Juniper

I am feeling quietly frayed. It's an odd feeling really and I don't think I've come across it before. Not necessary a bad thing...just strange. There are many things to love about chaos. Rubble in general can be quite entertaining. But, I'm not sure that I haven't fallen through some maturity vortex and landed in a place where the undone feels negotiable. The jittery incomplete feels all sewn up. The unchartered voyage seems navigated by some unseen force. And while all that sounds quite fine...underneath I feel a current of uncertainty. Running through me like a calm tsunami, or a silent volcanoe. I feel like someone hit the mute button inside of me, and while I was sick and tired of the chatter...it might have been what kept me on track. Anyway, it's all a bit disjointed.

The reality could be that I have to "perform" this weekend in Chantilly for a wine festival. And that always gets me into a new persona. I have to lose myself and become the fine actor. So, I could be in that transition.

The Juniper was one of Georgia O'Keefe's favorite trees. Close up it looks like a mangled explosion of movement. The growth seems tortured, the limbs seem cruelly twisted. The greenery is so short and somewhat prickly that I felt like it fought the whole way out of that branch...piercing and slashing to get through to the sky. What is beautiful to me is that everything about it seems to tell a story. Every turn and twist seems to relay some information about the earth it knows, about the climate it struggles to grow in. This tree was old, one of the oldest in the area where we found it near Tularosa. But, even the babys have this weathered air about them. Like they know life and hardship, and yet they choose to dig their roots into the red brown earth and make it home. I guess there are times when I am envious of them and what they know about themselves and their environment.

I think I loved New Mexico. I really think I do.