Electricity is Out

The electricity is out today.  It is no more quiet than when it is on.  The mark of living so remotely. As I write this, I know folks are driving to Long Beach to convene to make music.  I note the community of musicians, fondly.  My mind gathers together all the experiences of my musician friends that I have met and shared music with over the past three years when living in Oregon at the ocean.  My heart swells as a sponge in water after being in a dry dish for too long just thinking about all the melodies that will rise up today from the passionate music-making in the gathering.

The landscape outside my window this morning moves toward me from black and white skies and distant snow covered conifers to yellow field grasses tipped in white across rock walls to red caliche exposed soils.  As if Technicolor had a distance to span before reaching my retina.  

The snow comes strongly and dotting my vision outside my window.  Then the sun begins to brighten the landscape.  Now my leaking gutters drip down in front of my window, showing me the nearing of the end of the snowstorm and the warming temperatures. That elongated dripping that slows to broken droplets to slower drips until none.  But until then, it is still dropping minute snowflakes sideways in a light breeze and the landscape continues to fill be with awe.  A view I will not tire of for my existence.

  

I am reading a book right now “Easy to Remember: the Great American Songwriters and Their Songs” by William Zinsser.   Nancy gave it to me for my birthday this year and I am glued to its pages.  Even I am finding my way to understanding the structure of song-writing without intending to do so.  I do love understanding the parts and pieces and how they all connect together in this glorious fabric of music that I am blessed to participate in these days.  

I have been asked about my plans for the future.  I have none right now.  My sense is that by May, when my six month sojourn in NM comes to an end, that I will still be here.  To have my own land, my own home, a well with clean water, gardens and greenhouses, fields and forests, chicken coop and beehives, open space and mountains….clean air and lots of room to be peaceful.  How can I leave such a place, when my heart and soul tie closely to all these gifts?  I must have been in crisis mode when I left five years ago.  And most certainly I was.  And to have come back full circle, I was obviously fed deeply by loving friends in my music and writing circles, to even entertain such a solitary existence I live today.  

I have come to accept that what is least considered possible, can become reality.  And that with an open heart and gratitude for each and every day, life unfolds and can be just as miraculously delightful as what I dream possible.  I know that I will sing and play with all my Pacific Northwest musician friends again.  Just have no inkling of when that might be.

Sending love and joy from my box canyon to my friends in the Pacific Northwest wetland.

Kat
13 March 2019