Full Circle, Almost

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     Arkansas ditch                                                                                            
      all photographs by brian fender
 

Well I said my posts would be erratic.  How's a six month absence for a blog?  Works for me.

Since my last post I left my adult home of NYC to return to my home state of Arkansas.  It is undeniable that New York has a frenetic energy like no other that is always propelling you forward, keeping you a little on edge, keeping you hustling in a never ending pursuit to make it (especially if you haven't made it).  For those of us that aren't natural hustlers (potentially over indulged children with an unwarranted sense of entitlement) but have high expectations of ourselves the experience can be a profound struggle.

When we left for a week vacation in Arkansas in late May we had no intentions of not going back to NYC, but once I got on the back porch overlooking Beaver Lake (note the shit kickers and almost knee high socks on said porch) I found I could not move.  I sat there for the better part of two months and just absorbed the surroundings.  My family had planned the annual trip to Rosemary Beach.  I could not make myself leave to join them.  I just didn't have it in me.

About two weeks into my back porch sitting a barn sparrow couple started building their nest next to the back door.  It felt like primordial symbolism to have left the mechanical noises of the city and to suddenly be witnessing the genius of these birds working from sun up to sun down, building this complicated structure from twigs and small mouth fulls of mud.

No sooner had they finished the nest then these ugly little heads with beaks were peaking out over the nest.  The parents nest building gave way to frantic bug collecting and they resumed their trips back and forth from sun up to sun down.  To be honest it got a little exhausting watching them doing all that work, and it wanted them to take a break but they would not be deterred.  The most fascinating thing about the ugly newborns was how they knew to hang their asses over the edge of the nest to poop in the parents mouth, so that mom or dad could carry the poop and drop it away from the nest.  There eyes weren't even open yet they somehow knew to hang their asses over the edge of the nest to poop.  Isn't that incredible?  I thought it was so courteous.......until they started shitting on everything.

Equally as astonishig was how quickly they grew into cute little, fat, baby birds, firmly perched all along the edge of the nest.  The whole thing was miraculous to watch.  All the while there were so many species of birds coming in and out, Robins plucking big juicy earthworms out of the ground, a male and female Oriole, which I had never seen in Arkansas before, a wide variety of wood peckers, vultures, blue herons and a whole community of neighborhood dogs that came and went on regular schedules.  The occasional speed boat sliding along with fisherman hugging the banks throwing their lines.    

(Let this be a cautionary tale!  Don't let barn swallows nest near your dwelling.  It turns out that,  besides the bird shit, they have mites and microscopic parasites so having them close to your door can mean the infestation of your house and the potential for maddening crawling sensations all over your skin.  Total creep out factor.)

But my point is that having the time to just sit and be in nature, to let that frenetic energy of the city that eventually becomes a part of you, dissipate, my illness became more real to me and assumed an emotional weight it was lacking in NYC.  I finally wept for the first time in August, a year and a half after the diagnosis.  It was epic grief, incredibly intense, loud, messy and astonishing.  Without sounding too flip about my own life, I kept wondering what I was grieving.  We all die.  I am a human being subject to illness.  I suspect this is just the conditioning of men.  So I couldn't help but wonder if those epic grieving experiences were a lifetimes worth and the diagnosis was just a catalyst for going deep enough to unclog years of unrealized emotion.  I have wondered if all the pain, anger, and hurt I held in throughout my life could be partially responsible for having a nervous system misfiring like a struggling neon sign. 

So the following video is about gratitude, to slowing down to appreciate what surrounds you and our connectedness, rather than what we mostly here about our disconnectedness, how we mistreat one another etc.  The second is of nature sounds if you are still in the city or are stressed out to all hell.

And I am well aware that some Native New Yorkers will be more terrified of these noises than find them soothing.  I have nothing for you. Just stick your head out the window:)