metamorphose

Nearly 40 years ago, we had this idea that we'd find some land and try to have no debt and build a house and grow our own food. I hoped to have a horse. 

Well, we did. Our original idea was that we'd build a log house, so the house we designed has sixteen corners because we didn't have access to long logs. Shit, we even cut the cedar logs and hauled them here. They've been used for a lot of things, but not a house. We also thought we'd have a 45-degree roof -- until we built an outbuilding with one. 

Instead, the house is board-and-batten and WELL insulated. The roof is 30 degrees. Absolutely no regrets, even about the 16 corners.

We had SO many ideas. All the horse-drawn equipment was just one of many that never came to fruition. Yeah, I'm sorry, in a way, but we really just didn't know how impractical that was. It really needed more horsepower, a LOT more mechanical knowledge, and frankly, more land.

So 30 years of accumulated metal trash left the place recently: old fencing, old roofing, brake parts, old stoves, old appliances, and all but the plows and the spike harrow of the horse-drawn equipment. Not quite a Swedish death cleanse, but a start. And what it has made me think of is dreams/ideas and work: neither exists without the other. And I've been thinking about how dreams metamorphose, but the work is constant.

What I'm trying to say is -- things often turn out differently than you thought they would (like, most of the time), and sometimes they downright fail, and that's ok. When one isn't risking much, the smallest stubbed toe feels like a fracture, but if you are doing a bunch of stuff, you see that some things worked even if everything didn't. It's the eggs in one basket thing.

Corollary: if you are doing the work for the dream(s), there will be no metamorphosis.

Which reminds me of what I always say about gardens: Every year, some things fail, and some things don't, and something that you didn't expect is spectacular.