Dwelling
Autumn Trees
“I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when nobody calls.”
Dwelling is a word that has long enfolded me. It brings to mind both inner and outer dwelling. I have memories of being a small child - very vivid images come to mind of little me, in spaces both made and created. At times I have experiences that find me in places that are difficult to describe. Perhaps they are in times of before or in the future. Star lands that might visit during sleeping or active imagination times - a surprise glimpse of a wider consciousness - gifts of presence. All of this informs the way that I experience the world. Dwelling is a lifeway that I have been drawn to for as long as I can remember.
When I was thirteen - I read Walden by Henry David Thoreau. This important work laid out a course for me for the rest of my now many decades long life. I used to carry that copy of Walden around with me in my backpack and pull it out to read wherever I had a moment to fall into it. Next to my backpack was often my fiddle that I was playing every day. I can still smell the scent of the pack. The outline of what Walden represented to me was a captured moment in time of dwelling. It showed how one could set up a life in a simple, intentional and way finding journey. I understood that the world that Thoreau was able to inhabit was unlike my own - both in time, privilege and gender - however, it was a template for me to begin to conjure what was most important to me in my life. The way of Dwelling.
Deciding to dwell internally - a locus of importance- framing exploration was awakened in me by Thoreau and his work Walden. In a closer look at the books that held importance as a young person - it is there in revisiting that we can find seeds of what our future life might become. This has held true through all the years for me. I notice that when I stray too far from those long ago held ideals - life begins to flatten for me. Dwell into the past to seek what was important - before you had an understanding of it. It is the picture or story that is found at a moment that seems to hold us in its arms.
cabin
“Nowadays almost all man’s improvements, so called, as the building of houses and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap.”
window into
“Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.”
firewood
“Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection. I love to have mine before my window, and the more chips the better to remind me of my pleasing work..”
chair
“I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.”
window
“The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man’s abode.”
It is in the word Dwell that I will return again and again to share with you the reflections that have etched upon the life that I have lived. May you find your own dwelling place - within or outwardly - on this quiet Sunday morning The woodstove is burning. A big fat rabbit greeted me outside my back door. The sun comes up a bit later now in this autumn turning. May good things find you…