Okay, okay, I guess 15 comments is enough. I’m still alive. Speaking of weddings, the date is set for ours on Saturday, June 30th 2007. We’re having it here, and if you’re reading this, you’re invited. I think. Get in touch and I’ll let you know.
There are four minutes to go until the end of my birthday. I was born at 6pm our time last night 37 years ago, so I’ve really had the opportunity to milk this one. E took me to see Borat and eat some wonderful Indian food. Then we got home and a surprise party was waiting for me. I don’t think I’ve ever had a surprise party before. It almost brought tears to my eyes. I am a very fortunate man. To see all these people who already mean something to me, and to realize it’s only been a year, is quite a powerful experience.
I’ve never really had a lot of people around me I could truly call friends. And now, I see them sprouting about the place, and I see yet another dimension to Floyd County’s motto: “To grow is to prosper.” I hated it when I first saw it, with all my stories of progress popping through my skull, and as time has, well, progressed, I’ve seen more and more other more subtle meanings to so seemingly a simple sign. I am growing, and I am prospering as a result. I am beginning to see it.
The house is sealed. We have a woodstove (potbelly for my fellow Australians) burning downstairs and a door as well. We have been living in this house now for a few months. The top floor – where we sleep, where I am now, listening to Parliament on Pandora (thanks Lee) – is on its way. Six of the eight walls are painted, and internal walls still look a while away – we don’t even really know where we’d put them yet. Most of the electrical sockets are functioning. The lighting still needs to be sorted out a bit, and it’s not a deficit of it that’s a problem. Downstairs, the floor is gravel, water comes in and doesn’t go anywhere from there, and the frame is up for the bathroom wall. We’re working on that.
I’m also working on a rock staircase. I’m really learning to love rocks. About a year and a half ago in Mexico I went to a Viaje de Poder at Teotihuacan, big pyramids just outside of Mexico City. It was based around Don Miguel Ruiz’s (The Four Agreements) work, and quite an experience. At the beginning, we were asked to provide an object that we represented then, and an object that represented what we wanted to become through the course. I was a leaf, floating in the breeze, and wanted to become a rock, strong, steady and solid. At the end, I saw myself more as the breeze that carried the leaf, rather than the leaf – and that’s another story. As I move these rocks now, I find myself transforming more and more with the rock: it is grounding, pulling me home. Finally, I find myself here, entering this space and becoming one with it. If things go the way the script could suggest, I have a lifetime ahead of me to ground further.
And that is not my concern. The script writes itself, and I will be the rock or the wind or the leaf; I will be the husband and stepfather; I could be the father too; I could be a lot of things; I have already been a lot of things. I am this now, and it looks and feels more like a rock than it ever did before.
