From Boonetime

The mountain has a chill on it today. Somehow it is more 'right' for my soul just now, and more inviting, even than reams of sunshine. I ran awhile today, at the Greenway, ran into the misty air -- the droplets of which flung onto my face and rested there like healing hands. I am growing into this menage of hills. The feeling of it starts in my feet and spreads to my limbs, pouring up into them like fresh water courses through root & branch. I am in Boone. There is nowhere else for me, through this full changing of the seasons. Yes, I am home here. Several years ago, I can remember believing that wherever one found oneself was home (or should be), no matter if one experienced even rapid, drastic relocations. Perhaps one facet of this axiom I still believe in: the ground where you are is the ground where you are. There is no other ground. A tautology, yes, but even my body knows this to be so. For while there is ground and ground on this planet (and all grounds, por eso, are possible), as you are a being delimited by -- and extended within -- a single body, its singular place at any given time is your only ground for experience. For me to say now, I wish I was in Greensboro, or Russia, or New York, is for me to yearn for some magic, some astral projection, to ferry my soul away towards grounds that my body cannot just now know. That longing is to enact, to effect, a dualism -- the desire for projection creates it, just as attentiveness to the plants and stones, the rhythms and images of life here on the mountain, and so forth, creates and propagates a unity that is at once whole and plenary. So then it seems -- and this is to shift rather abruptly towards another focus -- that there is a benefit in physical investment in place, in sensitive observation, and in building a habitus suited to the geographical, social, and psychological landscape of any given location. Perhaps it is true that living in (supposed) readiness for moving on and always on is an unproductive chaos. It could be that such living-on-the-surface-of-the-tumult disallows one from climbing into the chaotic sinkhole and finding meaning, from drawing out from the swirling arche some form and structure, routine and repetition, that will provide a more accessible surface for the infinite details of a particular place to spread themselves, and sprout, and live.