Field of dandelions

"Our lives seem to live us, to possess their own bizarre momentum, to carry us away; in the end we feel we have no choice or control over them." Sogyal Rinpoche

still January 6, 2009

The last few days it’s been as though I was astrally transported back in time — to high school, particularly, right around 11th grade when I participated in another social experimemt that changed my life — The Mountain School — in 1984 when the program was brand-new. Memories and the feelings that go with them very much with me.

The realness of that experiment is something of what I've been feeling the last few days. The challenges of white-water kayaking in Northern Massachussetts the spring following, the concreteness of a newfound passion in farming, the years-long search for community without knowing exactly what I was trying to rebuild from my Mountain School experience.

The image I had a few years ago, when contemplating homeschooling: That to make that leap would be an abandonment of sorts, but not necessarily a bad one: the image of being left behind by a school bus on a sunny morning in a field of spring dandelions, and after the initial panic of being left behind, the beautiful thereness of the moment, of petals, yellow flower heads, seeds cascading on wind, the cross-disciplinary lessons of the moment that are absolutely homeschooling.

Reading Thoreau’s "Economy" again, the first time since the Mountain School, and though it’s necessary to work around some of his arrogance, there are jewels — very quotable stuff. Right now I’m on a paragraph where he’s assessing what are the basic, most very basic needs of people — and I have been thinking along these very lines for a while—wanting to shift my relationship with stuff to a more needs-based relationship (I truly need it, therefore I’ll seek and let it in) and away from decision-based material acquisition (I’m in Target, I see stuff and start to want it, I have to decide whether or not to get it, or when I’m really tempted, decide not to get it).