Milo the cat supervised my work in the blackberries. He’s standing in front of the vine pile. Everyday is a perfect day for Milo, he says.
What is a perfect day?
Is there such a thing?
Today, I played in the blackberry bushes for a “Blackberry Project” video. (I talk more about the Blackberry Project here, if you are interested in learning more https://wp.me/p7fM0r-jH. ) I set my timer for 20 minutes and shot some footage of a massive thicket that was growing up between two ugly trees. When I watch the video, I think that it’s not “very good.” But who am I to say? Of course, there are some obvious standards of “good” for video. I most likely didn’t excel at any of those. But my job right now is to keep showing up. To leave a little bit of space for my sweet self where I can breathe without judgment, and stop worrying for thirty seconds about quality and simply be faithful to the process. I’m committed to tackling the blackberries, one invasive vine at a time, and I want to share the journey with you. There’s no way to do that without sometimes including things that are less than amazing, not perfect or polished, but just the best that I can do with the time that I have been given.
Because a session in the blackberries makes me happy. It is a crazy thing, but it makes me strangely exuberant to chop a twenty foot invasive vine off at the roots and to pull it up to the road, and to put it in a pile with the other vines, and to see that suddenly there is space where there wasn’t space before.
Blackberry pulling is exhausting, but it is also supremely satisfying.
Time spent in the berries could be part of a perfect day. If there is such a thing. Continue Reading…
