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Saturday, April 24, 2004 |
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"REPEAT 50 TIMES AND CALL ME IN THE MORNING..."
"The cards indicate that you have a quiet courage & patience that can, in time, conquer all challenges. Your inner strength is outstanding & these qualities can take you through any condition/situation that may arise. If you realize this you can depend on creative solutions to arise at almost the 11th hour during any problem. Depend on this truth as you do know it."
Translation: "You go, girl." |
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Everything's picking up speed. I was devoting all my spirit energy to keeping happy and hanging on tight to the little boat T&H as we navigated stormy seas. But unfamiliar local people began to read my words, people who maybe don't love us much, I think, and the water roiling at the periphery was pulling us under. I couldn't afford the drag.  But, as the song says, it's just the motion. My godmother Jeanne Flowers, the Phoenix tarot lady, warns me to keep a big project on the back burner for a while, because troubles and worries will have an unfortunate effect on it if I don't. I don't know whether she means this blog or a book proposal I've been planning to write. But I don't much feel worried or troubled, so I think I'll resurrect Thistle and Hemlock sooner than later. I've been outlining improvements and I can't wait to relaunch for real next week. I came close to wedding my Inner Cynic as my vision approached collapse, but I think I'll elope with my Inner Flake instead and be joyful right steadily now. We may or may not stay on here at the farm. Last Monday the court ruled the auction may go forward, and in theory we have 10 days to two weeks remaining. But a bizarre glimmer of hope appeared in the wake of that ruling. An investor from the big city who owns "many ranches" in Northern California has been hovering just out of sight, ready to swoop down at the last minute. (See the metaphors shift and swirl--first the sea, now the air; perhaps he's a gull.) He very much does not want the farm to go to auction and is willing to take extraordinary measures to ensure that it does not. He and his wife drove here immediately last week to look the property over. He spoke as if it were theirs already. "I'm prepared to dump a ton of money on this place," he said. He's sure he can snatch it up and save the day--sort of. Because if he buys it, he says he would prefer that my brother and I remain here "up to a year, or maybe longer," to keep things watered and cared for and to repel squatters and vandals, until he has time to come and take the house apart and put it back together properly. He asks only that I empty the barn so he can store tools there, and make space for his earthmoving equipment in the yard, and see that the guest house is vacant and ready for him and his wife to stay in during their brief visits to come. And that's better than a poke with a sharp stick, to be sure, although whether this will set well with Audrey, who will have to move in any case, remains to be seen. We've talked, but I'm not sure it's very clear to her yet. She's so serene. And so maybe I can keep droning on about the Wonder of It All for a bit longer. And see how the herb garden turns out this year. And plant tomatoes and potatoes. Maybe. News of the moment is my older son's wedding on Sunday. A friend of Audrey's has agreed to pet-sit, so my brother and I plan to drive away first thing in the morning (oh! I still have to iron my rose linen dress! and cut Brian's hair!) and reach the valley floor in time to purchase wedding gifts. I've reserved a room at the Matador. The rehearsal dinner takes place at 6, and the wedding on Sunday at 11, in a grove of timber bamboo--my younger son will strum a guitar--and then the reception, and then my brother and I drive home in the Sunday evening twilight, I imagine. My older son's father and I were both 18 when we were married in 1971. We lived in a small Iowa town and we hoped marriage would impress the local draft board. But first we had to find an "18 state"--where legal marriages could be performed without parental consent for persons under 21. Friends drove us first to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, but once there we learned it was not an 18 state, after all. So we hitchhiked north through Minnesota and east to Michigan--I've never in my life seen so many tall dark trees all in one place, miles on miles of them, narrow highways like endless scary tunnels through pitch-black forests--to the town nearest Michigan's western border--Ironwood, "Home of the World's Tallest Fiberglass Indian," and we were married there, he in purple-striped pants and leather coat and squared-toed boots, I in floor-length red calico granny dress (I may have worn shoes, I can't recall), by a wheelchair-bound insurance salesman who was a JP on Saturday mornings. But I digress. 12:28:33 AM  comment []
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