grape cigar and folklore story day.

I sat on my porch with a book i got out of the free bin at mckays bookstore. The place hip people go to feel sane, when their alone.

The book is an icelandic folklore children's story. Sometimes i get sick of reading things for adult thought. I needed this.

My grape cigar tastes sweet, but i always have the lingering question of "what the hell am i doing here?" I need adventure today. Everyday to feel something.

I was missing the simplicity of my thought when i was a young girl. My wildness that was thoughtless and easy. It drove me to my childhood neighborhood. Two days ago, and im still thinking about it.

Driving down those familiar roads that are unknown to me now..I stuck my head out the window, to see if i recognized the smell. I did. It smelled the same. What was it.?!!

"There is the curve my brother wrecked on, there is the barn i first kissed a boy in, and here is that life-giving hill i road my bike down, recklessly with eyes closed."

I remember walking down that path to a field, to a pond, feeling those weird slimey frog eggs between my fingers.

I found myself standing between the two houses i lived in. Barefoot, wild-haired, and talking out loud to the unknown people inhabiting one of my houses. "Who the fuck are you in my house!?" "You arent even knowing life there!!" Life was great for me there, easy, wild, secure too."

They didn't hear me.....

I decided to drive up to the house i was born in. My friend Mr. Buckner lives there. He looks like santa clause and has one of the most tender hearts i know. He would run down to our house with his gun whenever there was a problem and i was scared. Once i got chased by a rabid coyote,.... we called buckner.

I used to ride my horse bareback up to his yard( i think i was still claiming it as my own) to pick apples. Once my horse went nuts and i got lodged between one of the branches and my horse. Why do i have to go to the chiropractor at age 23?

I walk in my old house and its smaller and different. Full of cigarette smoke and bad decorations. Mr. Buckner was so surprised and happy to see me now a woman. We stroll down memory lane while his new wife cuts bell peppers in the kitchen.

When it was time for me to leave, i hug him bye. He is misty eyed. I didn't realize I would have that affect. Maybe i didnt know how much he was seeing life in me when i was a little girl. Maybe i reminded him of another time.

He walked me outside, i looked at my old playhouse, empty and full of memories. All my old pets are buried here, the stain on the side of the house where i threw the egg, still there. I hop in my jeep. He stands, waves, smiles while i back all the way down the driveway. I drive up the hill i rode reckless on so many years ago, feeling selfish. Realizing how much i live for me, not remembering people who were there. Not caring of their well being now. I made a vow. I will search them out and tell them how i feel. I will remember and make them do the same. Maybe we can help each live life NOW, so we can look back at these moments like those.

Time is cruel. Fucking cruel.

We are here just long enough to ache and scramble, just short enough to not really care. Where is the in between?

I get pissed at the God i love. Claiming life as a cruel joke often. Then i see a child lose their ice cream off their cone, and i remember. It has to be this way. For now. We lose our ice cream, sometimes.

I work retail. I pay rent. I walk aimlessly. I am learning solitude and to see things as amazing. I am also saving all of my wanderlust up for something big. Grand. This is a season.

Everyone feels what i am feeling now. Why dont we talk to one another about it? I should pass you on the sidewalk and say" how are you handling the groaning of life today? suicidal? okay with it? lets get ice cream and watch our lump of goodness fall to the ground. Maybe we can share a laugh.

I feel like people dont know me sometimes.

I am nostalgic, always wanting comfort and good times simultaneously. Always living in the not good enough. I am still learning.

Good God am i ever

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7X7sZzSXYs

please watch that.

Meggyyyy

can i really do this.

" A rolling stone gathers no moss"

My step-dad keeps telling me this.

I am finding it more and more true for me right now. I have no roots anywhere and i think it is time for some. Not to say that these roots cant be really long ones. ..right? the kind that stretch and move..;) I am making a life in a spot. I will work. I will play and most importantly i will know people. Who knows for how long. I am just trying to be okay with it by not thinking of all the crazier things i could be doing and seeing.

I am always chasing this fleeting beauty that i can never fully capture. I might find myself holding it briefly but it always gets away from me. What is that?! I drives me crazy. I can be in the most beautiful of moments really trying to embrace it fully and still cannot.

I recall a moment when i tried.

I was sitting on top of a Mountain in Alaska watching Mt. Denali light up with the evening sunset. eating blueberries i picked from the tundra beside me. They were delicious. I said to myself in amazement " Megan look at what's around you, where you are at, what you are feeling. This is amazing. Breathe really deep. Close your eyes, NO don't close your eyes!. God this is too beautiful. Take it away OR take this annoying inability to consume this moment from me." What the hell is that? Why cant i consume something beautiful in the most full way? I don't think my human body could bare it. I feel the same about our father too. Why is he so damn elusive? Every time i feel like i have a grasp on him, he removes my hand gently. I love it so.

I want my forehead always touching the sky. Always.

Meg

Annie..

I sit alone and read. I like these words. Oh how i wish i could fully grasp every fiber, morsel, spec, feeling, breath of a day....although I'm not sure i could take it

-Meg

" Some days I felt an urgent responsibility to each change of light outside the sunporch windows. Who would remember any of it, any of this our time, and the wind thrashing the buckeye limbs outside? Somebody had to hang on to the days with teeth and fists, or the whole show had been in vain. That is was impossible never entered my reckoning, For work, for a task, I had never heard the word."

-Annie Dillard

torn.

Megan is missing her music. Windows down, sun setting and a good dose of tunes with her freedom. That is one thing she can say. but this farming is good for the soul. I will never NOT question where my food comes from again.

To have my hands in the dirt astounds me. To put this tiny little seed into soil and watch it grow into food is a living miracle. We have been harvesting some yummy, beautiful things. Kale, spinach, broccoli, radishes, beets you name it. I have learned a lot. I will always have a garden. Always.

Picking wildflowers. Medicinal ones, trying to remember all the names and uses as i go. Borage, jewell weed, Queen Anne's lace, Yarro. I am constantly amazed at how it is so easy to pass something beautiful up, like a flower, but then when properly presented to the world ( or even noticed at all) it comes alive and becomes noticed and breathtaking. The flowers teach me that after they are pruned and in a vase sitting in my room...I will vow to you fare flower to always stop and smell your petals.;) ha. Or pick you..

I have been praying for many things the past few months. Once i realized that me not being content EVER and my constant spiritual groaning is worsened when i do not have three specific things.

Purpose..community..simplicity..

It took me some time to flesh out what my soul was needing, but i can stand solid when i say that these things are so necessary to the human spirit.

So realizing these specific things, I started asking the father for them. I drastically battle with wanderlust and wanting a cozy place to settle with people i love. I wanted to farm organically and for several reasons i chose to look in Asheville NC as a place to do so. I am farming at Gladheart Farm. Part of the 12 tribes community. When i arrived, i had no idea what was in store. People dressed so different..lived in this very disciplined schedule. etc..but once the shock of it wore off I saw everything I had been asking the father for. " Here is my people, they are actually living it out!", I thought. Their love for one another and the unity that dwells here still astounds me. The life they lead is a beautiful one, sharing their hearts with one another, living simply and they actually know how to love. I was almost positive i would become a part of this life.

The second month came and whole new wave of doubt came across me. Maybe i am being influenced too much by these people. How do i know this is right? Is the gracious Jesus Christ i have been pouring my heart out too the same Yashua that they claim to serve? Is the very influential example of giving up everything for Yashua really mean your family, dreams, abundant life and freedom too? I wonder what Annie Dillard would say...

A life of Joy, freedom, beauty cannot be truly felt and found here stuck in a bubble. Not for me at least. It is in new experiences and new faces. It is in the simple things that just amaze me.

I feel so stifled here. I feel like if my God has put in my heart to be in this life he will call me back to it somehow. I do know that he led me to this community for a reason, to teach me some crucial things that i did not know about myself.

I have been through spiritual turmoil, on my face demanding answers from the father. I feel like he is ushering me the way i should go. I will feel it when i am there. I have put my family in a state of constant worry,( understandable i guess) even thought they never respect what i do or say and just claim me nuts.

This place is good. These people are good. Heart will be healed here but I cannot say that this is it for me right now. Maybe not ever.

I learned how to truly purge my heart, i have seen inequities in me i didnt even know were there. I pray i take all of the beautiful things i have learned and apply them to my life on the outside. It may be called a cult but It's one i respect greatly. I will always love these people.

I very torn megan.

Greenhouse Goats.

Words are gonna fall short when i try to explain my experience thus far. I am on an organic farm/ community in NC. Culture shock just a few hours from home. There are blonde haired blue eyed children with ponytails running around everywhere. Goats. ..and the devotion these people have for each other and the father really astounds me. They live so simply and with such purpose.

I work in the greenhouse working with these tiny plants. It would be so easy so easy to rid them off as meaningless and small, but with care and a watchful eye these things grow into sustenance. I watch them grow from one day to the next and my excitement grows with them. "These will be big enough for the ground soon, and then big enough for someone to live on" It is crazy actually. For me to ever say that My God is not communicating with me is complete bullshite.

I got into a rhythm yesterday of picking Kale. Working with my hands in the dirt feels right.

Gatherings twice a day are frustratingly beautiful and necessary.

I refuse to leave this place so soon. I want to make roots here. Tune into the people and be known. I have no idea what will come out of my mouth when trying to explain this place to others outside of this place. The Acts 2 church cannot be wrong.

Meggy

Life Has No Lines.

The uncertainty of life seems to hit people when they hit their early twenties. When education(well formal kind ) stops being a factor and you suddenly get to decide which path to take. There are so many options, so many things on my bucket-list that i feel my wanderlusting soul growing tired.

It would be so much easier if God would just come down audibly and tell this granola girl where to go. Which road will make me the happiest, which road will be most influential on people and the world?One small decision can alter your life drastically. This is scary. It is scary to know that if i strike up a conversation with a guy at the gas station it could have the potential to totally change my life. First its "hi how are you"? "Killer boots man", then next thing you know i have the mob shooting in my living room. Just an example.

What i am saying is, i wish life had lines. Then again, i love that it doesn't. See, even me saying that is no line.

I realize that i am very bad at writing a blog consistently. Life is strange currently. I have been in TN far longer then i expected but good things have happened. Life is beautiful after all if you choose to see it that way...

I am a caregiver for this 82 yr old man. He is Mr. Scrooge. I am serious. He thinks buying junk at goodwill will make his life more complete. He likes hookers and has a drawer full of women's underwear. I deal with this everyday. I love him though. He teaches me patience. My days are filled with arguing about ridiculous things with a toothless man who refuses to get dentures...

My folks are selling the house. I have moved out into my aunts attic for the time being. Interesting and very comfortable set up. I like it. I like her. My Boona.

The jeep is paid off! That is a great thing. Too bad i freaked out and deferred all my student loans for a year. HI, I'm megan the biggest procrastinator ever. I just need to venture or i will die. I really think i will.

Josh Ritter has been my sanity these past weeks. I drive to and fro and listen to his stories in music form. My heart literally flutters.

My nephew Mason is a beautiful soul. What a precious little babe. He brings so much joy to everyone's life.

I have been consuming Annie Dillard books for weeks. I think this woman's soul is beyond beautiful. I am learning so much from her words. I am learning to see life in the smallest yet biggest ways. She is teaching me goodness. The woman finds joy in everyday she is given by searching for beauty in all things. She slaps a slide of creek water onto her microscope and stares spring in the face...she makes me want to move to Virginia..to Tinker Creek..

Listen to this woman...

"If you wish to tell me that the city offers galleries, I'll pour you a drink and enjoy your company while it lasts; but i'll bear with me t my grave those moments at the Tate where i stood planted, openmouthed, Born, before that one particular canvas, that river, up to my neck, gasping, lost, receding, into watercolor depth and depth to the vanishing point, buoyant, awed, and had to be literally hauled away. These are our few live seasons. Let us live them as purely a we can, in the present."

"The present is a freely given canvas. That it is constantly being ripped apart and washed downstream goes without saying; it is a canvas, nevertheless."

"Our whole life is a stroll--or a forced march--through a gallery hung in trompes-l'espirit. "

"Once i visited a great university and wandered, a stranger, into the subterranean halls of it's famous biology department. I saw a sign on a door; Ichthyology department. The door was open a crack. and as i walked past i glanced in. I saw just a flash. There were two white-coated men seated opposite each other on high lab stools at a hard surfaced table. They bent over identical white enamel trays. On one side, one man, with a lancet, was just cutting into an enormous preserved fish he'd taken from a jar. On the other side, the other man, with a silver spoon, was eating a grapefruit. I laughed all the way back to Virginia."

She knows the present. I like her.

I am leaving in about a month. I think I am going to North Carolina to work and live on an organic farm for a few months. I could end up changing my mind. I could find myself wandering back up to Alaska or Maybe Montana. I really think the farm life is what i need. The community, the sun, the vegetables, the hard work in the dirt. I am exited to meet and know different people. I hope i become part of the family to the point where i cook in their kitchen...

One Month. So i have to soak this life in. I want to breathe deep. Be patient and kind in my words and most of all be present. .. Love on my momma and smell my homewashed sheets..

kill your television.

Sincerely Meggy

Back on Country Roads Again...

Leaving Alaska was so damn hard. I cried on the train to anchorage. It all started with the package my roommate gave me to open once i was rolling. My half of the map to the magic bus we never got to go to. I'll be back. I will see them again. For now I am back in TN. I feel strange. It has just been a little over a week and i already feel like i have been here for months. I miss my people in alaska sooooo much. I miss the tundra. the bus rides. the beards. the groovy vibe of it all.

This is such a weird time in my life. My schooling is over( good thing). I care nothing of being successful(career wise) unless its be accident. I find myself wanting to get rid of everything i do not regularly use(which is a lot) but then realize that i would want this stuff in my own cute little cob house, oh wait i do not have a cute cob house. I will just store it at my parents house for years and years until i settle down in one..will i settle down in one? will i settle down at all? Will i be happy doing that?! its such a permanent and elderly thing to do...then i Panic...i am such a spaz...

I am trying so hard to keep my self occupied being back here. Bike rides. Making and devouring hummus. Picking flowers. Sewing. Cooking. My aunt Boona. Rearranging. JAKOB DYLAN's raspy voice. Harmonica. Guitar. Books. Downtown. Zumba. Wearing shorts and going barefoot. and simplifying my life by getting rid of sooo many things i do not use .....These things make it easier. I AM using this time for spiritual rest and thoughts, which is much needed.

I find it frustrating that one can never soak up the moment in which they are in. They can say, " wow, this is great! I am gonna breath deep, take it in, oh wait I can't, I have to refill my lungs again, and that totally interrupts my process!" I guess this goes along with " you never knew what you had until it was gone"except with this one you actually realize that you cannot seize the moment while you are in it. It is the most frustratingly beautiful feeling. I know that once my time here is gone, there will be things i will miss. That being said, the struggle to soak up each moment, by living in the present, is still so very hard at times.

I am gonna try with every fiber of my being to be truly present in each moment, to break through the boundaries we humans have created, to do something crazy each and every day.

I will talk to that stranger.

I will sing that song.

I will notice that petal.

I will give that away because i truly do not need it.

He is alive in this day. In this moment. I wasn't created for this world, but another....

-Meg