I am feeling like that is what I need now, to retreat to the forest and rest. I never noticed until writing the other day that forest slowed down was for rest. I know probably stupid and everyone else on the planet already figured this out...but for me, it was kind of a realization that stopped me in my thinking tracks.
I get overwhelmed in every day life. The grind, the work, the kids, the cleaning, just all the fucking responsibility I have. I mean, I wanted it this way, but fuck if some days I just don’t want to to do much of any of it. I have really been feeling like adulting is just too much of an ask lately. Like I don’t want to work or parent or clean or do anything that is part of the world of a responsible adult. I just want to fuck off. Go to the gym, hike, run, read, write, sleep, date. I just want to have fun. Adulting can just fuck right the fuck off.
And while there is this engine driving me that propels me forward through my responsibilities, there is another part of me that wants to just take off to the redwoods, for rest. I mean I know myself well enough to know that I will not likely, actually rest but it is a nice idea that I like to toy with...like the kind of idea that someday I will run a marathon again...I mean I know I am NOT going to do that, but I also haven’t abandoned the idea completely. It still knocks around in the confines of my mind.
In this somewhat delusional fantasy I have, I retreat to a cabin in the woods, surrounded by massive redwoods and the air immediately changes my breathing. I am slowed to a regular person pace and freed from all the shit that I want to do, have to do and think I need to do. The to do lists evaporate like a vapor that hangs over a redwood grove on an early Fall morning. And I settle.
I sleep, read, walk, eat, write. There is no television or streaming, perhaps there is a little brook or stream that provides all the background noise one could want or stand. I think of the redwood grove Jack Kerouac retreated in his book Big Sur. A small cabin in the woods, with no one else around. Fire for warmth and solace for company. Of course I have another version of this retreat that involves a man, but that one isn’t really ok to print here. I think you can fill in the other activities...
I think of how quiet everything is on the floor of a Redwood forrest. And I do know I am spelling it wrong...I mean it was the easier way to use this metaphor. Forest makes it harder to attempt to explain what I am talking about. It seems to me no matter how you spell it, the word is a directive...go there for rest. And I am thinking I could really use some of that right now.
Life has been pretty lifey lately. Parents in hospitals, medical issues and appointments, children growing up and moving on with their lives, without me. Work is just insane right now. It is as if everyone, and I do mean everyone, has lost their fucking minds. And the more I try to fix their fucked up domestic situations, the more broken they become. It is hard and I feel impotent to help the people I am tasked with helping move on and forward in a positive direction.
Couple all of the above with a malaise I feel about all of it. A somewhat lazy, precocious teen who is really pretty hellbent on not doing a fucking thing they don’t want to.
I picture myself on a road, barefoot, walking away, in a dress, just fucking walking out. Shoes slung over my back, hair in various states of disarray. Just fucking leaving...retreating to somewhere where the wisdom of trees prevails. Somewhere my phone doesn’t work. Somewhere things make more sense than they do to me right now.
Maybe I am just tired. Maybe I do just want to get away for a few days. Perhaps my upcoming birthday would be a good reasons to retreat to somewhere where life is simple, clean and feels more supportive. Then I think of all the logistics I would have to make happen to make that happen and I think that perhaps I will just find some sort of live cam feed to watch of trees doing nothing except off gassing oxygen so that the planet can live another day.
I know that rest is part of life, and I know that I need more of it, but I also know that I am a poor accessor of it. And I need places like forests to help me unwind, relax, rejuvenate and repurpose myself. Life can’t be about the lists. Fuck, it really can’t. And no matter how great it feels to tick off the to do list items, there has to be more to life, to living and to me.
I feel the directive of forrest. I do. The question always remains, what shall I do with all the imperatives in my life? What ever shall I do?
Heed them...is all that resounds.
Again...still.
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