Clueless, like the squirrels

My partner and I have developed a new daily regimen in response to the needs of early Autumn. Just after midday, when the sun starts to heat the damp forest, we grab our things and drive to the city. Our home in the woods lacks the impetus to feel animated and productive. In town, we stroll from cafe to cafe, discovering new favourite places to work. We keep running into friends who seem puzzled by our sudden urban bent. ‘It feels good to be surrounded by people and things people make,’ my love explains while I enjoy the sound of heels clicking over the pavement.

I have learned my needs are never the same, and living truthfully means running back and forth on what feels like a giant seesaw, trying to find my footing but never quite getting there. The point may not be balance but a careful attunement and response to the moment’s needs. There is nothing I can hold onto forever. Things have already changed when I know what ‘works’ for me. That is why most well-intended advice from others who have figured out how to live is quite pointless when taken ad verbum (yes, I can see the irony here).

But it is never pointless

A manual to life is a working document and is best treated as such. Whatever works changes with time, and if you subscribe to my ideas, with the passing of the seasons, too. Life is not a solvable puzzle but rather a mysterious work of art unwilling to give up its absolute prize. As we try to hone in on it, meaning breaks into beautiful but meaningless swaths of texture and colour. By calmly accepting the dissolution of meaning, there is an opportunity for greater understanding, a humbling and freeing sense of what I cannot describe other than having no fucking clue and being perfectly fine with that.

I believe pacing back and forth on the seesaw is never pointless. We keep trying to make sense of the mystery because we need things to hold onto temporarily. Life is a blank canvas where we learn how to paint through experimentation.

Working on my manual means writing about what I observe and carefully examining the parts of the mystery that speak to me clearly. The squirrels are already busying themselves with the first acorns lining the sandy road to our home. When you want to follow the early signs of Autumn, you need to start procuring your own acorns. It is time to bring everything home.