Carolee Bennett –> poet. artist. crankypants.
i’m pretty much over the i’m-going-through-a-divorce storyline entirely. i’m ready to shed it. to skinny dip my way through my life. to dive into my relationship not as antidote but as its own Very Good Love. to explore motherhood and citizenship without schlepping around my baggage and lamenting its weight. to be an artist not as survivor of anything but as one with tremendous fire and spirit apart from battle.
photos of the loch ness monster, revisited go back and back to a single grainy image: a man’s outline in
i don’t want you to assume that kristin’s writing sugar-coated or romanticized the farm or the relationship. in fact, if i had to guess, the book’s scales weigh difficulty and sacrifice/death (for both the farm and the relationship) heavier than its victories. what it seems to come down to is what’s inside you begging to be expressed by love — whether it’s love of farming or love for another person. if there’s no other way you can find that bit of yourself, you commit to it. and probably a certain amount of fear about that is good.
it was terribly confusing all those years. it was training for not trusting words: i love you. and it was training in paying close attention to my gut. it took me a long time to recognize that it was right about my marriage. now, i don’t waste much time questioning it.
despite a windy couple weeks, we can feel the sun now. and i couldn’t be happier about that.
we grow tired of having nothing to tend. we dream of flower beds and vegetable gardens. we wait for the first signals that it’s ok to care as deeply as we do.
how very different it is to be making something new instead of dismantling everything i’ve ever known. that’s going to be an adventure, for sure. it used to terrify me to think of what it takes to grow and change because i’ve had some pretty awful things interject themselves in my life. but when you think about friends and blessings and desire and warmth, you can see how these things change you, as well.