This is a big day for my former girlfriend. She gave notice at her day job, and in a couple of weeks, will become a full-time fiber artist. She will work on her art in her  Studio Barn, set up the Pig Barn at Bedlam Farm Gallery, which she will run, and work on other activities with other artists, including the new Gallery 99 in Glens Falls, N.Y. This is the dream of a lifetime for her, and I appreciate what it took for her to come this long and painful and fruitful way. She is very brave, very strong, very creative and very good, and so she will do very well. She already has. I just made reservations at a good restaurant so we can celebrate tonight. A surprise. Sssssh.

It is gratifying beyond words to see how this profoundly loving human being worked so hard, day and night, to get to where she is. I suppose that in all the world, only the two of us will really know what went into our amazing trip together, and her own struggle to live her life. We joke that we are warriors against fear. We chose life together. At the end of our wedding ceremony, I said that I was a story teller and Maria was my happy ending. This is a great day for her.

Love you, girl. Lips to the world. And just live.

“Independence Day”

“Between painting a roof yesterday and the hay

harvest tomorrow, a holiday in the woods

under the grooved trunks and branches, the roof

of leaves lighted and shadowed by the sky.

As American from England, the woods stands free

from politics and anthems. So in the woods I stand

free, knowing my land. My country, tis of the

drying pools along Camp Branch I sing,

where the water striders walk like Christ,

all sons of God, and of the woods grown old

on the stony hill where the trush’s song rises

in the light like a curling vine and he bobwhite’s

whistle opens in the air, broad and pointed like a leaf.”

– Wendell Berry