A Great Many Things

       You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body  love what it loves. Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.  Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese - harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things.  ((Wild Geese))  Mary Oliver I’ll begin with a full disclosure because I feel like I need to get this out there: I’ve been working on this particular entry since June. It’s almost January of the. next. year. This entry has gone through several it...

  Last summer, I went to visit my sister, a successful Triad realtor. Nothing unusual there. Before we could commence our scheduled brunch, however, she had to meet a roofer for an inspection on a property she had under contract.  “Just come with me. You’ll love the house. It’s totally you. It’s an old bungalow in a historic neighborhood.” Dear Reader, she knows me. How could I resist an old house? (Spoiler: I can’t.) As we drove, she told me more about it. It was an estate. The owner had passed away the previous year, and her children were selling her home. It had been unoccupied for eight months.  When we pulled up in front of it, I loved it immediately. A procession of chipped concrete stairs led to a wide porch, complete with swing, chairs, and once verdant, but long-dead plants. As we walked in, I loved it more. All of her things were still in the house, a perfectly preserved picture of a life once lived.  “Can I look around while you talk to the roofer?” “Sure....