Today I was speaking with my favourite human about doing physical stuff, country stuff: cutting wood, digging trenches, wrangling goats.
He said, "Yeah, you're doing this kind of work all the time, and it's still work, it's still physical labour, but it's just what you do."
And I said, "Well, yeah, it's like … physical work. But it just becomes … you know, that's life."
That's life.
I did not mean "that's life" in the sense that the cliche would communicate. I wasn't saying, "yeah but man, you just gotta suck that shit up." Or, "you have to take the bad with the good." Or even, "yes, but don't you see, this is all part of the rich tapestry of life." (Of course I didn't mean that—what am I? Some kind of Zen master of block splitting?)
What I meant was, that is life. That is where the life is: in morning air so cold it burns your nostrils. In rasping-throat breaths as you stack wood. In seeing next year's buds at pruning and knowing that Spring is hurtling toward you even now, with the first frost. In the crystalline nights, with the terrible stars screaming dead light into the precarious, overwhelming dark, each one barely a pinprick, but so much bigger than you.
That is life.
Fuck you, cliches.
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