If you have a contrary opinion of the writing on this blog, congratulate yourself for having a mind of your own. Your second step, should you be heading anywhere, will be to take that opinion for a test run. Report back to yourself the "what" that you have gleaned, and question that too. With any luck, you will find not one thing fit for human consumption.
The appearance of chaos - disheveled shanty porch, plastic covered trailer, piles of gravel, tarped lumber, buckets of compost, all raging against the beautiful pines. Collateral damage of change. This motorhome was enough then, sufficient in shelter providing all the dry and warmth one could really need, but the overall disorderly environment holds a contrary opinion to my organized and tidy tendencies.
All stages of house construction push the boundaries of my imagined perfection. I fought those contrary opinions with twelve hour work days flanked by morning and evening hour-long cleanups. Covering and recovering the pallets. Moving and restacking lumber.
Contrary to the stacked pallets and lumber debris surrounding every empty brown patch of grass, held the promise of a clean and organized site. Being alright with the paradox of wanting organization verses having clutter; the paradox of BEING Karen verses just being.
Eventually, the gravel was spread, the motorhome sold, the pallets empties, the lumber hauled off, and the compost bucket returned to the kitchen.
Clear skies, full stomach, straight lumber, and good times - this is most every day. When I do have the audacity to get prickly-pear about life, which - I am loathe to admit - I remind myself of the final stanza in Alexander Pope's Essay on Man:
All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee;
All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see;
All Discord, Harmony, not understood;
All partial Evil, universal Good:
And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason's spite,
One truth is clear,
Whatever IS, is RIGHT.
Namaste,
Karen
