There is something otherworldly about my new home. It’s rich and lush landscape, wild and unruly is almost as if time hasn’t changed a whole lot about life here. I don’t miss my hive in New England very much, not the stress or the political ideology that rejects non-conformism.

I’ve had trouble conforming to expectations since I was 5 years old. Largely because I didn’t understand what was happening to me, often. School seemed like punishment, betrayal, a sort of rooting out of non-conformists. Like how horse trainers “break” horses. Perhaps then education was intended to create equality- by subjecting all children to “equal share” of exposure to new ideas and useful knowledge. (In theory.)

I believe school was developed by educators who had an idea about how human beings ought to live, and what was good for them. Perhaps the dark night of my soul, the consciousness of otherworldly things that I discussed in yesterday’s post obscured my understanding of the value of education then. Nothing like light could penetrate and waken me from my wrestling, half-consciousness state.

Spring is almost like heaven has gently fallen on the land. Pastel colors dot the landscape. Redbud trees seems quite at home here and proliferate as birch trees do in New England- volunteering on roadsides and any unkempt place where they may find welcome. There’s cherry and apple trees shimmering all over the city. My city is an official “Tree City.”

Beauty has a way of awakening the soul. It’s the only thing that makes life worth living, I believe.

If you have not taken upon yourself to live deliberately, this is no judgment. I invite you to experience my “Consciousness Collision” that I wrote about last time. It’s a sort of reckoning of the soul, and a sweet surprise- when I learned that the dark night of my soul was not going to last forever.