“Haul Wood, Chop Water” by Julie Shavin

I'm sitting in the dirt, my favorite thing to do. Not just sitting, but moving the dirt around.

Even though I’ve recently relocated to a just-short-of-condemned, 100-year-old farmhouse on six acres of mostly dirt (the dead kind in which nothing grows) in Fountain, Colorado, I actually went on to purchase three additional tons of Mother Earth. I had brought bags of really good dirt with me from the other house seven months ago, enduring merciless teasing from my daughter, but those trash-bag treasures didn't go far, and nothing affordable is enough to cover the achingly barren ground over the new septic tank in the front yard of this prairie-within-prairie of semi-arid Colorado land. This particular pile of newly-acquired soil is one of two, about 5 feet tall by 8 feet each. It is enriched, if not top of the line. The problem is, I had it dumped in the wrong place, the most ridiculous place – exactly where we need to park. So I'm sitting in the dirt and moving it to the southeast corner of this, our final dwelling.

I cannot overestimate the terror of “final dwelling.” Yes, all is winding down now, and we know it. I had dreamed of ending up in a place like this, without fully contemplating “ending up.” Sardonically, I could think, “Oh wait, there will be another place: a facility of some kind, a nursing home, and, of course, the inevitable cubicle.” Not exactly cheering. In addition to this little morsel of mortality, I perseverate constantly, as I did at the former house, on another one — the death of (most likely) my second husband (-to-be), Jerry, before we were able to marry. This circumstance has haunted me for six years and always will. The finality of this move, and with the first husband, who would have remained a great friend, if not lover, along with J's demise, all settle and never really settle into my mind, my bones.

Due to chronic back problems, I don't dare rake or hoe the dirt. Instead, I use a gloveless flat hand, my forearm, hand tools, or some stray piece of wood. Once, I tried pushing the dirt, which worked with the small upper stuff only. Then I thought of driving the car into a pile, maybe with two persons’ holding a discarded piece of wall from the demolished horse shed in the neighbor’s adjoining field. From this, I was heartily dissuaded (not by the neighbor, who wouldn’t have cared, but by family). I also called a man recommended for this type of dirt work. “Only 600 dollars!” he said. When I gasped, he offered, “OK, 300.” Just…no. So, it will take forever, it seems. Sometimes I'll feel things are progressing, then I stand back to look, as though an artist with an easel, and am suddenly Sisyphus.

Strangely, though, I like this toil; in a way, it's rewarding – comforting, even. It keeps me from ruminating, but I don't know why. It's not mentally taxing. My mind should be profoundly free to stress out. One gloomy day, prior to moving, I suddenly had the idea that if I couldn't have J, the only thing to do to be with him was to become him. He had lived on a more dire, more severe prairie than this one – way out east in Rush, Colorado. The thoughts of him do begin, but I think the subconscious has its way. This work, perhaps, is part of merging with him, of keeping him alive.

I have always gardened, loved planting things and watching them grow, and, in general, being outside. Today, mid-May, the sun is warm, which sounds absurd. But as a deep-south “Georgia Peach” who was addicted to the never-failing, punctually-blooming March 1st jonquils – on some days following the alpine snows of March, April, and yes, even May, I contemplate thanking God for warmth. It's a silly idea, like giving thanks for food – not just for plenty – but for the very concept, as though it's gift, not a necessity for, say, being able to thank at all. (Maybe instead of thanking God for sun, I consider, one should thank the sun for God.)

I can see the Rockies to the west, and, to the south, vaguely, the Sangre de Christo range. I relocated from the city for the quiet, first and foremost; there are a few cars, but not often, and at least I can't see them. There are fields in all directions, with their horses and, by this time, sumptuous clover. Other fields are gold, some with lots of bales of hay. To the sloping south are dots of houses, the enormous sky, at times, geese in their perfect formations, and once in a while, a hawk. The saplings I planted are all, psychotically, fruit trees. The ubiquitous barbed wire doesn't hem in any view; there are no privacy fences. The brightness is searing; sunglasses are a must.

I take on the task of dirt-moving at all different hours of a day. If it's early, I hear birdsong. At first, I was surprised by this, as we have so few trees. I didn't think I'd hear them at all. At dusk, the crickets serenade with their appogiaturas, not as in Georgia – which is to say, not as a symphony – but more like a chamber group; sometimes just a solo. Dirt on my arm feels like a throw of some kind: warm, soft, downy. There is a breeze, which, in the absence of humidity, and with rare clouds, can be suddenly bitter, but now is mild, pleasant. Yes, the wind can be a hellion here. It once stole a whole cat carrier and demolished it, scattering it in pieces in the next field; also, a heavy chair. It upended and destroyed the porch swing out back, and also left us with the gruesome and broken arthritic bones of the plastic greenhouse I didn't dare put the plastic on. One can put concrete blocks on things and they will still blow away or transform into grotesque mimicries of themselves. Wind destroyed even the windmill, a housewarming present to myself. Nothing stays put – if near ground, items have better luck. In a curious way, I find the winds apt – things keep slipping/flying away, which is like life itself and, by extension, like J. And speaking of decay, once in a while, the foul and disgusting odor of the new septic bubbles up and overcomes me. Apparently, this is normal.

Despite the enduring stress of memory and longing, I am somewhat able to enjoy living this old dream of country life, with its views, quiet, and so forth, but mainly because about a mile to town there's a street called “A Dog Will Lick His Balls But Won't Eat A Pickle Road.” In fact, it was necessary for this dream to come true – given the mourning, given a loss so insupportable it rendered me virtually inert. I still wonder whether I could have saved J from the hemorrhagic stroke that ended his life – whether we could have been together, whether, with care, he could have made it until my daughter was grown. The speculation and agony never die down themselves.

I move the dirt daily, though not consciously due to obsessive demons. Simply put, I am drawn to it. One day I thought, “If only it were finished! I can just see it now, I can envision the whole yard!” – and then realized, surprised, that I wasn't interested in any such thing. I was working toward a goal, sure. But actually, I enjoyed the process. Although physically taxing, this process, paradoxically, was closer to just … being.

I was reminded of the TV series “Rectify.” The main character had to keep on keeping on, had to go through the motions – and those motions saved him. Apparently, it is in the love of the doing – the planning – that I find myself relatively okay, by which I mean, not wanting to end it all (its meaning me). This seems to be is a saving grace of mindless physical work, to include its repetitive nature. In the mountains, where we lived when first moving to Colorado, I’d had a similar regimen: raking rocks away from the lawn's edge to get the grass to meet the street (which, even after ten years, didn't work). I came to realize that, like raking rocks, like focusing on the dream house (a kind of meditation, I realized), like rocking myself to sleep, as I have done all my life – all of it was self-soothing endeavor. One may not think about those things in that way at the time, but it seems to me now (in my ancient, ending-up, final, doddering years) that the body – the body, not the mind! – knows what to do. This is how it was with J as well. I could not have conceived loving someone and not for his mind. Sadly, I did not realize that the body can love, that it possesses its very own wisdom.

This day, as on so many others, the body has taken me outside to sit with the dirt and whittle it, little by little. It is only now, in composing these words, that I remember that J, long before meeting me, had been a woodcarver. I have one of his creations by my bedside. Of course, the result of my labor will not be a sculpture, but more like an anti-sculpture, a spreading, which reminds me that J was cremated, his ashes sprinkled over his pond and elsewhere. But undoubtedly, the body knows things, is capable of allusiveness, can conceptualize things without our ability to name them, at least until some time has passed.

A perplexing circumstance is that I haven't been able to write much since moving here. Another life-long dream for the end of, hopefully, a long life, was to write, continually, relentlessly, freed from earlier life's duties, like working for others, and also child-rearing. Writing was always my “thing.” It was my goal, my passion, my M.O. – my “me.” Yet here I am, amid stunning views and impressive quiet, with all the time to do what I really want while living in a truly poetic and prosaic environment, where the neighbor let me name his ponies (Sonnet and Prose, of course) – yet, seemingly, the last creative bone in my body has broken, become dislocated, or ossified.

As we know, fertile ground (no pun intended) for a writer who cannot produce seems to be writing about that inability. I find myself among that, if not hallowed, certainly that frustrated, conundrumish company all facing their writers' monoliths. I can't even seem to write about not writing, which is inexplicable. Is the problem getting something one has wanted for decades and finding that one truly can't have it all? Is it the terrifying final home, and aging, engendering an “I'm old now, too old to be a genius” realization? Or am I somehow not the person I was – and who the heck will I or could I become now?

Amid this turmoil, I read an old essay in a literary magazine in which the writer speaks of abandoning the city for the country. She, too, isn't writing much. It is then she realizes that hers is now just a parallel life – which is to say – and this really struck me – her wordless existence. “Oh!” and “Voila!” I thought. Perhaps I have only shuttled over to other things – which are, as with anything else, a kind of self-preservation. This would entail doing whatever must be done at the time – in my case, moving the dirt, then the piled rocks, and watering a lot to establish a few trees. It doesn't mean the writing is gone – vanished – but rather, that it is subdued in favor of what some wise part of the self or psyche (and of course, body) knows is currently needed: the wordless existence.

A few days passed, and I was communing again with dirt, sky, breeze, horses and fields, and thought, “What if I considered writing a process like the yard – something to have control over, to grow, nurture?” – and also, “Perhaps how I have lived, i.e., created my life – this identity of a person who writes – is not wasted.” Maybe it is not about audience (in which I have lost interest) or final product, but about living. Could I look at the writing this way – as process, not necessarily completion, but rather as a way of being, of living well? What if the universe (for lack of anything else I could consider as some sort of consciousness) is trying to teach me something about remembering – in this case, how I used to enjoy writing, not for a final product – not for submitting, not for an aimed-at prize or book, but just for the sheer pleasure of it all. Possibly, it occurred to me, it's necessary to die to the writing in order to start anew. After all, when I met J, I felt absolutely reborn. It's that simple and that complex. And how can one be reborn if not by perishing first?

Speaking of demise, an impish thought has snuck in like dirt through a screen or cracks in a foundation (of which we have plenty). One day, I'll be surrounded by dirt for eternity. Maybe this hard work, this toil, this – lovemaking – is an odd form of preparation – something I can control, until the time comes that I cannot.

I ponder this as dusk embraces the prairie, gifting another bizarre thought: what if a god, demon, saint or other entity were able to communicate with J, saying, “You two can be together forever – she need only die; what do you say?” I may know little, but I knew and know him well, and I knew and know love. He'd say no; that I must not go into eternal darkness. Thus, tomorrow I will again step into the caress of sky and kiss of sun, which is to say, into the light, all the way to summer, and, most likely, beyond.

In memoriam, Jerry Leon Fields, 1951-2012

“Haul Wood, Chop Water” by Julie Shavin

“body” by Twig Cummins Garber

“Common Ground” by Colleen Cassidy

TWENTY BELLOWS