Yesterday I wrote about the boundaries set by others – our feral cat Mamacita, and the owners of the empty farm next door. How there are places we cannot go, where we are not welcome.
When we lived on Martha’s Vineyard, during the off-season, we would trespass. After the summer people evacuated at the end of the season, we would walk on private properties, across land that was fiercely private during the tourist season. We would joke, saying, “I am going to trespass against them.” To me this felt like a way of weaving the forbidden lands back into the whole cloth of the island.
I have a friend with a daughter who is fiercely private. Secretive even. Resentful of any incursion on what she considers to be her business. She is also a child who requires particular attention due to her learning deficits and chronic, even dangerous poor judgement.
So my friend has to dance along the thin wire of holding on and letting go. It is not always a graceful dance. At times she finds herself hanging by her toes, or teetering perilously close to falling. She has found that if she can find an aperture – a space that invites entry – things go better. Sometimes there appears to be only a wall, but if she waits, a way to enter will usually appear.
What initially seemed to be a trespass is then a meeting place. Like the tree in the photograph above. Can you find the opening?
