The ice is cracking outside and the birds have been coming back in giant Vs across the sky. The open expanses that used to be fields have temporarily become lakes of melted snow and the birds alight there, right in the middle, by the stranded trees and old cornstalks, to wash themselves and play in all the reflected light. I ate lunch outside for the first time since the eery global-warming afternoon in January when New York City was 70 degrees and the cherry blossom trees had started to bud. I wonder now what became of all those flowers, what will become of all those trees, if New York City will be underwater in 20 years and our metropolises will have to move further from the coast. Will we be rowing down Broadway and making fires on the rooftops, or will we be growing bananas in Greenland, who knows...

Yesterday I went to help with the maple sugar harvest for the first time. My friends had put taps in all the maple trees and run hoses between them that emptied into buckets all over the woods. We ran up and down the hillsides of melty snow emptying sap out of buckets and gathering downed wood for the fire that will boil all that sap into syrup we'll eat for the rest of the year. It was one of those stubborn afternoons when you don't put on a hat and gloves because it's just warm enough that you could pretend it's nearly spring, and so your skin turns pink and you run up and down the hillsides hauling heavy things to keep your temperature up and remembering that you have muscles and your body is capable of working outdoors, and it feels GOOD to work hard and be alive.

The sunset afterwards felt like a growing-season sunset, pink glowy sky, mountains flattened into blue silhouettes, made me remember what the summer looks like here, and that it exists. After a bunch of turbulent days and distorted states of mind I felt alive and awake again as if for the first time, as if it was the first sunset I'd ever seen, the first Spring I'd ever felt return. Drove home in a friend's car talking, realizing how much energy I've put into my relationships here, how lucky I am to know and love the people I do.

Lately things have been turning in a lot of my friendships towards much deeper connections --  our conversations are going further, our hearts are more open,  we are admitting more of our uncertainties and conflicts and actually working through them,   admitting that we scare each other sometimes and that we need each other like plants need sun and that all the cultivation is worth the effort. It is beautiful. There are people in my life now who I've been close to for 5 or 10 years and this is new to me, having some roots, having relationships strong enough that everything can change and we adapt, rather than disconnect. Getting proof that crises do pass, that everything shifts and transforms, that people are capable of far more than I realized. For the first time in my life I have friends who are connected to each other, friends with whom I have interdependent histories, friends with whom my roots are all tangled up underground. We seem to be bridge builders, this tribe, people who are part of many worlds and help them know each other, people who are trying to find some kind of balance that shouldn't be radical at all and yet runs in total opposition to the momentum of our culture -- a balance of being in touch with the earth and seasons while also being connected to new technologies and the creation of media -- a balance of spiritual practice and political activism -- city and country -- brain, body, and soul -- personal healing and community growth -- roots and wings -- travel and home -- books and music and art and hammers and fires and hoes -- hard work and genuine rest -- mad chaos and total quiet -- connection to the primordial and ancient, connection to the new and evolving -- opening up to total strangers and generations of family -- expressing all kinds of genders, all kinds of sex, all kinds of relationships -- so many projects and yet the time to love, cook, play, adventure, sleep...

we are trying to do so much, to balance so much, but is there anything else to do? turn on the TV and check out? That just doesn't work...

and so here we are. The residents of Inbetweenland. Crafting our bridges, our ladders, our flying machines. Opening our homes, our songs, our hearts, our mouths. Trying our hardest and still making messes and still we go on, and learn more, and love more, and keep trying, cause there's nothing else to do.

*******

Some things have been hard lately. I push myself into risky places and the whole system starts screaming, freaking out, splitting into different parts and anxious voices, moods surging and withdrawing like the ocean in a series of storms, life feeling possible and impossible on the turn of a dime. If only dangerous gifts came with better warning labels.

But that's why we're here, right? Trial and error, creating the instructions we go, writing down the hints after we make another masterpiece, make another mess,  get more information about what does and doesn't work. Examining our personal and cultural pieces and figuring out how they might fit into something we couldn't have dreamed up if we had ever actually managed to "figure everything out.

Some things have been so beautiful lately. One of the best things in my life: being available when people need help. Having an available ear to listen, a heart to hear. Extending empathy, resources, food, hugs, wisdom, foolishness, faith. A lot of people have been calling on me lately and mostly, mostly I've been able to respond. An old friend of an old friend got in touch needing help, understanding, friendship,  new ideas, and we've spent some time getting to know each other, walking around under frozen skies, talking about all our craziness and our attempts to stay sober and move into the lives we actually want to live, and I got the most amazing message of thanks from her today and a little of what she said was:

"Thank you again for being so kind.  It is obvious that I know how hard/intense it is to live in this world. Reaching out to a perfect stranger, well it's not me. Although I have done it with you.  I am beyond grateful.  You are a brave woman. It's people like you, that keep me optimistic in thinking there is more good in this world than evil."

That's what keeps me alive. Why else are we here, except to share this crazy miracle and ease each others' suffering?