“Seek Freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek Discipline and find your Liberty.” –Frank Herbert

Greetings Dear Ones!

It has been snowing through the night—just a couple of inches. The whole world looks like someone cut into a down coat and it exploded all over the shop. This morning, there is no dawn, just a gradual whitening of the sky, like someone turning the volume up on a camera setting. The top half of the trees look like black scratches against white, halfway down becoming white scratches against the dark of the surrounding woods, like an Escher painting. The only spot of color is the blood red of the barn, but even that is muted, more like dried blood than fresh. As I make my way there, towards the steamy warmth of the sheep, I wonder where the coyote is right now. A bedraggled, mangy looking fellow has been hanging around lately. The well-upholstered Jack Russell by my ankles is ready to give him what-for. He’s barking before he even has anything to bark at.

The coyote does not seem to be doing nearly as well as his sleek neighbor, the grey fox, whom I have also seen grocery shopping around the barn. The fox looks self-assured and sassy. The coyote looks confused and juvenile—like an adolescent whose single mother got sick of working three jobs to bring home dinner just to find he hadn’t made his bed and had left his crap all over the den while she was gone. He’s obviously out in the big bad world to fend for himself now and doing a terrible job. His coat tells me he’s doing more learning than winning. He is easily scared away by his ferocious plump white canine cousin. But he’s still Alive, still pulsating with Hope and Hunger in 18 degree Farenheit temperatures, which is as much as any of us can boast these days.

I say to the annoying creature yapping ecstatically at my feet, “You! Little Mister Tough Guy, you wouldn’t last a night out here!” He pauses, mouth in a laugh, and blinks at me impudently with bright, mischievous eyes. The slight arch of his brow informs me that he’s stopped barking because he wanted to, not because I said so. He’s definitely one of those simpering yes-men relying on regular meals and his favor with the Queen to bolster his swagger. Deep down, there is no way he wants to be Wild. He likes wood stoves and down duvets way too much. Ill-mannered captivity suits him to a T and he makes the most of it, wool carpets be damned.

“Do you want to be wild?” I ask the sheep. “Are you resentful of living within the boundaries I set and living on the dole an Outside (in this case, it’s Inside) Authority grants you in your station?”

“Everyone wants to be wild,” says one. “Or so they think. We make a trade when we live in community and get some advantages and lose others. We’re very glad you are on top of this coyote situation, for example.”

“That coyote is no danger to you where you are,” I reassure them. “He might be a nuisance in the Spring, when there are lambs about, but right now, he just wants the mice and voles eating the seeds in the hay. Perhaps he wants a chicken too—but they are safe in their coop. He’ll have to snack on chipmunks and dip.”

“Well, no one serves us cookies in the wild,” says another, rooting hopefully in my torn pocket.

“Are you not afraid of cookies?” I ask.

“Who’s afraid of cookies?” they want to know.

“Lots of people,” I say. “For some, they are a gateway drug to captivity and shame.”

“That’s too bad,” they say. “Tell them we will eat their cookies.”

I sigh. I love cookies just as much as the sheep do.

“Cookies or no, sometimes I wish I was Wild,” I admit to them. “Too bad I cannot digest bark.”

“But bark is delicious,” they insist. “Especially pine bark.”

That I have moved to this homestead in Vermont, to be Free, to escape suburbia, to be a Feral Woman at Large (and growing larger, thanks to the cookies) in the wilds of the Green Mountains, only to see my days perforated by buckets slopping into my boots as I drag water from the well to my fellow captives every few hours, is the kind of Irony I delight in. Is there such a thing as Freedom without rules? Without commitment? Is there such a thing as Commitment without Freedom? What is the music that compels this dance?

I check my calendar of appointments on my phone. I have only one but it is a big fat nail, smack in the middle of the day, locking it down so that nothing on either side can wiggle. That woman, coming to my shop today at two o’clock p.m. to have the moth holes repaired in her sweater, has no idea that we are Married. Our courtship was a brief series of phone calls, one email, and a re-schedule via the website template. Hardly personal, not the least bit romantic, but a Contract of medieval gravity none-the-less. Wistfully, I gaze at the new-fallen snow, hear the call of the hills, and I want to set off into the wilderness either to be or track prey, I’m not sure which. I’m that wild…

In this moment, I think of two things--a friend’s comment “The self-employed get to work any eighty hours a week they want!”—and Birdseed.

Many years ago, when I was a young bride in a new home, I hung a bird feeder in a tree. A neighbor who worked for the local Audubon society commented “Well, that’s just fine. But now you are going to have to feed those birds.”

“Isn’t that what a birdfeeder is all about?” I asked.

“Yes, of course,” he said. “But you will create a dependency in the birds so now you cannot let that feeder go empty. Ever.”

“I won’t,” I promised faithfully. And I didn’t. I married the whole flock of sparrows on the spot and our mutual bliss lasted many years.

I think about that Loyalty, Fidelity, Service now, as I contemplate my customer base. I have lured them to the shop with a different kind of “birdseed”—the promise that I can mend their clothing, hem their trousers, and feed their hunger for disco pants remade with yoga waistbands. The only way to create Dependency is to be Dependable. Yet there is a price to pay; we capture ourselves when we seek to domesticate others by feeding their needs according to our own desires. It’s the eternal dance of the Co-dependent.

Sometimes we Creative Types feel so heavily wedded—to an overwhelming polygamy of chores, Beings, appointments, relationships, and tasks that takes us away from the part that cannot be domesticated—the part that wants to roam, explore, create, view, sniff, howl, or disappear silently into the woods. This, I am convinced, is the part that brings us our art in the first place. How do we honor that bedraggled coyote within us that is reduced to poaching on “the civilized” for survival?

In my New Year’s quest to be a better writer, I have joined a support group. Without us really stating it as such, our first discussion touched on the dance between structure and inspiration, imagination and the creative process, Ferality and Captivity. Like that African proverb that says “The threads of many spiders can take down a lion,” (FYI, I’ve probably misquoted that but you get the idea…) we are bound by many threads—many little ties, a thousand tiny vows—that keep us from tossing our manes and galloping away with ourselves. The fantasy we nurture is that total freedom will be all it’s cracked up to be. Seeing a live coyote—I wonder.

Certain relationships look like entirely too much captivity for some folks—whether they are the Birds or the Birdfeeder doesn’t matter—it’s too costly a bargain. As my daughter said recently, “My private opinion is that these people who claim they don’t know what Love is haven’t had a dog. They [dogs] teach us that all our chores surrounding their care reward us with vast quantities of joy we otherwise couldn’t have experienced.” She is asserting this as one who has just adopted a cat, which I find hilarious. When I point this out, she reminds me that she does not have the time or resources to invest in a dog. Cats require less work and can be just as loving. “The point,” she insists, “is that our personal investment in connection is what creates the bond we call Love. Some people have never known that…”

I think this is true of sheep, customers, children, lovers, and anyone to whom we choose to give our hearts, whether they ask us to or not. Whether our commitments come in bird-feeder-sized (weekly), cat-sized (daily), dog-sized (multiple daily), or child-sized (minute-by-minute-round-the-clock), the “work” is mostly good and occasionally vexing—with the extreme (yet rare) impulse to gnaw our way out of our own clothing and escape naked into the woods.

Being Wild is a rough and mangy business—just ask the malnourished coyote. Being captive is hard too. A Marriage without love is not worth it but Love can be a Savage business, especially when the one we are seeking to love is Ourself. Balancing Creativity with the demands of captivity is not for the faint of heart. Just ask the Writer who had to get off our Zoom call the other night because her little daughter had just pooped in the tub.

Well, my Dearies, as Frost says, “the woods are lovely, dark and deep” but we have “promises to keep” and “miles to go before we sleep.” There is a full moon out tonight—join me for a howl or two—then get on with your precious work of Loving and Mending. We all need YOU. Thank you for your Good Work.

With sew much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy