Swingers Of Birches

The solar eclipse will start in about an hour.  Millions (or so I hear) have flocked to Oregon for this auspicious event.  Our normally quiet hamlet is buzzing with small planes flying overhead, our neighbors are all outside talking to each other fences, everyone is abuzz.  We live in a great spot to see it, right along the river up on the mountainside with what looks like will be a perfect view.

The first thing I think of when I think of a solar eclipse is that Stephen King movie Dolores Claiborne.  Dolores finds out her husband abused their daughter and decides to kill him during the solar eclipse.  Dark, eh?  I always loved that movie.  Not because of how seemingly dark it is (although I’m drawn to that to!) but because it’s about the friendship of two women who took their life back after not having any control for years.

All signs point to reclaiming your life, a new start, changing old patterns or shedding old skin during an eclipse.  I’ve meditated, written pages and pages in my journal, and pulled tarot cards.  Sage is burning, I’m ready.  I feel like I’ve been shedding old ways of doing things for a while and this is the beginning of a fresh start for me.

Almost five years ago Eric and I created the ultimate fresh start.   We quit two stable and well paying jobs, put our house up for rent and moved to Portland, OR.  A town we’d only been to once on vacation.  Five years later we are thriving in a beautiful home recently purchased, Eric’s company is wildly successful, and I finally have a job I love and am inspired by (also exhausted by) every day.

Change is the only constant.  Nothing feels better to me than getting out of old habits and starting new ones.  The time is now, and I’m jumping in with both feet.

This book was recommended by Joanna Devoe, whom I adore!  I have loved every page and highly recommend this if you’re into moon cycles and such things.  My card pull for the Eclipse was the King Of Cups and I am THRILLED!

Hope this Eclipse treated will you well friends!  More soon…

There is a quote by Rumi that sums up perfectly how I feel about social media right now.

“Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field.  I’ll meet you there.”

Instagram is fantastic.  It’s creative, inspiring, thought provoking, and rarely gives me anxiety.  I get so many great ideas and have so many good feelings courtesy of Instagram.

Facebook?  Not so much.  I can absolutely understand why people love it.  In an odd sort of way, I’m confused about why I despise it so much.  My voyeuristic tendencies started young when I watched the first episode of The Real World New York in 5th grade.  I love watching people live their life.  A weird idea for some, I get it.  Nevertheless, I love it.  I love learning new ways of doing things, seeing what people’s favorites are, what they have for dinner, all of it.

All of this say, after an unfortunate incident with our well meaning real estate agents announcing that we’d bought a house in Facebook (without our permission) we are bailing.  Neither of us are into it, for many many reasons, but the main issue for us is the lack of control you have over your content there.  You can be tagged, located, checked-in, etc. without your having any control over it.  I’ve locked my Facebook down and still I deal with these issues.

So!  You can find us here.  Well, mostly me, although sharing Eric’s a my shenanigans is one of my favorite things to write about.  Eric’s got a crazy cool blog HERE if you’re into vintage toys, collecting, painting, and general nerdom.

It’s such an exciting time for us right now.  We are four years into an adventure that we started out of desperation and a feeling that we didn’t belong where we were.  Our decision to rent our beautiful house that we loved, quit secure and well -paying jobs to move to a place we’d only been to once before and start a business has been the adventure of a lifetime.  Bookmark this blog if you want to see what we’re up to.  I love sharing and I want you to be a part of it.

Stay tuned…

Birches

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father’s trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.