the architecture of the day ahead –

the architecture of the day ahead takes shape in mind, on clear days. i picture the hours, the moments at hand, and how i might engage with them not just to make the kind of life that supports our aims and needs but to actually live how we mean to live, within a guiding pattern of greater symbiosis with life.

on foggier days, most days really, it seems to me that every day is new again, with nothing in it. then i am surprised by everything that needs to be done, usually well after it ought to have been. i am amazed at all that must repeat. i vastly prefer new projects to old maintenance. i want to be free to improvise. to potter. still, there are roles that are important to me, habits that support the life i seek to live, beings that depend on my participation, and they all want my ritual devotions.

it’s not always an easy task, to determine one’s own time, if it is even one’s own to determine. the nature of the work i do demands self-directedness. if you too play the roles of writing, designing, lifelearning, making art, running a business or the like, then you know that this freedom is an uneasy one. what should we be doing, when? all of it, now!

there are roles that reconnect a person to a greater pattern. gardener-farmer-cook, goatherd, orchardist, land steward, brewster, keeper of flocks, that immerse us in the seasons, weathering us. so that getting about by bicycle, doing the morning and evening chores, stacking and curing firewood in one season or barrowing and burning it in another, catching rainwater in tanks and ponds or watering the new young plants with it, all of these relationships assure us that we are embedded.

so too, in parenting young children or tending to elders, we are shaped by the beings we live with and the arc of their lives. the consideration of what to do with one’s time is never singular or isolated.

when this net is a healthy, balanced one, i feel held by it, in joyous collaboration, nurtured, co-regulating. when it is out of balance, or in a season of transition, of weaning, i can feel tied down, ready to bolt. it is this balance that demands more than any other natural system. the people, in relationship.

with all that in mind, what i like to do best is to review the day at its end, or the week, or the month, the season, then turn my attention to the next. what could this year hold? what must keep for another? when the new season approaches in the calendar, if not convincingly so in the weather, i sit down to imagine the new quarter. each season has its character of work. so we can get into projects deeply without sacrificing variety.

in deep winter our plans are preoccupied with the dormant season. persephone’s long dark hours are beloved for restful pursuits by the fire: the fiddle, knitting needle, sewing machine, spinning wheel. mostly, for me these days, the pen and the camera. we dream of the potter’s wheel, the pole lathe and chisel, plant dyes, basketry willow, natural plaster, but we cannot do it all and we shouldn’t. desire can lead us. it’s ok. short days want quick work: building beds, pruning the orchard, making biochar. planting the trees and shrubs we propagated last winter; starting more. the flocks are settled, we’ve decided not to breed the goats, so there’s a lull. carpentry begins later than we think it will, as autumn harvest is somehow always madcap and seemingly endless.

in early spring the preoccupations expand with the light, as if to meet it. we find our energy redoubles in the sunshine, and our vision widens and turns to the growing things. then it is all carpentry and seedlings, making repairs and sketching plans, and one quite forgets to make dinner. everyone lounges in the sun, cats, goats, chickens, ducks, people. the geese hide their eggs and we hunt for them. we linger out on a goat walk in the angular sun. the blossoms, the night-song of frogs, the dawn chorus, they are pure energy. we grow meditative, weeding a bed or cleaning corners that were invisible before. people come out of their houses and the rhythms shift. when i am in the city, there are city variations on this theme. when i am travelling between, i feel those rhythms inside my own private day, in miniature. it is still intrinsic, no matter where i am, this energy of early spring.

it used to be that the aims of the season were listed into months, projects suggested for the weeks; but i am often wrong about just how much will fit in a small vessel. mostly now i potter between the surprises and demands and limitations of the day and the determination and inspiration of the hour. each year i plan less and potter more, improvising on themes that every year i become more fluent in, though the patterns are unpredictable for a wildly altering climate and with it, instability across the spectrum of our world.

still, sometimes i have been known to graph daily habits, tracking to maintain some equilibrium. morning, evening routines groove deeply into the days, then insomnia wreaks havoc. hyper-fixation on a project will rivet me til chaos awakens me from my work. some tasks i just tend to resist, or forget, and thus slip down a slope into chaos. so, i track them.

all the x’s under ‘make your bed’ evoke satisfying order.

stretching on the mat x

medicinals x

tidy and sweep; a transformative x

kitchen clean, my achilles, x

prepare food — if we soak oats, rinse beans, mill flour, feed sourdough, culture kefir, ferment feed, or simmer stock, life is sweet. x.

lately i stack habits. when, then. when i rise, i write. when the kettle goes on, i go to the mat. once i eat, i take tinctures. when i cook, then i clean. after a goat walk, we bring in wood and harvest veg. when i leave a spot i carry away belongings to their homes. the cues liberate me from the fatigue of many decisions.

the sun and rain, the heat and cold, the dark and light, they pattern how we live and any map must acknowledge them. while ambitions for comfort and independence have moved us to design our houses and mobility, our food, our work, to be quite insulated from any of those parameters, it is a pleasure and a privilege to live in response to them. to take up handwork or writing on a rainy day, to grow cosy and rest on long dark nights, to spend hours in the garden on a bright afternoon, to bake on a cold one. our plans may be ambitious and full of ideals,

but to make them and live them in collaboration with the seasons and this place

is to reconnect with all that lives.

and so i greet the day.

thank you, dear readers, for supporting this work that emerges so freely here. you open the space. thank you for reading, thank you for subscribing. i’d love to hear how this lands with you, as ever ♡

good equinox to you 𖡼.𖤣𖥧𖡼.𖤣𖥧