Today’s Words:
mullet
debutante
apply
ruddy
guest
bargain
muck

My dad’s response to advertising was “I’ll sell you some cowpies at a bargain price.” I guess he was saying that just because it’s on sale doesn’t mean it’s not shit.

I’m sure there are some life lessons to be drawn from this but just now I’m pulling a blank. People buy manure you know. On sale or not.

My dad also said you should never sell hay from your own fields. You should till it back into the soil, otherwise you’re selling the soil itself. See, the dirt makes grass, the cows eat the grass, they re-deposit the grass as shit on the field, which nourishes the dirt. It’s one big circle of life and nitrogen. You start selling off your hay, you gotta start buying fertilizer, which is really other people’s cowshit. It’s an endless cycle.

So we didn’t sell hay. But we bought hay, from the neighbors down the road. (about 6 miles down - in the country, “neighbors” is a looser term). I always wondered if we didn’t sell our hay because of the “cycle of life” or because we always ran out before winter was done and so we had no extra to sell anyway. Sure sounds better the first way though.

My dad read me Just-So stories when I was a kid. They’re all about explaining things by making up stories when you don’t know what’s really true. But you call it folklore, then it’s OK.

I’m not bitter (much). I just like the truth. I like the way it rings inside me, like the bells of an angry cathedral. It comforts me at night. I want to know that I stand on the ground, even if the ground is muck. At least it’s solid. Stories change, but there is always a ground to stand on. Things fall away.

Sometimes the truth is just the present moment, and the ruddy feelings of sadness that overtake you right before the light turns green. You know you feel it. There’s truth in there, somewhere. You can’t name it, you can’t explain it, but you can’t deny it either. It’s there, a pushy guest that won’t just shut up and let things be. Always has something to say.

So you listen, and wait, and things become clear, eventually.

It’s the clearness I crave. I want to wrap myself in it, the calm nothing of the night. Angry visitors come and go, but the night stays. The silence holds everything, even the aching to be held.

You always get what you need after you don’t need it anymore. It’s our human fate, to learn to let go and be content with what we have. It’s the only lesson that endures: that just this moment is enough. Whenever you forget, there is life to remind you. It comes along and steals away the promise of the night, until you remember that you don’t need promises.

You only need the night, and the ground, and the clearness of the air. It is there, in your lungs, holding you from the inside, filling your blood and caressing your cells. Time and space, truth and air, all turn into the breathe and the moment by moment dance of your heart with the world.