Percolation
We walk through the woods, GPS mapping our way so we can find this spot again, the lone tree in this part of the forest that has a branch bent enough to do suspension off of. A forest of birch, a forest of pine. A forest in the middle of the island.Peaks Island, Maine is a beautiful place. We board the ferry at dock 5, laughing tourists, happy dogs, children taking it all in. It is dramatically different than the first time I came here, snow and ice and candle wax melting onto envelopes. Summer and chickens sitting on the porch, and the temperature warm enough to sit at night looking out over those wave as I talk on the phone to whispers and processing and laughter and hope four thousand miles away.At 1am the woman who bakes down at the waterfront café shows up. She likes here cinnamon rolls the best right now. When you open the doors at 5:30am, the work starts early. Time tables shift around. Right now I am going to sleep at 4am on the east coast, my body linked up with other spaces and places.I have come to the island to write, to talk, to spend time with friends, to be. To be. Sometimes I forget how important being is, stepping away from the scripts and programs and letting life percolate through the layers, the rock bed, the sediment. I filter out, drip at a time, into the aquifer below. I find my thoughts distilled and purified, flavored by the experiences I have come through.Places of possibility are washing up on the shore. Digital media plays out the next steps, meetups and greetups and rituals unfolding. I am dreaming again of possibilities. But I am giving them time to percolate. I deserve to percolate.Saying that I deserve is so hard to do. That I have needs. That I need. Because if a need is not met, what is the next step? Cords unbraid and pull apart. If your needs are not met, what is your next step?Sitting in a breakfast nook, I look out to the green. A labyrinthine house of twists and turns, enough space to house an army of cousins, with boxes of Ritz crackers left behind from the invading force that left last week. I sit with them, sit with it all, I sit. I wash dishes, sitting with it all. I percolate.We walk down to the grocery store, an experiment in Soviet rationing. The island gets food shipments only once or twice a week, and Monday the shelves are running low. The tomatoes are sad, but a bevy of summer squash sits there unmolested, an inspiration for our meal. Looking at the shelves this place seems like a story of booze, beverages, power bars, and artisanal cuisine. Stocked for the tourists, my friend and I parse out what we want.Wandering the lines of grocery stores tells us of what an area values, what it considers normal, what is consumed. Thinking back on London, I have cans of treacle and a dearth of black or refried beans. I remember when, in the late fall of 1999, the first canned refried beans, half cans, showed up in the local store. I bought 6 of them, and cherished their existence. A piece of home, as if somehow my cultural experience was accepted finally here. Like the apartment in Crown Heights finally getting frozen vegetarian proteins, my existence approved.I acknowledge that I want my existence approved. Words are spoken and books ring out that self-value is key. That we each should matter, whether others say so or not. That we are valid. But my reality is that I find value in being valued by those I care about. That I can look into the mirror of their eyes and know that I am okay. That I matter.The trick is figuring out who matters. I begin to tease out boundaries, one somatic response awareness at a time. That when my shoulders go up and my chest heaves, that it means I don’t want to be here. That when my lower lip goes numb and I can’t feel my legs at all that I have emotionally checked out. That I don’t have to ignore those signs every time, to help everyone, to please everyone, to fear rejection.Boundaries matter because they keep us functioning. The skin is our boundary between our meat-self and the world outside us. It holds in our muscle, fat, veins and bones, keeping out dust and disease. Our skin keeps us together, keeps us apart, provides opportunity for the tension and space between.Disease. Dis-ease. I percolate.If we have no boundaries, we do not know where we begin and where another ends. Their thoughts become our thoughts, their joys our joys, their pain our pain. This is a blessing, this is a curse.When we have thick and distant boundaries, we become a country with high walls and no gate. We become an island with no tourists, no hikers finding their way through the woods looking for the one bent tree.But the word boundaries infers a wall, a place that “thou shall not pass.” Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Monopoly skewed as a farce by my time living in NYC.Merging two countries hurts if there is a civil war, or a dissolvent of political ties. Once country becomes two once more, cans of corn put into storage units and a deep breath echoes across the land. Treaties sent out, messages posted at the Trivia, the place where three roads come together. Roads labeled ours, yours, mine. We walk up to ours, and with a heavy load, one turns right, one turns left. A single road on the way to Delphi, on the way from Delphi.Greenery and dishes being washed. Food marinating for tonight’s barbeque. Three authors and a computer programmer, two maine coon cats, two large dogs, three chickens, an outdoor cat and an obscene amount of yogurt. Percolation through the sediment, and dreams slowly floating to the surface.