Everyone, it’s me! I’m a good deal tireder than I’d like, and a bit older I suppose; but I’m still around. This time I am in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan...it is a somewhat isolated spot, but very beautiful. I just returned from Minnesota; I love the place, but the Twin Cities have changed a good deal since I lived there over three years ago. Neighborhoods that were safe before, don’t seem that way to me now, and it is VERY crowded... I do love Minnesota though, and enjoyed a bit of a tour of some bits. I really enjoyed a small town called Rush City, where the people were really friendly and nice to me. The place is full of rushes, from which it must get its name I’d guess. And Two Harbors was likewise worth a visit. Of course, it did turn out to be 5’F when I arrived in MN, and there was a blizzard when I left... It looks like another loooooooong winter on the way. Brrrrrr!
I’ve been lamenting the seeming demise of blogging: once upon a time when I was trapped in Arizona for three years, if I didn’t have blogs to read and write, I think I’d have gone mad. Now, almost all of the folk whose blogs I’d followed have quit their blogs, which is sad to me. But then, even I have hardly used it—though largely due to only owning an ipad and a phone for the past 4 years or so. I may get another computer, but it’ll have Linux on it. Things have changed so much in the world since that time, especially in terms of technology. But what disconcerts me mostly is the shift in the direction of hate; yes, it seems acceptable in this country and world these days, and I find this deeply sad and concerning.
Sometimes I feel like going to live in a hermitage and spending my days praying and growing food; other times, like Lao Tsu, I want to walk off into the mountains and never come back. I said to someone a few weeks ago that hate seems more powerful than love because it burns so intensely—but in so doing, it consumes the hater until there is nothing left—whereas love is like this constant background energy upon which the truth of the Universe depends: it is constant, consistent, and largely missed or ignored by humans. We feel alone because we’ve learned to ignore it, to pass it by due to the fact it isn’t screaming in our face like hatred is: hate is like noise; love however abides in silence, and requires a silence in one’s soul to truly ‘hear’ its voice. This is the true voice of the Heart: we have it always, but it is buried in the noise, deeper and deeper within us, till sometimes it is never heard from again.
I wish for that quietude in which I can feel my heart harmonize with the silence of love. For you, too.
XOXO Always,
-Reifyn
