Onto the Face of the Earth

This is the first time I've actually sat down at the computer in weeks.
Even the spammers have given up on me.
I have dropped onto the face of the earth.

Around the first of June I decided to deal in the tangible, the immediate and the things I could touch, taste, feel. I have not regretted it. I think the Internet is a useful tool, but it had become, for me, over the last several months a giant black hole. I read countless posts about managing social media, about all the ins and outs of social politics on Facebook, about the "rules" of blogging, about finding balance in your life, about dealing with kids and technology, finding time for important things and on and on. I don't think it's terribly uncommon for people to get sucked into the virtual world. Technology has improved exponentially over the last several years, getting quicker, smaller, more accessible. Sometimes I'm not sure it's entirely healthy for humans to move faster than the speed of light all the time.

The complaint du jour seems to have revolved around finding enough time in our lives that spread us so thin and run us ragged. I am no exception, really. There are all the activities and necessities and demands of an active life. But it has nagged me more and more over the last year or so that it seems that all these devices and services that we have in order to make things quicker and easier, are actually just filling up our time with more stuff; that they're not really freeing up our time, but just consuming more of it. And with what?

I am tired of quick and easy. I'm tired of a constant stream of information. I am worn out with commentary. I find that it isn't necessary for me to know what everyone I've met (or haven't) since elementary school thinks about NSA or potty training or gluten free living or their neighbors or what they had for breakfast. So I have unplugged. I temporarily deactivated my Facebook account, I check my email only for messages that are pertinent or immediate to my life, I have mostly neglected the entire blogging world. This is not a permanent solution, it's more like a cleanse. There are people about whom I care and with whom I keep in touch only through electronic means and I miss them. Rumor has it, a few people miss me, too.

But for right now, I've disconnected electronically for the most part. If you are over twenty, you probably remember a time when people wrote letters with actual pens and paper, when you had to wait to hear from someone, or when you picked up the phone and interacted with a real voice on the other end when you wanted to communicate long distance. You probably remember a time when sitting and waiting meant reading a book or a magazine or even interacting with the people around you instead of looking at a tiny computer you held in your hand. You may remember a time when the things that you did or experienced were not a status update or a post, but your real life for you and your loved ones to enjoy or despise without an audience. You may remember a time when your "friends" were people you actually knew and with whom you interacted tangibly. We'll never get that time back, and I'm not sure that I want it back. I like having gotten back in touch with people I thought I'd never hear from again. I like "meeting" and interacting with people I would otherwise never have met but for the Internet. But sometimes the best way to get perspective is to step away and view from a distance.

I have dropped onto the face of the earth.

For now, dear readers, I'll be on a bit of a sabbatical. My writing will be done the old fashioned way for a while - on paper with a pen and without the immediate gratification of instant sharing and commenting. My communication is mostly with my own vocal cords and with hugs and holding hands and laughs that people can actually hear without being reduced to a ubiquitous acronym.

Enjoy your summers, friends!

Empty Spaces

Nature abhors a vacuum.

Empty a space out completely and it will scramble to inhale debris from nearby to right this imbalance.
I have been dealing in empty spaces these last few weeks.

In my yard, I have inherited years of neglect and invasive species run amok. My husband and I have donned work gloves and overalls and cut and cleared and dug and pulled ever since the weather turned nice. Wild blackberry, Morning Glory, buttercups, dandelions, English Ivy, bamboo. We have wrestled with the roots and fingers and suckers and vines of all the many ways Nature has to fill in all the empty spaces with abundance.

It's not enough to clear it out, though. By the next morning, the insistent tiny green invaders return. I don't want these brambles and strangling vines out of control and rampant to take over my space. So I dig some more, with purpose. I plant sturdy plants with delicate names: Lobelia, Meadow Sparkle, Coral Bells, Blue-Eyed Fuschia. I set and mulch these tiny plants with great promise. They will, with the proper tending, one day be giants. They will expand to fill the empty spaces with color and scent and riotous flowers. They will stave off the wildness that encroaches from around the edges.

There are places where the Ivy and Morning Glory have won. Their roots and tendrils are so old, so gnarled and thick, so pervasive that I can't eradicate them without uprooting trees or bulldozing the fence. In honesty, I don't want to completely eradicate them. They are tenacious and beautiful as they seek light and purchase by whatever means possible. My daughter and I have erected a fairy hut under the trees. A tepee of bamboo poles, wound with twine where the vines can wander free and create magical green, undulating walls and a shady reading or picnic spot for the summer. A place to let the vines be what they are and do what they do best and where we can live in harmony.

Today I am tending an empty space that used to be filled with grief and sadness. It would have been my father's 67th birthday today. It's a date that I cannot, will not, ever forget. It's a date that, for a few years, brought keening grief and a remembrance of things lost. But today it brought me quiet contemplation and gratitude. I held my pruning shears in strong hands, protected by my tough leather gloves and saw my dad in that. I taught an art lesson to small and excited children, using words and concepts too difficult for them to grasp and then letting them free with huge black paper and sidewalk chalk, succumbing to the joy rather than the technicality of art. I saw my dad in that. I prayed and meditated on Scripture, and I saw my dad in that. I looked in the mirror at my unruly graying red-brown hair and my wide and crooked smile and I saw my dad in that. I see him in my husband's strong and intelligent gentleness, in my son's sense of humor and the dimple in his chin, in my daughter's sense of discovery and passion for experimentation, in the paintings that hang on my walls, the books that sit on my shelves, in the very words I write.

I have inherited a wild space within. It is easily overrun with the invasiveness of bleak emotion. It can be strangled and choked with thorns and brambles if left untended. I get this expansive, barely controlled heart from him. This fertile ground where worries and crippling compassion can volunteer, out of place, overnight. From him I also received the tools to keep these empty spaces full of color, full of life, and full of promise. He left me his faith, his creativity, his passion, his dedication and his belief in hard and necessary work.

He left a giant empty space when he died; a space that for a while, I believed would swallow me whole. But after several years of clearing and tending, there is no empty space. His presence runs like vines through my entire existence. And I spent today quietly continuing to train those vines into their places, appreciating their presence without allowing them to overtake my whole life. Creating a place where I can be who I am, do what I do best, and live in harmony with my loss.