So...another year, give or take.  The figs are getting ripe, the grapevines are crawling toward the top of the pergola, the boys are getting bigger and the 12x12 is still 12x12.  This morning I turned the compost and shoveled forkfuls of it around the tomato and broccoli plants. I bribed my offspring with quarters to gather lemon balm and mint leaves for tea.  I plucked nettles for my morning eggs and then stood with my chin in my hand and looked, really looked, at this space that has been my home for so long.  Had I known I would be here for two years, wouldn't I have put in fruit trees?  A pond?  Built an outdoor room?  Sewn curtains? Covered the cinderblock walls with murals?

If I had known I would be here for so long, wouldn't I have made a greater effort to build community?  To volunteer, start a nonprofit, involve my children in the workings of this ecosystem?  To create a band, a babysitting co-op, a couple of beehives? To learn to sail or surf? To run for city council? What on earth have I been DOING?

I've been twiddling my metaphorical thumbs, waiting for the life I expected, somehow feeling OWED, subconsciously assuming it will find me.  HA!  Wanting so many things that I am afraid to select one, finding that I am, in effect, choosing to have nothing.

I have been feeling a ferocious need to roar into focus, gather up the beads and string them, LIVE.  If here is where it is, so be it.  Leave the wasted time where it lies and move forward.

Did you know that nettles heal their own sting?  It's true: squeeze the juice of a nettle over a nettle rash and it will disappear.  The problem is the solution.  So if my problem is a lack of focus, wanting too much, then I shall give myself EVERYTHING.  I shall strike out in every direction that gives me pleasure: painting, surfing, hiking, sewing, gardening, traveling, making love outdoors, having dinner parties, doing yoga, writing, creating necessary changes, learning.  I am going to have it all.  I am going to make a sincere effort to have it all.  Because fearing that I will somehow fail in having it all has held me captive long enough.

And I owe this world my full, glorious, LIVED life.

My last post, written nearly a year ago, featured this song.  I wrote it in a depressed daze, feeling I'd left myself behind, praying that I would stop wanting so much.  I remember thinking that if I could just forget how much I'd wanted, dull down my frantic desires, I would be at peace.

I know better now.  Our appetites are beautiful.  Our gargantuan, articulated, immense WANTING is the fuel that drives us to create, to innovate, to heal.  When we stop dulling our desires with pastimes and rubbish and self-recrimination and invented drama, maybe we will start feeding ourselves---and by extension, our world---with the deeply nourishing things we truly want.