Honest People

Simplify. This advice is only helpful and true when it comes from within. What are we doing to each other? I want to simplify as I have in the past with less plans, less complications, and more freedom and harmony, but for someone to force simplification on another? For someone to take control, much like with Covid, and take away jobs, take away life force----no, that's not simple. That's not freedom or harmony. It's the opposite. Money is important. Recognition of work is important too. But I'm trying not to think about work right now. I'm trying to feel the universe again and enjoy my day off.

What was my favorite part of the week? This is an incredibly important question. This question raises a very humble and real truth. My immediate knowing of my favorite part was the silence in the woods with my windows down in my car as I waited for the Wilmington Transfer Station to open Tuesday afternoon. I was there because when I went on Friday with a couple bags of trash, all I had was a credit and debit card. The man who worked there was kind----a grounded, earthly, no-needs-or-wants-from-me kind of kindness. Real human-to-human----the kind of energy that is rare, and I wish existed everywhere. He told me I could come back with cash another day, but not to worry about it. There were two ways I could have interpreted these words. An honest person would not even need words. An honest person would simply come back with cash. A dishonest person, however, or perhaps a desperate, very-in-need-and-abused-by-the-system person could have left without paying and never come back. But I saw the movie Into The Wild. I also very much lived it. I know firsthand that no matter what, I would and always will be an honest person. And so, I told him I'd be back Tuesday with cash, and Tuesday afternoon, as soon as the transfer station opened, there I was with cash.

I want to honor this favorite moment by returning to it and exploring why it was so beautiful. First of all, it got me to slow down. By approaching the gate ten minutes early and shutting off my car, I got to soak in the soothing silence of the stillness between the trees. What a miracle. What a cleanse and full-body energy release. To have no thoughts, nothing to do, and no sound or input around is to feel completely at peace. My ear canals expanded into a relaxed, fuzzy, and warm nothingness-compassion. There is nothing wrong with nothingness. This I have discovered. When nothingness is given through grace, rather than forced through control, it is a gift, and it is well-received.

After a while, the truck came, and sure enough, it was the same down-to-earth, humble and kind man. I turned back toward the woods as he opened the gate to give him some room----it's always nice to do things without people watching----and then I followed the car in front of me as we went in.

What is it about dumps? It sounds funny when I use that word, but "transfer station" doesn't sound right either. These places have another-world energy. An expanse of meadowy space that reminds me of a book I read as a child. I don't remember the name of the book, but I read it a bunch of times out of the school library. It was about a group of kids who found a hill away from society with small shrubs and dirt, and on that hill, they played make-believe and made their own world. I remember melting into that book and becoming a part of the pictures. It wasn't the group of friends that captivated me----it was that hill. I wanted to live in that world. I wanted to run around in that deserty landscape and be whoever I wanted----make a tiny little society and world all my own.

The transfer station reminded me of that book and that feeling. I've had many magical moments all to myself in dump yards. I wondered----no, I didn't need to wonder. It was obvious to me that the humble man who worked there was in touch with a similar memory and feeling. He loves his job. He loves where he works. I gave him the cash after the woman in front of me was done, and it felt good for far more reasons than I originally thought it would. He didn't rely on me to come back, but he was happy I did. He went to get the change, but I felt better not taking it. He loves his job. He loves it so much, he operates from somewhere not founded in money but somewhere so much more genuine, innocent, and true. Sometimes I hate society because the majority take advantage of people like him. Or at least, that's what I've experienced.

I didn't feel hate in that moment though. That's something I'm crying through privately right now. Returning to that moment, I felt the flow of honest and humble energy, and then I took my time as I turned around and mentally slowed down time so I could take in the environment. It's possible to do both.

I thought of Idaho a little bit----about the several trips David Chester Smith and I took to the dump as we worked on his house together, but mostly, I purely felt. I felt that freedom from that childhood book with the well-illustrated pictures inside, and I felt the freedom in the moment through the meadowy expanse laid out in front of me with dips, hills, shrub-shrouded corners, and other worldly dirt mounds powerfully yielded toward the sky. And now, I feel a memory relevant in the forefront again from my journey across the country. Before I went back to get Scrat----when I was still escaping, still searching, still running, still trying to find any sort of sanity left in the human world----I walked from a motel somewhere out in the Midwest along a strip of gas stations toward a dirt mound: the highest point in the whole town. At this point, I didn't care anymore, not about society. I understood that the majority of it was a big old crapshoot, and my best bet was to be alone. So, I came to the barbed wire fence and I snuck through. I climbed up the dirt hill and I began to fall in love. I fell in love with the strange plants growing from the trash-filled earth----so wirey and wild. So beautiful and unafraid. They discovered nutrition from something more. In that moment, I began to too. I climbed to the top. It took maybe a half hour. Who knows. All I know is that once I reached the top, the entire hill was flat. I didn't expect that. It was like a stage. A trash-mound platform. A space observatory, private, off-limits, cut-off from society, and a secret just for me.

I sat up there for a while and watched the moon come up and the stars begin to sparkle through. I peered over the edge of the deepening blue glow at the town and motel so down there and far away, and then I returned to the moon. I sat with the moon for a while in my alone and bizarre alien world----no desire or reason to ground. After a while of being up there, I started to remember laws and rules and decided to sneak back down. It wouldn't be until Butte, Montana that I would turn around and get Scrat. And it wouldn't be until Wallace, Idaho that I would meet a genuine person and realize that society could still be real and okay. And it wouldn't be until now that I would discover again the importance of an honest and beautiful flow within community. The higher stuff will always be there. I will always be connected, but the quiet gems of society who make this grounded place special----the ones who understand the strange and beautiful solitary places too----they are rare and they are the ones who are truly holding it all together.

That was my favorite moment of the week. What was yours?