by.  Every seed that can be reached by the moisture the rains have blessed the land with have sprouted.  The land is luxurious.  This beauty makes even a troubled mind feel the same way.  I soak in this beauty as my last monsoon in this area bleeds its beauty into my soul.  I want to take all of this with me!

Can I?  Will I?

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Meanwhile – I sew.  In my odd collection of various thrift store accumulated fabrics there is a collage of color and texture I am turning into bags – shoulder purses, tote bags – as I create a birth with each completed object. 

What for?  What destiny does this growing collection of fabric reformed possess in the future?  In my future?  I know not.

Sewing simply grounds and calms me.  Making things with my heart, mind, hands, time – life – is something I have been doing at least for 60 years.  I know this because my verbally abusive mother often berated me during all of my childhood for being such an “unimaginative, stupid child” because I sat in the middle of the living room floor when I was two making things with my plastic pop beads.

(Perhaps I thought I was safe doing this.  If I didn’t move around I wouldn’t “get into trouble?”  Ha!  That didn’t work.)

But for myself I claim my creativity, humble as it is.  I claim the songs that take over my mind and disappear again before I get back home.  I don’t know what kind of a place I can afford to rent when I get north on my rather small disability income – but I know what I can dream of living in….

A STUDIO! 

I wish to haul my craft supplies and my tools right along with me.  I want to haul my storage shelving, my sturdy tables, my crayons and paper, colored pencils and paints, my sewing and weaving and spinning and mosaic materials.  I can do what I’ve done before if my living space is not really big enough for me.  I have built very sturdy “lofts” over beds, over chairs, over tables and UP UP UP UP everything goes.  It only matters that nobody bumps their head as they move around in my space!

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In other words I am in a transition time of great change a’comin’ and the many, many unknowns and potential surprises that await me.  I do know that so far I have lost 27 pounds on my changed green vegetable diet and out from under the middle-age (and climbing) body of mine is appearing the body I used to have (with a few adjustments due to aging) in my 20s.  This all fascinates me – like I am coming unburied from years of weight from depression and loneliness – as I anticipate a new life with my daughters and grandsons in it.

Mystery.  I work to remember that the unknown really is a mystery.  My future life as mystery, creeping along ahead of me slowly enough as if it is waiting for me to catch up.  Mystery.  The Great Mystery.  Mystery can be very, very sacred!

Maybe I can take a painting class.  Maybe a yoga class, or a dancing class.  Maybe I can take care of my age one grandson so he can be spared the chaos of big daycare.  Maybe I can volunteer somewhere and make some kind of a difference.  Maybe I can find a group to play my conga drums with!

Maybe……  Mystery is full of maybe…..  I am working to be OK with that!

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